Biometric Passports

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Dubs]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have proposals to introduce biometric passports.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)]

My Lords, British passports have contained biometric information in the form of facial recognition technology since 2006. There are no plans to introduce a second biometric, such as fingerprints, into passports.

[Lord Dubs]

First, given that many countries have said that they expect visitors to have full biometric data in their passports, will that not make it much more difficult for British people to travel in the future, especially to the United States? Secondly, will the Minister confirm that forged passports have been involved in almost every known case of terrorism? Surely biometric passports are much harder to forge than the ones that we have at the moment.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, the noble Lord has raised various points. There are no reasons at all to suppose that the absence of a second biometric in British passports will in any way hinder the ability of British citizens to travel to whichever country they wish to enter. The United States takes the fingerprints of people entering the country but does not insist on fingerprints in passports. The US does not itself have, or intend to put, fingerprints into its passports.

This Government entirely agree with the noble Lord that passport security is extremely important. Although the move to introduce a second biometric will not continue, one part of the programme that definitely will continue is the strengthening of security surrounding the existing facial biometric.