Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Pannick and Lord Clement-Jones

Report stage
Monday 9th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

This is another context where there has to be a fair balance between competing interests. One can easily see that the use of live facial recognition is a vital policing tool. However, as has been explained, it has an adverse impact on privacy. What concerns me is that the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act require not merely that steps taken are necessary and proportionate, which the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, rightly referred to, but it is a requirement that any restrictions or provisions in such a context must be prescribed by law.

I am very concerned that having police authorities and police officers exercising a pure discretion, without any statutory guidance or code of practice, may well fail that legal test of prescribed by law, because of the uncertainty and the excess of discretion. Therefore, the Government would be well advised in this sensitive context to ensure that there is statutory guidance and a statutory code of practice. The Minister may be unable to accept this amendment, but I hope he will be able to tell the House that steps will be taken to provide clear guidance to police authorities as to the use of this technology.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 374, which I have signed, but also to Amendment 430, which I tabled.

The use of live facial recognition in our public spaces is an extraordinary expansion of state power that currently exists in a legal vacuum. We are not Luddites on these Benches; we recognise the utility of technology, but we must ensure that live facial recognition is a targeted tool used under the rule of law and not a blanket surveillance net that chills the right to move freely and anonymously in our streets. The use of live facial recognition technology in public spaces poses a profound challenge to our civil liberties that cannot be met purely by internal police guidance. We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the nature of British policing—a shift, if you like, from the line-fishing of traditional human observation to the deep ocean trawling of automated mass surveillance.

Amendments 374 and 430 collectively seek to provide the democratic and judicial safeguards currently missing from what the experts have called a regulatory lacuna or legislative void. Amendment 374 prohibits the use of LFR during public assemblies or processions, unless a specific code of practice has been approved by both Houses of Parliament, as my noble friends have explained. In a free society, individuals should not have to pay the price of handing over their sensitive biometric data just to engage in democratic protest. We must safeguard public privacy and civil liberties by requiring democratic oversight before this technology is deployed against those exercising their right to assembly. We cannot have policing by algorithm without democratic oversight.

The current lack of oversight creates a documented chilling effect. Research by the Ada Lovelace Institute indicates that nearly one-third of the public are uncomfortable with police use of LFR, and up to 38% of young Londoners, for instance, have stated they would stay away from protests or public events if they knew that this technology was being used. We cannot allow our public squares to become spaces where citizens are treated as walking barcodes or a nation of suspects.

Critically, Amendment 430 would establish that the use of LFR in public spaces must be limited to narrowly defined serious cases and require judicial approval. It would provide the fundamental safeguards our society requires. It would prohibit the use of LFR by any authority unless it was for the investigation of serious crimes and had received prior judicial authorisation specifying the scope and duration of its use. We must ensure that this technology is used as a targeted tool, not a blanket surveillance net.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Pannick and Lord Clement-Jones

Report stage
Monday 2nd March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I associate myself with what my noble friend Lord Russell said about the remarkable contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin. I also thank the Minister for all her efforts today to explain the Government’s position, and for the amendments that she has brought forward on behalf of the Government.

Amendment 298 is very important because it seeks to regulate online harmful content, and I very much support the principle. However, I will raise an important quibble. Amendment 298 defines what is meant by “harmful material” by reference to a number of very specific matters that I think we would all agree should not be online, such as material that

“promotes or encourages sexual activity that would be an offence under the Sexual Offences Act”,

or any sexual act that is

“non-consensual, or … appears to be non-consensual”

or

“threatens a person’s life … or is likely to result … in serious injury to a person”,

et cetera.

I have no difficulty with that: I entirely agree with it. However, I am concerned that, in subsection (2)(b) of the new clause proposed in Amendment 298, “harmful material” also includes that which

“would be an offence under … the Obscene Publications Act 1959 or the Obscene Publications Act 1964”.

I am concerned that that would be a very unwise way for us to regulate online content. The reason is that that Act is notoriously vague and uncertain. It depends on jury assessments of what would “deprave and corrupt” a person. It does not seem appropriate or necessary to include that element of harmful conduct when the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, lists, in perfectly sensible and acceptable ways, the specific types of content that ought not to be online and that should be prohibited.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, as with the last group, we on these Benches support the Government’s amendments, but we do not believe that they go far enough. Alongside the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Pannick, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, for her tireless work on the Independent Pornography Review and subsequently. We on these Benches fully support her amendments to ban step-incest pornography and content that mimics child sexual abuse, to implement age verification for those featured on porn sites and AI nudification apps and to establish vital parity between online and offline pornography regulation.

I will be extremely brief. Amendment 298 in particular would create parity between offline and online regulation. Offline content that would not be classified by the BBFC should not be legal online. The noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, rightly proposes a monitoring role for the BBFC to support Ofcom’s enforcement and I very much hope that the Government will concede on this. If the criticisms of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, are taken on board, the Government can easily alter that amendment at ping-pong.

I have also signed Amendment 281A. The Government’s nudification amendments are clearly too narrow. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, has described, by limiting scope to UK products, they ignore the global nature of this harm. We must go further to capture possession and use of any software designed to produce these non-consensual images. I very much hope that we will be able to avoid votes on the four amendments that the noble Baroness has put forward, and that the Government will take them on board.