Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, for his contribution and broad support for the regulations. I assure him that the purpose of these regulations and the direction of travel—which, again, the previous Government supported—is to ensure, first, that we have effective border control, secondly, that we make it fit for the modern age and, thirdly, that we do so in a way that helps support the individual to maintain their privacy while having biometric information for UK and other citizens in the longer term to ensure that we can control our borders effectively. These regulations form part of the wider commitment to harness new emerging technologies radically to improve our public services and border processes. This is part of the evolution of how we manage our border. We are bringing forward legislation today to allow us to transform existing identity verification capabilities. This will ensure that our border remains secure and will enhance our ability to identify imposters, people traffickers and others who try to undertake criminal acts at our border. The enhanced facial recognition capability provided through these regulations will also allow us further to develop new identity verification technologies, including to trial contactless travel at the UK border. It is an ongoing process. Capturing and maintaining biometric information will support border control and the crucial investigative work of police and law enforcement agencies that keep the UK safe. The noble Lord mentioned sanctions for non-compliance with the requirements. The changes are intended to encourage status holders to update their biographical information and facial image on their UKVI account at least once every 10 years, as I mentioned, without requiring them to make an application to replace their immigration document. That is to make it simpler and easier for individuals to ensure that their status is correct. They will be told about the steps they need to undertake to enable them to generate a share code. In most circumstances this will simply require them to upload new facial images, which should take no longer than a few minutes to complete. The new sanction is introduced to reflect the move to eVisas. That will allow the Secretary of State to prevent the user creating a share code to enable third-party checks of their status until they comply with the requirements of the regulations. In a sense, this will put a stop to that level of potential fraud; it will also reduce the need to impose more stringent sanctions, such as civil penalties or immigration sanctions. Again, I hope that is part of the process to ensure that this system works effectively. As I mentioned at the beginning, we are beginning to trial this system for British citizens. It will develop in due course, but I hope that I have been able to answer the noble Lord’s questions. If he has any further points, I will certainly take interventions, but if not, I commend these regulations to the Grand Committee.