Security and Policing: Facial Recognition Technology

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, we are very lucky that we have people like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and organisations such as Big Brother Watch. In some ways, I start from the same premise of the requirement that fundamental human rights have within democracy. However, I quite quickly come to a different fork. I would illustrate that fork by suggesting that it depends on which country you live in. If, for example, you live in—to take the ultimate—North Korea, or—to take the intermediate—perhaps Russia or Venezuela, it is rather different to living in a European country, or at least most European countries, and many other countries in the world. For me, that is a practical and philosophical distinction. I describe it as the “two Ts”: T for tyranny and T for terrorism. I do not happen to believe that we in this country are faced with potential tyranny, let alone have tyranny already, but we all know that we are faced with terrorism and other forms of organised crime. That is what makes it essential that we use the implements that are available to protect us.

As I said at the start, I have sympathy for the general need to conserve our liberties. Indeed, I would even suggest that I have a minor credential in that: along with other noble friends in this House, I have been in the advance of trying to limit and check the use of powers of entry into premises without warrant, of which there have been far too many. We have a lot of our people on our side over this, and the committee that looks at statutory instruments now keeps a close eye on that.

However, we need to make the fullest use of all the techniques available not just to keep a check on terrorism and crime but for the proper organisation of the state. I shall like to use my remaining two minutes to say that what is really needed is that the state is aware of who its citizens are, which at the moment it is not. What is needed, therefore, is some form of proper identification. I do not believe in identity cards; still less do I believe in identity cards with biometrics, because biometrics on identity cards can be used fraudulently by terrorists or criminals who, with modern technology, can put their own biometrics on them and therefore appear to be any person that they represent themselves to be.

What we need are national identity numbers. Surely we can have no objection to this. We need our biometrics, whatever the best biometrics are, to be stored within the Government centrally and securely, not on bits of paper scattered around. They should be online and available to those people who should have them. In that way, we would have one number, a national identity number, instead of the current plethora of numbers, so many of which have been devalued by being misused, such as national insurance numbers, national health numbers, HMRC numbers and passport numbers. I was amazed that the noble Baroness was concerned about photographs on passports; of course they are available to the police. It is essential for our national security that those who need to know, as the jargon goes, have access.

I hope the Government will reconsider their repeated refusal to introduce national identity numbers and look at this system, which would make a huge difference to the administration of our public services, social services and National Health Service and guard better our national security.