Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what plans his Department has in place for the oversight of private companies' use of live facial recognition technology.

The use of biometric data (including facial images) by private companies to identify individuals is regulated by the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018. Under the legislation, data processing must be fair, lawful and transparent. Individuals who consider their data has been misused can make complaints to the Information Commissioner's Office, the independent regulator of the legislation.

To ensure a safe use of facial recognition technology (FRT) in all sectors, the government tasked the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) to produce a Snapshot briefing paper looking at the uses and potential implications of facial recognition technology’s deployment in the UK. The paper was published on 28 May and we are considering its findings.