Police buying biometric technology 'without understanding it'

Professor William Webster, the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, made the allegation in his formal submission to the Independent Review of Police Force Structures. The letter, dated 13 May but made public last week, reveals that Webster has spoken directly to forces in this position, or been made aware of them – and it lands against a backdrop of accelerating deployment of facial recognition and other surveillance technologies across policing.

The warning is backed by his office’s own evidence. A 2022 survey of forces’ use of surveillance camera systems in public spaces found no evidence that forces were applying the national decision-making model — the structured framework the police service uses to guide significant operational choices — when procuring new equipment. Webster has announced his intention to repeat that survey this summer.

The commissioner used his submission to argue that the structural reform proposals set out in the government’s From Local to National white paper offer an opportunity to address the problem. He welcomed the proposal to centralise procurement, on the grounds that consolidating purchasing away from 43 separate forces ought to raise standards and ensure more rigorous due diligence before powerful technologies are acquired.

Webster also raised concerns about the Crime and Policing Bill, currently before Parliament, which is intended to include a new framework governing police use of facial recognition. He warned that oversight provisions risk being overshadowed by the more politically visible elements of reform, the abolition of Police and Crime Commissioners and the consolidation of forces.

The white paper also proposes merging Webster’s office with that of the Forensic Science Regulator, creating a single body with oversight of biometrics, surveillance cameras and forensic science. Webster gave the proposal a cautious welcome but called for statutory footing for inspections under the new body, signalling he does not regard its authority as secure without legislative backing.

Currently, his office’s visits to police forces to audit DNA and fingerprint retention practices and surveillance camera compliance are periodic at best. With 43 territorial forces and a small team, meaningful scrutiny of every force every year has, he acknowledged, always been “an impossible task.” A reduction to fewer than 20 forces, he told the review, would allow biennial visits — a frequency he considers adequate for genuine oversight.

The submission is one of a series of responses to the structural review’s call for evidence, which closed earlier this year.