Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of the rates of false positives generated by live facial recognition systems.

Police use of live facial recognition (LFR) is governed by equality, human rights, and data protection laws, and can only be used for a policing purpose where necessary, proportionate, and fair. LFR technology is not automated decision-making; it suggests possible matches not definite ones. Following a possible alert, it is always a specially trained police officer on the ground who decides what action, if any, to take.

Facial recognition algorithms provided by or procured with Home Office funding for police use are required to be independently tested for bias. Independent testing is important because it helps determine the setting in which an algorithm can safely and fairly be used.

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has independently tested the LFR algorithm used by the police. At the settings used by South Wales Police, the Metropolitan Police Service, and in the 10 LFR vans rolled out in August 2025, the NPL found that the algorithm had an 89% chance of correctly identifying someone on the watchlist of people wanted by the police or the courts. At worst, the algorithm had a 1 in 6,000 chance of generating a false alert on a watchlist containing 10,000 images. In practice, police have reported that the false alert rate has been far better than this. Importantly, the NPL also found no statistically significant differences in performance based on gender, age, or ethnicity, at the settings used by the police.

The Government is committed to ensuring that facial recognition technology is used proportionately, responsibly, and with strong safeguards in place to protect the public. On 4 December 2025, we therefore launched a public consultation that sets out proposals for a new legal framework and strengthened oversight of facial recognition and other biometric technologies. The Government proposes creating a new oversight body to consolidate and clarify existing regulatory roles, ensuring responsible use of these technologies.