Police forces in England and Wales are acquiring powerful biometric and AI-assisted technologies without fully understanding what they are buying or its implications, the country’s biometrics watchdog has warned. Professor William Webster, the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, made the warning in a formal submission to the Independent Review of Police Force Structures, in a letter dated mid-May that was made public last week.
Webster said he had spoken directly with forces in that position, and pointed to his office’s own evidence to back the concern. A 2022 survey of how forces use surveillance camera systems in public spaces, he noted, found no sign that forces were applying the national decision-making model, the structured framework police use to guide significant operational choices, when buying new equipment. He said he intends to repeat that survey this summer, against a backdrop of accelerating deployment of facial recognition across policing.
The commissioner used the submission to argue that the government’s structural reform plans, set out in its From Local to National white paper, offer a chance to fix the problem. He welcomed a proposal to centralize procurement, on the grounds that consolidating purchasing away from 43 separate forces should raise standards and force more rigorous due diligence before powerful technologies are bought. He also flagged the Crime and Policing Bill now before Parliament, which is meant to include a new framework for police use of facial recognition, warning that its oversight provisions risk being overshadowed by more politically visible reforms such as scrapping Police and Crime Commissioners and merging forces.
Webster gave a cautious welcome to a separate proposal to merge his office with the Forensic Science Regulator into a single oversight body, but called for inspections under it to be put on a statutory footing. He acknowledged that meaningful annual scrutiny of every force has always been, in his words, “an impossible task” for a small team covering 43 forces, and said a reduction to fewer than 20 forces would at least allow visits every two years.
The warning lands as British forces expand their use of the technology, from Norfolk Constabulary scanning tens of thousands of faces in its first live deployment to proposed data-protection changes touching on police biometrics.
Sources: Police Professional
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
