Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what guidance her Department has issued to police departments on appropriate use of live facial recognition technology.

The Home Office has not issued guidance to police forces on the use of live facial recognition (LFR) but the government is responsible for the legal framework. The legal framework governing police use of facial recognition requires compliance with data protection, equalities, and human rights laws, national guidance, the Code of Practice for surveillance cameras, and is supplemented by specific policies published by individual forces.

The College of Policing has produced national guidance, in the form of an Authorised Professional Practice (APP); this includes when the police can use LFR, the categories of people they can look for and how the data is processed.

Although there is a legal framework in place, this is complicated, inflexible and difficult for the public and police to understand. That is why we will shortly be launching a consultation to support the development of a new legal framework for law enforcement use of biometrics, facial recognition and similar technologies.