{"id":4407,"date":"2025-03-31T09:24:19","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T09:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4407"},"modified":"2026-03-06T15:11:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T15:11:32","slug":"live-facial-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/?p=4407","title":{"rendered":"Live Facial Recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>John Whittingdale&nbsp;Conservative, Maldon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What her policy is on the use of live facial recognition technology by police forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Diana R. Johnson&nbsp;The Minister of State, Home Department<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I thank the right hon. Member for his interest in this subject and for the&nbsp;Westminster Hall&nbsp;debate that he secured last year. I want to support the police to use live facial recognition safely while balancing public safety and safeguarding individuals\u2019 rights. The&nbsp;Home Office&nbsp;invested over \u00a33 million in 2024-25 to develop a small national live facial recognition capability by purchasing and equipping 10 mobile&nbsp;LFR&nbsp;units for deployment later this year. I have been listening to stakeholders and will outline our plans in the coming months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>John Whittingdale&nbsp;Conservative, Maldon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although I recognise that the use of facial recognition technology can lead to more offenders being caught, does the&nbsp;Minister&nbsp;accept that deployment of a permanent network of fixed cameras across Croydon represents a significant escalation in their use, which makes it all the more important that a clear legislative framework governing their use is debated and approved by Parliament?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Diana R. Johnson&nbsp;The Minister of State, Home Department<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I fully accept that there is a need to consider live facial recognition. At the moment the law governing the use of that technology comes from various different things\u2014human rights and equalities legislation, and other measures\u2014and we want to see whether that should be brought together. That is why I have been having a series of meetings over the last few months. As I said, we will set out our plans for live facial recognition in the coming months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Please see the link below to watch a clip of Sir John&#8217;s question:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Sir John Whittingdale MP on Live Facial Recognition\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-RJcnOS7jzY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sir John Whittingdale questions Minister  on the expansion of facial recognition cameras in Croydon, urging that Parliament debates and approves a clear legislative framework for their use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speeches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4407"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5776,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4407\/revisions\/5776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnwhittingdale.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}