Asked by: Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of introducing a statutory requirement for the deletion of custody images where no (a) charge and (b) conviction follows.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The retention and deletion of custody images is currently governed by the statutory Police and Information Management Code of Practice, and the associated College of Policing’s Management of Police Information (MoPI) guidance and Authorised Professional Practice. These require forces to retain images only where necessary and proportionate and to review and delete them in line with assessed continuing policing need. Individuals are also able to apply to the police to have their custody image deleted, where they believe continued retention is not necessary.
Following the recent public consultation on biometrics, facial recognition and similar technologies, the government intends to bring forward a new legal framework covering biometric retention rules.
Asked by: Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has issued guidance on using experimental methods in conjunction with facial recognition.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has not issued specific guidance. Police use of facial recognition and similar technologies is currently governed by a legal framework that includes data protection, equality and human rights laws, national guidance, a code of practice and force level policies. The College of Policing has also published guidance and an Authorised Professional Practice setting out police forces use new technology. However, we intend to bring forward a new legal framework to provide clearer, more specific rules.
The Government’s aim is that a new legal framework will ensure all police forces across the country can use facial recognition and similar technologies with greater confidence, and that their uses and limits are clear to the public.
Last year, we launched a public consultation on when and how biometrics, facial recognition and similar technologies should be used, and what safeguards and oversight are needed.
Asked by: Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the cost-effectiveness of police use of live facial recognition technology in comparison to traditional policing methods.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has not made a final assessment of the cost‑effectiveness of police use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology in comparison to traditional policing methods. However, when the government introduces legislation on a new framework this will be accompanied by an impact assessment. This will include consideration of costs, operational benefits and wider impacts, alongside legal, ethical and equality considerations.
With regards to the integration of facial recognition into existing CCTV, police forces must comply with data protection, human rights, equality and other relevant laws. This means that police can use live facial recognition only for targeted, intelligence led, time-bound deployments to locate specific individuals on a watchlist, such as wanted offenders or people who may pose a risk of serious harm.
The Home Office is aware that both the Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police have piloted the use of facial recognition cameras mounted on fixed street infrastructure. This involves adding standalone LFR cameras and does not involve changing the use of existing CCTV, which remains separate.
Asked by: Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of introducing a statutory requirement for the deletion of custody images where no charge or conviction follows.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has not made a final assessment of the cost‑effectiveness of police use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology in comparison to traditional policing methods. However, when the government introduces legislation on a new framework this will be accompanied by an impact assessment. This will include consideration of costs, operational benefits and wider impacts, alongside legal, ethical and equality considerations.
With regards to the integration of facial recognition into existing CCTV, police forces must comply with data protection, human rights, equality and other relevant laws. This means that police can use live facial recognition only for targeted, intelligence led, time-bound deployments to locate specific individuals on a watchlist, such as wanted offenders or people who may pose a risk of serious harm.
The Home Office is aware that both the Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police have piloted the use of facial recognition cameras mounted on fixed street infrastructure. This involves adding standalone LFR cameras and does not involve changing the use of existing CCTV, which remains separate.
Asked by: Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what guidance her Department has issued on using experimental methods in conjunction with facial recognition; and who is responsible for enforcing that guidance.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has not made a final assessment of the cost‑effectiveness of police use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology in comparison to traditional policing methods. However, when the government introduces legislation on a new framework this will be accompanied by an impact assessment. This will include consideration of costs, operational benefits and wider impacts, alongside legal, ethical and equality considerations.
With regards to the integration of facial recognition into existing CCTV, police forces must comply with data protection, human rights, equality and other relevant laws. This means that police can use live facial recognition only for targeted, intelligence led, time-bound deployments to locate specific individuals on a watchlist, such as wanted offenders or people who may pose a risk of serious harm.
The Home Office is aware that both the Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police have piloted the use of facial recognition cameras mounted on fixed street infrastructure. This involves adding standalone LFR cameras and does not involve changing the use of existing CCTV, which remains separate.
Asked by: Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the proportionality of deploying mass surveillance technology to address low level offences.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has not made a final assessment of the cost‑effectiveness of police use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology in comparison to traditional policing methods. However, when the government introduces legislation on a new framework this will be accompanied by an impact assessment. This will include consideration of costs, operational benefits and wider impacts, alongside legal, ethical and equality considerations.
With regards to the integration of facial recognition into existing CCTV, police forces must comply with data protection, human rights, equality and other relevant laws. This means that police can use live facial recognition only for targeted, intelligence led, time-bound deployments to locate specific individuals on a watchlist, such as wanted offenders or people who may pose a risk of serious harm.
The Home Office is aware that both the Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police have piloted the use of facial recognition cameras mounted on fixed street infrastructure. This involves adding standalone LFR cameras and does not involve changing the use of existing CCTV, which remains separate.
Asked by: Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of integrating facial recognition into existing CCTV infrastructure on civil liberties.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has not made a final assessment of the cost‑effectiveness of police use of live facial recognition (LFR) technology in comparison to traditional policing methods. However, when the government introduces legislation on a new framework this will be accompanied by an impact assessment. This will include consideration of costs, operational benefits and wider impacts, alongside legal, ethical and equality considerations.
With regards to the integration of facial recognition into existing CCTV, police forces must comply with data protection, human rights, equality and other relevant laws. This means that police can use live facial recognition only for targeted, intelligence led, time-bound deployments to locate specific individuals on a watchlist, such as wanted offenders or people who may pose a risk of serious harm.
The Home Office is aware that both the Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police have piloted the use of facial recognition cameras mounted on fixed street infrastructure. This involves adding standalone LFR cameras and does not involve changing the use of existing CCTV, which remains separate.
Asked by: Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether (a) she or (b) any members of her Department met or corresponded with Lord Mandelson on Palantir.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
No such meetings took place.
Asked by: Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether an impact assessment into the policy paper on Home Office immigration and nationality fees, due to increase from 8 April 2026, has been conducted.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Where changes to fee legislation are made, Impact Assessments are produced which identify potential impacts resulting from the changes.
The published Impact Assessment includes discussion of the impacts of the fees that are due to increase from 8 April 2026: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukia/2026/44/pdfs/ukia_20260044_en.pdf
Asked by: Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the safeguards in place to mitigate racial and other bias in the use of retrospective facial recognition technology.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Secretary has commissioned His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary (HMICFRS) to conduct an inspection of police and relevant law enforcement agencies’ use of retrospective facial recognition. The detail of the inspection and publication of the report are a matter for HMICFRS, but they will look at whether there have been or are likely to have been any wrongful arrests as a result of the use of retrospective facial recognition.
Additionally, the Home Office is aware of the risk of bias in facial recognition algorithms and supports policing in managing that risk. Manual safeguards, embedded in police training, operational practice, and guidance, require all potential matches returned from the Police National Database (PND) to be visually assessed by a trained user and investigating officer. If the trained PND user or investigator decides a facial search image provides a potential match, this must be treated as intelligence rather than evidence and additional lines of enquiry must be undertaken before any action is taken. These safeguards have always been in place, even before the independent National Physical Laboratory (NPL) testing.
The Home Office does not issue guidance on setting algorithm thresholds. The National Police Chiefs’ Council and police forces consider the impact and equitability of facial recognition technology in line with their Public Sector Equality Duty. The threshold is set for all forces by a Chief Constable on behalf of the NPCC to balance the equitability of facial searching, and the operational imperative to find true matches where they are present on PND.
The Home Office takes the findings of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) report very seriously and has already acted. The Police Reform White Paper included a commitment to invest £26m into the development and delivery of a national facial recognition system for policing using a new algorithm. The new facial recognition algorithm has been independently tested by the NPL and this showed that it can be used at settings with no statistically significant bias. The new service will be operationally tested by the police in the coming months and will be subject to evaluation to inform future decisions about rolling out the new system with the new algorithm.