Baroness Doocey (LD)

My Lords, Amendment 374 seeks to place statutory guardrails on the use of live facial recognition, echoing the recent calls from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. We recognise that this technology can assist the police in tackling serious crime, but it must be used responsibly. Its rapid spread into everyday policing before essential safeguards or parliamentary scrutiny are in place raises profound constitutional concerns, particularly in the policing of dissent. Amendment 374 addresses the most contentious use of this technology, at protests and public assemblies. It would prohibit live facial recognition when police impose conditions under the Public Order Act unless and until Parliament had approved a new statutory code of practice. These are moments when people exercise their fundamental rights to free expression and peaceful assembly; rights which depend on participants feeling safe from tracking or retrospective profiling. This Bill already tightens protest offences and curbs anonymity; layering unregulated facial scanning on top of those restrictions risks further shrinking the space for lawful dissent. Many people will have perfectly legitimate reasons to think twice before attending a demonstration if they know their face may be scanned. Without clarity on how watch-lists used at protests are compiled, people have no way of knowing whether they are being flagged for genuine risk or for the views they hold. At a protest, the chilling effect is not just about being scanned; it is the fear of political profiling. If the Government cannot clearly define who is a legitimate target for facial recognition at a peaceful assembly, then such deployments are, by definition, arbitrary and cannot meet the legal test of necessity and proportionality. Operationally, the emerging concerns around false positives and the significantly increased risk to those from minority-ethnic backgrounds are a real headache for policing large public gatherings. Deployment without a code of practice will likely result in dozens of wrongful stops to verify identities, with confrontations that divert officers from real security threats and de-escalating crowds. We have already seen how damaging these errors can be. Just in the last few weeks, an innocent south Asian man was arrested at his home in Southampton for a burglary 100 miles away in Milton Keynes. He was handcuffed and held for nearly 10 hours because he was wrongly matched to CCTV footage by a Home Office algorithm that its own research shows produces significantly higher false positives for black and Asian faces. Last month, a man was publicly ejected from his local supermarket after staff misinterpreted a facial recognition alert. These are not minor glitches to be shrugged off. They are serious violations that erode public trust, particularly in communities already wary of state power. The Government’s consultation is welcome, but it is far too slow for the pace of change we see on our streets. Until Parliament has set clear rules, Amendment 374 is both necessary and proportionate. We must ensure that Parliament, not oblique algorithms, decides the limit of state power. I beg to move.