Metropolitan Police: Live Facial Recognition

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Missing people deemed vulnerable—a risk either to themselves or to other people—may well be the subject of LFR deployment for their own safety.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I certainly endorse the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, and I hope the Government will take it on board. How accurate is this facial recognition technology? I have been told that a deployment of the technology at Oxford Circus on 27 February scanned 8,600 faces to see whether any matched a watchlist of more than 7,000 individuals and that, during the session, police wrongly stopped five people and correctly stopped one. If that information is anywhere near accurate, it would suggest that the technology is not overly reliable. For how long were those apparently wrongly stopped at Oxford Circus detained, and for how long is the record of those wrongly stopped, including where they were stopped, retained?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I understand that the incident at Oxford Circus was on 20 February. I understand also—I will be corrected if I am wrong—that the machinery was not working on that date .