Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the accuracy of facial recognition technology.

Facial recognition is a fast evolving area of technology with the potential to streamline identity verification and authentication processes across Government and the private sector. When used in the appropriate setting and context, it has proved to be a very reliable and accurate tool.

Its performance is dependent on a number of variables, from the quality of the images, environmental factors, the specific algorithm used, the thresholds or risk profile applied and many other factors. Possible matches produced by LFR systems are always checked by a human operator before deciding what, if any, action to take.