Security and Policing: Facial Recognition Technology

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for initiating this debate.

“I also wanted a framework for governance and oversight, which I think is so important in this area. We need the public to trust that what we are doing is clearly legal … why we are using biometrics, and for what purpose”.


Those are not my words, but the Minister’s words to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on 6 February this year. However, for facial recognition technology collection use and storage, that is not what is in place and is what we have not got. There is no legislation, codified regulation or independent oversight and therefore public trust will be diminished.

The first issue is the framework for governance. In reality, there is none. There might be a few scattered papers, but there is no combined, clear, legal governance framework for the use of facial recognition technology by UK police forces. In fact, the Biometrics Commissioner said it is a postcode lottery with inconsistent use, retention, searching and taking of first facial imagery. What we have at the moment is a make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach or “do as you want as long as you don’t get caught”. That is what is happening and why this issue gained prominence with the public in 2012 when somebody took the Metropolitan Police to court. That is where this started in 2012, and the use of facial recognition technology is still unregulated and non-legislative, with no independent oversight.

I say to the Minister that we are on the road to another court case and, based on the judgment in 2012, my guess is that the Government will probably lose. The letter written by the Minister on 30 November to the chair of the Science and Technology Committee states that a decision to deploy facial recognition systems is a police operational matter. Of course it is, but it should be within a framework of legislation and regulation, the same as other operational requirements of the police. For example, Durham Constabulary is now using body-worn cameras to create a database of troublemakers. That is totally against the principles of data protection and the spirit of not using this type of technology as an intelligence-gathering tool. As there is no legal status, there are no proper regulations and no independent oversight and Durham Constabulary is getting away with it.

Pippa King, from Biometrics in Schools, made an extremely good FoI request in January this year. It is telling that out of 32 forces that responded, 27 could not provide any national or local guidance for the use of biometric facial recognition technology—27 out of 32. In addition, 32 out of 32 had not done a privacy impact assessment. Five stated that the Home Office has a PIA and they were using that. Has the Home Office done a PIA on the police use of facial recognition technology? If so, when did it share the assessment with police forces and where is it public? There is no body with oversight powers or independent checks—none whatever. Particularly in light of the fact, it is really important that many people on the database will have no idea that they are on it. They may have been to a train station, a pop concert or a memorial service. When will the Government look at giving power to an independent oversight body with the power of sanction to check that the police are using this technology correctly?

I end with the Minister’s own words. “These things are potential monsters”, she said at the same meeting, “which is why the Government need to be absolutely clear why they are collecting this data and for what purpose”. When will the Minister bring forward regulations and when will an independent oversight body be appointed?