Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of introducing a statutory requirement for the deletion of custody images where no (a) charge and (b) conviction follows.

The retention and deletion of custody images is currently governed by the statutory Police and Information Management Code of Practice, and the associated College of Policing’s Management of Police Information (MoPI) guidance and Authorised Professional Practice. These require forces to retain images only where necessary and proportionate and to review and delete them in line with assessed continuing policing need. Individuals are also able to apply to the police to have their custody image deleted, where they believe continued retention is not necessary.

Following the recent public consultation on biometrics, facial recognition and similar technologies, the government intends to bring forward a new legal framework covering biometric retention rules.