Shockat Adam
Main Page: Shockat Adam (Independent - Leicester South)Department Debates - View all Shockat Adam's debates with the Home Office
(1 month ago)
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Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
It is a real pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) on securing this debate and agree with him wholeheartedly that this issue should be considered further in the main Chamber.
It is said that technology is a very useful servant but can be a very dangerous master. Many colleagues have already made a robust case for the use of this technology and undeniably it can be very useful. However, I am extremely concerned and believe that we must proceed with caution. In Leicester, some people already want to use the technology, but we must ensure that there is watertight legislation before we proceed any further.
Among my main concerns is the accuracy of the technology. We must ask whether it is fit for purpose. A spokesperson from StopWatch, a UK coalition of academics, lawyers and activists, has said that
“there is very little evidence on the efficacy of LFR deployments”.
In fact, in the first six months of this year, when this technology was deployed, StopWatch found that on average it stopped one person nearly every hour, or every 55 minutes, and that a person was arrested every two hours because of it. The data showed that, as the hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) said, over 80% of those arrests were unnecessary. The right hon. Member for Maldon said that the police have polite conversations with people, but polite conversations have a different meaning for different people.
Secondly, there is equality and non-discrimination. We already know that a black person is four times more likely to be stopped by this technology, as we are now. The technology has been shown to exacerbate any racial profiling. In fact, it has been demonstrated that it disproportionately misidentifies women, people of colour and even disabled people. That is a real concern.
Thirdly, as the majority of colleagues have already mentioned, the technology is an attack on our civil liberties. Earlier this year, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Russia after claims that it had used LFR technology to locate and arrest a protester on the Moscow metro system. That is extremely frightening. Similarly, China has been accused of perfecting a version of facial technology that can single out and track Uyghurs—members of the repressed Muslim community in China.
We must acknowledge these concerns and ensure that, like the EU, we have in place stringent legislation, like the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act 2024, before this technology becomes widely used and turns into our master.
James McMurdock
Absolutely. Let me put it like this: if any of us were to turn up at a social event and unexpectedly find a large swarm of police, that would give us a moment’s pause for thought. We need to be careful to ensure that this technology is not a more pervasive version of that example. It must not be constantly in existence, attached to every CCTV camera, without us even being aware of it.
To go back to transparency, we have to be open and frank about any issues with how the technology is being implemented, so that we can fix them. I agree that there absolutely could be issues, and we definitely want to be on the right path.
Shockat Adam
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this technology could further alienate minority communities —as happened with the Muslim community, which felt unfairly targeted by the Prevent strategy—and could cause further division and mistrust of the police?
James McMurdock
This is all about the first principle of “without fear or favour”. If there are any examples of where that is failing, regardless of whether it relates to local behaviour or the broader introduction of a new technology, we need to be open, transparent and mindful. We live in a world in which not everything is done perfectly, but there are some communities with problems that are perhaps not being tackled in the most beneficial way. I do not want to get too deeply into these issues, because I am not an expert and I recognise that they are extremely sensitive, but I think we can tackle them transparently.
The hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) used the excellent analogy of a night out. I completely agree; I was thinking, “Yeah, I’m up for it, but let’s just make sure we can all get home safe”, but the more we discuss the issue, the more I think the appropriate camp to be in is, “I could be tempted out, but let’s make sure we like the destination.” I will leave it there. I thank hon. Members for their time.