Facial Recognition and the Biometrics Strategy
Debate between Louise Haigh and Kate Green(5 years ago)
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Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. This excellent discussion has been informed by expert opinion, particularly from my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), whom I congratulate on securing this important debate. I think the public would be shocked to hear about the lack of legislative framework and guidance, and the potential for such intrusion into people’s lives by the state.
My hon. Friend spoke about the need for us all to understand the technology that could be used, and to ensure that the frameworks we set out are relevant and keep pace with legislation. That must be informed by a principles-based framework, because legislation will never keep up with the technology used by law enforcement or private operators. Several Members mentioned the police national database and the unlawful processing of custody images by police forces. That is not a good starting point for this debate, given that the Home Office’s response to that issue has been poor and the delays in the auto-deletion of images are worrying.
My hon. Friend mentioned the need for ethics by design to ensure that any biases, particularly against people from BME backgrounds, are built out of such technologies from the beginning and are not allowed to be replicated and harden. He described well the astonishing fact that there is no legal basis for these invasive, pervasive technologies and highlighted clear gaps in the biometric strategy in failing to address those issues. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke powerfully about the consequences of false positives, and raised basic questions about the rights of innocent people. Those questions should be answered. We should not need to hold this debate to speak about the right of innocent people not to have their privacy undermined, and about the police unlawfully holding images of people who have committed no crime.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) spoke about her personal experience and the Trafford Centre in her constituency. She made the important point—I have had the same conversation—that the police want and need a transparent, national and consistent framework, because they feel that they have to make things up as they go along. Experiences will differ: South Wales police has demonstrated a completely different attitude from the Met’s in rolling out facial recognition, and it cannot be right for people to experience different technologies in completely different ways and with different attitudes, depending on the police force in the area where they live.
Kate Green
My hon. Friend is right to say that the police want a clear, national framework, and it cannot be right that different police forces operate in different ways. Greater Manchester police has stopped using that technology altogether, but there may be circumstances where we would like it to be deployed to keep us safe.
Louise Haigh
That is completely right, and that is why this debate and the framework are so important. We cannot allow the police, with all the best intentions, to attempt to use this technology and then in some cases to mess it up—as they will—and have to roll it back. We want to ensure that the framework is in place so that the police can go ahead with confidence and the public have confidence. We must ensure that biases are designed out and that people accept the intrusion into their privacy and understand that such technology is being used proportionately and out of necessity. At the moment we cannot have confidence in that, which is why this debate is so important.
Gaza: Humanitarian Situation
Debate between Louise Haigh and Kate Green(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Louise Haigh
I recently visited Palestine and was unable to visit Gaza, so that would be very welcome.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on opening the debate. She is right to highlight the acute pressure on the health services in Gaza in relation to physical health. Of course, there is also a long-term mental health crisis in both Gaza and the wider region—including Israel—for people who are living constantly in the shadow of this terrible conflict. Does my hon. Friend agree that we also have a responsibility to ensure that those mental health needs are properly cared for?
Louise Haigh
Absolutely. The ongoing psychosocial, as well as physiological, implications of the woundings around the protest and of continued life under the blockade and the occupation cast a very long shadow for the entire Palestinian people. I believe Save the Children did a recent survey of children in Gaza and found that a very high percentage of teenagers were bed-wetting due to continued trauma.
According to WHO estimates, 11% of people injured since the start of the demonstrations risk developing a permanent disability. That is more than 1,000 people who will be permanently disabled, putting further pressure on the health system.