Automated Facial Recognition Surveillance

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his question, which points to the heart of the matter. As he knows, there is a facial recognition and biometrics board, which is soon to have a new chair. As part of that renewal of leadership, we will review the board’s terms of reference and its mission, especially in the light of technological developments. What emanates from that, and whether it is a change in the terms of the code, we will have to wait and see, but as I said at the start, I am very aware of the duty we have in this House to strike the right balance between security and liberty.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

The approach of trying it out and seeing how it goes is exactly the wrong way to maintain public trust. Many of my constituents use King’s Cross railway station, and last year they discovered that they were, in effect, being spied on. The legal framework is not in place. When even the head of Google is saying we should move more slowly, because we need to keep the public with us, is it not right that we follow the example of the European Union and put it on pause while we work out the right way to proceed?

[Kit Malthouse]

No, it is not right. The hon. Gentleman is incorrect to say that there is no legal framework, and in saying that he disagrees with the High Court, which only last year certified in a case that there was and therefore the police could roll it out. The Information Commissioner looked at this and issued a report, and the Met has adopted many of recommendations of that report. Like every development in crime fighting, the technology is not static; we have to be agile and sensitive to its use. For example, the past 100 years have seen enormous developments in fingerprint technology—in detection and retrieval and in the identification of individuals using fingerprints. We keep fingerprints in a way that we do not keep facial recognition information, and there are good reasons for that, but these things should be kept under review at all times, and that is what we intend to do with LFR.