Criminal Justice Bill (Eighth sitting)

Vicky Ford Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Alex Norris]

“Proportionality” is the exact word here. It is about finding balance, as I say, between individual liberty and our collective safety. If we are saying that, in all instances where the police have a photo of a possible offender, we have complete comfort about their searching the entire DVLA database to try and identify that person—well, that is a very significant change. I would argue strongly that that is different from saying, “Well, we think we might know who it is; let’s apply for the driving licence of an individual.” I think that the public would see a big difference.

The issue becomes even more important given the pace of technological change; we have been talking about retrospective facial recognition technologies here, but live facial recognition technologies are developing at breakneck speed: cameras can scan huge crowds of people, check who they are and flag persons of concern. The Minister, I think, has a degree of enthusiasm for that technology; it is a plank of his plans around violence against retail workers, and shop theft more widely.

I recently visited South Wales police because I wanted to understand the use of this technology. With your indulgence, Ms Bardell, I will take this opportunity to put on the record my thanks to the police and crime commissioner for South Wales, Alun Michael, for his work. He is stepping down from public office at May’s elections after more than half a century in different posts. He has sat in the chair that I occupy; he has sat in the chair that the Minister occupies; he has sat in Cabinet, and he is one of the few PCCs to have served the entire 12 years of that post’s existence. His is a life of extraordinary public service to the UK and Wales, and to Cardiff, and we have been very lucky to have him.

As I was saying, South Wales police is very much in the vanguard of facial recognition technology. In a recent oral questions, the Minister graciously made reference to the work of South Wales police in this area, particularly the oversight that it is doing through the PCC’s office, which may well be a good model—in fact, it very much is. However, it is not without controversy, partly because it is in the vanguard and that sort of disruption is generating significant public interest.

There was quite a bit of public debate around one of the events in question: a Beyoncé concert at the Principality Stadium. That was a huge event. It had incredible hype; people really did everything to try to get tickets. Live facial recognition technology was used at that concert. The police advertised it, defined a public watch list, and said, “We are looking for anyone who is a known terrorist, in light of the Manchester bombing, and for paedophiles, in view of the likely attendees of the concert.” That probably finds the right balance: the public are informed and there is a defined watch list. There is a degree of common sense there.

As I said, what South Wales police have put in place, and what I think we are going to see across the country, is a model where we have civilian balance to the operational independence of the police and where the public’s representative, as we have in England and Wales in the form of police and crime commissioners, is able to know what is happening and to have public oversight. However, there is a real risk around how that sort of technology could be combined with the powers in this clause. The use of live facial recognition technologies could be combined with the entire DVLA photo database for the purposes of live blanket surveillance. I do not think that is what the Government want, but I do think that we have to hear that they do not. Relying on Henry VIII powers makes it even worse.

It is welcome that, according to proposed new section 71A of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000, a code of practice will be issued. That is really important, and speaks to my amendment 60, which is a pretty basic attempt to put some degree of parliamentary guardrail on to this new technology and its use in law enforcement. It states that once the Bill has received Royal Assent, a report on its usage must be published by the Secretary of State on an annual basis. I will be honest: I am not precious about the form that that should take, but I am precious about technology that has moved at great pace and with which there has been very little parliamentary engagement at all.

Stronger guardrails should be set. We have to be really cautious about other changes we might make, such as those in clause 21, that would mean that a significant database could be used for proactive surveillance of people who have never done anything other than apply for a provisional licence. That point could be held, but we would have to argue with the public and build public confidence around it. We would have to be shown the evidence for the effectiveness and the operational cases. I do not think the Government have done that.

My hope is that I am taking the issue far beyond what the Government intend. I will be very glad if that is the case. Part of the problem is that we are relying on regulations when we have no idea what their form will be. I stop at this point. I hope the Minister will be able to give the Committee some comfort.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I have listened extremely carefully to the shadow Minister and the Minister. I take issues of data protection and privacy very seriously, but I also believe that members of the public expect us to try to keep them safe, and expect the police to be able to use technology to try to keep them safe.

I listened to what the hon. Member for Nottingham North said about the facial recognition technology used in south Wales. Those same south Wales cameras were used last half-term in my constituency of Chelmsford and in Southend in Essex. As a result, a number of individuals were arrested, including somebody who had come into Chelmsford from outside and was wanted for a very high-profile sexual offence. What the Minister has been saying about being able to use this technology to arrest rapists is not hypothetical; it has happened, and it happened in my constituency in Chelmsford.

[Alex Norris]

I am sorry to ask the right hon. Member to give way, because I have said so much—but I guess the point I was making about the Beyoncé concert was about having a defined watch list of people known and suspected of having done significant crimes. Such measures feel like a proportionate tactic to apprehend them, but is that enough for us to say that therefore everybody’s faces ought to be in play, even though the vast majority have never done anything wrong?

[Vicky Ford]

I was just coming to that point. I completely hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying about widening out the potential dataset of photographs that could be used. I suspect that most members of the public would say it is utterly reasonable to widen out the set of faces we could look at. For instance, we might have a picture of somebody who is a rapist and was never known before, but their photograph might have appeared on a wider database such as that from the DVLA, rather than on a known potential suspect list. If that helped to find really dangerous criminals, I suspect most members of the public would accept that.

I agree that there need to be very strong measures to make sure that we do not turn into a surveillance society, such as we have seen in some much more autocratic countries, where those pictures can then be used against innocent people. I believe the Minister is trying to say that the protection is there in the Bill. When these cameras have been used, there have been very strong rules about where they can be used. The cameras used in both Chelmsford and Southend were highly publicised, with signs and alerts that the technology was being used in that place on that day. Those sorts of measures are important.

I would be interested in a bit more clarity from the Minister about ensuring that we do not turn to inappropriate use, as we have seen in some autocratic countries, while also ensuring that we can help the public by making use of the best technology to identify those who have committed the most serious crimes.

[Chris Philp]

I would like to speak to a couple of matters concerning the clause, and then talk about the read-across into facial recognition. I think there is some conflation of two different kinds of facial recognition—live and retrospective—only one of which is relevant here. I will explain how that works and how it might be relevant.

Let me speak first to the to the substance of the clause. First, just to be precise, this is not a Henry VIII power, which is a piece of secondary legislation that can amend primary legislation. This does not create a regulation-making power to amend primary legislation; it simply creates a list. It is not technically a Henry VIII power, but it does specify the circumstances, or the policing and enforcement purposes, for which data can be used.

Secondly, we are not passing clause 21 expressly to authorise the use of DVLA data for facial recognition or indeed for any particular law enforcement purpose; we are simply creating a regulation-making power. Regulations might be brought forward using this power to do any number of law enforcement activities, including facial recognition, but that would, of course, have to be debated at the time and subject to the affirmative procedure. This is enabling legislation; we are not actually passing the substance of any particular power today.

Since members of the Committee have raised questions about facial recognition, I would like to address them. There are essentially two different kinds of facial recognition—separate concepts—one of which is relevant and one of which is not. Let me start with the one that would not be relevant here: live facial recognition. Live facial recognition would never need to use images from the DVLA database, the passport database or anything else. Live facial recognition takes a watch list of people wanted for criminal offences or wanted by the court.

Such technology was run recently in Croydon—my borough—where I think there are about 12,000 people wanted for criminal offences. The camera was set up, as it was in Southend and Chelmsford, in Wales, for the coronation and at the Silverstone Grand Prix. Everyone who walked past those cameras in Croydon town centre got scanned. There were public signs up; the authorised professional practice says that public signs have to be put up, which I would have thought would mean criminals would not walk past the cameras—but they do.

Over a couple of afternoons in Croydon, several thousand people walked past the cameras, despite the fact that there was a sign up saying, “The police are using live facial recognition” and in the course of those two afternoons, there were 17 alerts and all were accurate. The police would stop each person, have a conversation, ask for ID and so on, and all 17 had been accurately identified. Those 17 people were all arrested because they were wanted for offences. One of them was a wanted rapist who would otherwise not have been caught. It was just good fortune that that wanted rapist had to walk past the camera and was apprehended. Were it not for that, that wanted rapist would still be wandering around. There was another person who had been wanted for grievous bodily harm since 2015—for eight years—and they were arrested as well. In Croydon, the scheme was run in the first couple of weeks of December.

Concerns have been raised previously about accuracy and disproportionality: does the technology pick on members of certain ethnic communities, as it were? There was litigation that preceded South Wales using it, back in about 2020. I join the shadow Minister in commending Alun Michael for his work on live facial recognition, where he has shown real leadership, and for his long career in public life—in Parliament as a Secretary of State, as Welsh First Minister, and as a police and crime commissioner for the last 12 years or so.

The litigation happened, and the court set out certain conditions that had to be met, one of which was around accuracy—I think the false positive rate had to be one in 1,000—and disproportionality. The algorithm was improved and tested by the National Physical Laboratory at 0.6, which is the setting that the police use. At that setting, it found that the false positive rate was, I think—I am speaking from memory—one in 6,000, which is six times more accurate than the court specified, and that there was no disproportionality based on either gender or ethnicity.

For the one-in-6,000 false positive, what would happen—this has not happened in Croydon, because only 17 people were stopped—is that the police would say, “Excuse me, sir or madam, can you just identify yourself?” If they turn out not to be the person the police think they are, obviously the police will say, “Sorry to disturb you—off you go.” But that is one in 6,000, and it did not happen in Croydon, because the police did not stop 6,000 people.

So that is live facial recognition. The police do not need access to a DVLA database or password database, or even the custody database; they just need a list of people who are wanted. In the examples in Chelmsford, Southend and Croydon, they caught people who were wanted for offences or who had absconded from court, who would otherwise still be wandering around. It was used at the coronation. Three camera points were set up and, similarly to the Welsh example, the watch list included known terrorists, fixated people—people who are obsessed by the monarchy—and also wanted offenders. I think three wanted people were caught on the coronation day, including a wanted sex offender who happened to wander past the camera. The technology has also been used in Soho to try and catch robbers who were stealing mobile phones and so on.

I hope that illustrates to the Committee how live facial recognition is useful. It comes under the auspices of the Supreme Court judgment in the Bridges case, and authorised professional practice is published by the College of Policing. I think the Information Commissioner’s Office has also looked at it. Live facial recognition, which does not need DVLA data anyway, has a good basis, and it is catching people who would otherwise not get caught.