Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what plans she has to allow for Parliamentary scrutiny of proposals to expand the use of live facial recognition technology.

There is an established basis for the police to use live facial recognition technology. When deploying facial recognition technology, police forces must comply with existing legislation including the Human Rights Act 1998, Equality Act 2010, Data Protection Act 2018, Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, as well as their own published policies. For live facial recognition, police forces must also follow the College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice (APP) on Live Facial Recognition. Forces also need to comply with the Surveillance Camera Code of Practice, which is supplemented by published policing policies.

On 4 December the Government launched a consultation on law enforcement use of biometrics, facial recognition and similar technologies. Although there is a legal basis for police use of facial recognition, the current legal framework is complicated, inflexible and difficult to understand, which in turn limits the extent to which facial recognition and similar technologies can be confidently used.

That is why the government is consulting on a new legal framework to inform potential legislation.