Police National Computer

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

We have just seen from the previous question that there is a bit of contradiction in some of the points raised by noble Lords on the Opposition Benches. Personally, I would allow my data to be kept for as long as anybody wanted for the purposes for which it might be used. Those pleas from the Opposition Benches have certainly been quite contradictory over the years.

[Lord Scriven (LD) [V]]

My Lords, we now know that a weekly weeding session from the database owned and operated by the Home Office takes place for DNA and fingerprint records, and this has links to local police force databases. The Minister answered a Written Question that I tabled by saying:

“The police in England and Wales cannot at present automatically wipe facial images at the point when a person is determined to be innocent.”


So why are “no further action” facial recognition images not included in the Home Office’s weekly weeding?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Facial images have to be manually removed from the database, whereas the DNA database allows for automatic deletion. That is the answer.