Ministers will pave the way for the widespread introduction of live facial recognition cameras by publishing for the first time nationwide guidance on their use.
Sarah Jones, the policing minister, said the government was consulting on guidance that will be given to police forces on where, when and how the technology could be used more widely. It is expected to be ready later this year.
Live facial recognition is only used routinely by two of the 43 police forces in England and Wales.
Ministers believe that pilot projects in Croydon, south London, where Jones is an MP, and in Cardiff, south Wales, have been successful. In the first 12 months of the Croydon pilot, the Metropolitan Police arrested 580 alleged rapists, abusers and robbers, including 52 registered sex offenders.
Jones told a fringe event at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool: “What we’ve seen in Croydon is that it has worked. We just need to make sure it’s clear what the technology is going to be useful for going forward. If we are going to use it more, if we do want to roll it out across the country, what are the parameters?
“Live facial recognition is a really good tool that has led to arrests that wouldn’t have come otherwise and it’s very, very valuable.”
Live facial recognition was a principal recommendation of The Times Crime and Justice Commission, a year-long policy report that proposed solutions to the crisis in the criminal justice system.
• Times Crime and Justice Commission proposals could become law
In April, The Times reported that retrospective facial recognition searches exceeded a quarter of a million in 2024 — the Met alone conducted 30,000, ten times more than in 2019. Lindsey Chiswick, the Met’s director of intelligence, said that the tool was a “game-changer” for crime fighting and that the technology had triggered the arrest of an alleged criminal every two hours since it was introduced in April last year.
Chiswick said: “The technology enables policing to accurately pick somebody out from a crowd and identify them against a wanted list of thousands of people. It’s something an officer couldn’t do on their own and this can do it in milliseconds.”
The Conservatives welcomed its introduction nationwide. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “Live facial recognition can easily identify dangerous wanted criminals who would not otherwise be caught.
“It has been trialled in Croydon town centre and has recently led to over 200 arrests including a man wanted for double rape. I strongly support the national rollout of this technology which will take dangerous criminals off the street.
“I hope the government does not create excessive restrictions which will undermine the effectiveness of this technology.”
Silkie Carlo, director of the civil liberties charity Big Brother Watch, said: “The question the Home Office should really be asking is whether police should be spying on the public with live facial recognition cameras around the country at all.
“No other western democracy watches its own citizens with facial recognition cameras in the same way as Britain is now doing.
“We all want safer streets but these AI cameras are a serious assault on the public’s privacy and cannot solve the problems with our country’s criminal justice system. Combined with mandatory ID cards, live facial recognition could enable the most Orwellian street surveillance system this country has ever seen.”
