Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)

I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate. A number of us in this House spend lots of time on trains. He makes a very interesting point about the distance between stops. On the train I get every week, the last stop before London is normally Stafford, and there is a lot of time between those stops, a lot of carriages and a lot of individuals. I had a very brief conversation with my noble friend Lord Hendy, who said that the most important thing that he expects on a train is the ability to have contact with the driver, so that the driver can take immediate action, such as was taken in this instance by diverting the train to a non-mainline station, Huntingdon, where police and resources were made available. I know that my noble friend has heard what the right reverend Prelate has said on staffing issues and will reflect on that as part of his normal day-to-day duties. The question of stop and search is an interesting one. I have some statistics, which I hope will help the noble Lord who raised this issue—I may not have given him as full an answer as I perhaps should have at the time. In the last year, 16,066 stop and searches led to an offensive weapon or firearm being found on the individual, but, interestingly, that was only 3% of all stop and searches. It is an interesting statistic. We can make of that what we will in slower time, but only 3% of stop and searches found a weapon on the individual who was stopped and searched. The question of facial recognition is important. As a Government, we have invested in live facial recognition. We have 10 new vans in static location pilots. We have undertaken piloting of this, and it saves a lot of police time. We need to ensure that we trial it so that the right reverend Prelate’s points on facial recognition and characteristics are taken into account. The main thing it will do is this: in the case of convicted offenders who are known to the system, it will potentially help draw down the ability to identify them more quickly in a large crowd than would be the case otherwise. We are undertaking a public consultation on a new bespoke legal framework for law enforcement on the use of biometrics, facial recognition and similar technologies, and that will be launched very soon. There is an opportunity for the right reverend Prelate and others to raise those issues of interest and concern so that they can form part of our final judgment on the benefits versus some of the challenges.