Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the use of live facial recognition systems by retailers to identify suspected offenders and alert the police.

Police and private live facial recognition systems are procured and operated independently of government. However, the government welcomes the guidance provided to private operators by the Information Commissioners Office and support retailers’ use of technology to protect their staff, customers and property.

To this end, through the Retail Crime Forum, we are actively engaged with retailers and law enforcement agencies to strengthen digital evidence-sharing and the responsible use of facial recognition technology, making it easier to identify repeat offenders and build stronger cases against them.

For example, shops and business are encouraged to send images they capture of criminals on their CCTV systems to the police. These can then be searched by police investigators against a police database of images of people who have previously been arrested, using retrospective facial recognition, to try and identify the offender.

We also launched a public consultation last year to support development of a new legal framework for law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology, which will ultimately support responsible increase in its use. The consultation asked questions about whether the framework should extend to private users of facial recognition such as retailers, and the Government are working through the responses and policy implications.