UK Politics

Rolling out more facial recognition vans is not intended to create a “total surveillance society”, the policing minister has said.Dame Diana Johnson said she believes the public would back the police’s use of live facial recognition cameras, if they are used “in a very measured, proportionate way to go after” suspects who officers are looking for.But Labour peer Baroness Shami Chakrabarti alleged that the technology had been “developed pretty much completely outside the law”, and voiced fears that the Government’s plan is “yet another move towards a total surveillance society”.Dame Diana denied Lady Chakrabarti’s claim.Asked whether the rollout was the “thin end of the wedge”, the Home Office minister told BBC Breakfast: “With the greatest of respect, that’s not what this is about.“This is about giving the tools to our police officers to enable them to keep us safe.“And the live facial recognition results in London, where it’s been used, in the past 12 months, over 580 arrests were made, and these included people who were wanted for rape, for GBH (grievous bodily harm), for robbery, for domestic abuse, and also for sex offenders who were breaching their conditions of being out in the community.“So I think this is a really powerful tool for policing.“And it’s actually a tool, it’s not an automated decision maker.“So, the police officer has to look at what’s being put up on the screen and decide what to do next, so there’s that human involvement, but it is a really powerful tool, which I think the public would actually be supportive of being used in a very measured, proportionate way to go after those individuals that the police are looking for for these serious offences.”Dame Diana said she had seen the technology in action in Croydon, London, where the Metropolitan Police had put together a watchlist of wanted individuals, and the list was deleted after the exercise.“So it was very tailored,” Dame Diana said.She added: “There are laws about how this has to be done in terms of human rights, equalities law, data protection laws.“I think one of the concerns people, perhaps rightly, have is the need to consolidate that into one piece of legislation or one law, and that’s something we’re going to consult on later in the year, about how live facial recognition technology should be used and the oversight of it to make it as transparent as possible for the public to really feel this is something that the police are using properly.”Dame Diana had earlier told Times Radio: “There is quite a lot of misinformation out there about what this actually does and how it’s used.”She said: “And I know in the past, there’ve been concerns about bias, particularly around certain ethnic groups or genders or age.“And the way that this is now structured, the algorithms that are being used have been independently tested, so I’m confident that the live facial recognition that we’re rolling out today actually is within the law and does not have the bias that has happened previously.”According to the Home Office, the technology will be used to track down high-harm offenders.Seven English forces will have access to 10 vans equipped with cameras, across Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Bedfordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley and Hampshire, following on from recent deployments by London’s Met Police and South Wales Police.Chief Superintendent Tim Morgan of South Wales Police said the technology had “never resulted in a wrongful arrest in South Wales, and there have been no false alerts for several years as the technology and our understanding has evolved”.But human rights campaigners have “concerns” about “this incredibly intrusive technology”, Lady Chakrabarti, a former director of the civil liberties advocacy group Liberty, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.The former shadow attorney general said: “Some would say this is yet another move towards a total surveillance society – challenges to privacy, challenges to freedom of assembly and association, and problems with race and sex discrimination because of the higher likelihood of false matches in the context of certain groups.”She said that “the public generally understand that police powers are governed by statute, so there’s a public conversation, there are parliamentary debates and votes”, but warned there was no law specifically covering live facial recognition to gather evidence.“It’s particularly odd that this has all been developed pretty much completely outside the law,” she said.Lady Chakrabarti said she “welcomed” plans to consult ahead of possible new legislation, but warned that to date, “it’s been a bit of a Wild West – the police procuring technology from whichever companies they see fit, the police drawing up watchlists of who they’re looking for and what level, what severity of crime should be sufficient for deployment, and pretty much marking their own homework”. More

The Treasury is looking to raise more money by tightening the rules around inheritance tax, it’s been reported.Amid growing pressure regarding the state of the UK’s finances ahead of the autumn budget, the chancellor needs to address a black hole left by Labour U-turns, higher borrowing and sluggish economic growth.Economists have warned that Ms Reeves must raise taxes or tear up her flagship borrowing rules to fill a £50bn shortfall in public finances.According to a report in The Guardian, the Treasury is now looking at options on inheritance tax like changing rules to restrict the gifting of money and assets.Under current rules, unlimited amounts of money and assets can be gifted to relatives and friends which avoids inheritance tax, provided that it is gifted at least seven years before the benefactor dies. The chancellor has been warned she faces a £50bn blackhole (Jacob King/PA) More

JD Vance is to host Robert Jenrick at his holiday retreat in the Cotswolds, in a move that will do little to dampen speculation about the senior Tory’s leadership ambitions. But the US vice president will not meet the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, according to reports.Mr Vance is taking a surprise summer break in Britain, staying with his family at an 18th-century Georgian manor after spending the weekend with the foreign secretary David Lammy. JD Vance, Trump’s vice president, is holidaying in the Cotswolds More

EU citizens waiting for the government to decide their pre-Brexit residency status have been wrongly refused entry to the UK, forcing them to give up their lives here.The Independent Monitoring Authority for Citizens’ Rights Agreements (IMA) has expressed “serious concerns” after individuals who left to go on holiday or visit family were barred from entering Britain on their return.Among those affected was a 34-year-old Spanish woman who was removed from the UK despite showing Home Office documents which proved her right to live and work in the UK. She had flown to Spain to see her sister and her new baby at Christmas, The Guardian reported.Another EU citizen, Greek Cypriot Costa Koushiappis, was forcibly removed after taking a short trip to Amsterdam in November, the paper said. The IMA has now written to the Home Office, warning that those waiting for a decision on their residency should not be removed if they make short trips overseas, including for business or leisure.It is advised that those who hold a valid “certificate of application” (CoA) from the Home Office show it to Border Force officials at airports or ports to prove they are allowed to travel.Miranda Biddle, chief executive of the IMA, said: “Our position is that a citizen with a valid certificate of application has a right to exit and enter the UK while waiting for a decision on their EU settlement scheme application, subject to providing additional documentation required at the border.”She said she was “keen to continue to work with the government” to “ensure citizens are not discouraged from exercising their rights”.The group has called on the Home Office to clarify the CoA rules before a new system requiring visitors to the UK to have “electronic travel authorisations” (ETAs) is enforced.Campaign group the3million said it was “very disappointed” that the IMA had agreed with Border Force’s approach of asking EU citizens to carry documents to prove their residence before Brexit took effect on 31 December 2020. A CoA was sufficient proof of rights until such time as a final decision is taken, the group said.A Home Office spokesperson said: “All individuals with a certificate of application are made aware that they may be asked for evidence to show that they qualify under the scheme before they are allowed entry to the UK. Equivalent guidance has been issued to Border Force officers and published online.” More

From being interviewed under caution as part of Operation Branchform, to leading a failed bid for Scottish independence, Nicola Sturgeon’s time in office – and the years after it – were far from ordinary. In her long-awaited memoir, Frankly, the former Scottish first minister details how it felt to have police raid the home she shared with her ex-husband Peter Murrell, as well as shedding light on her relationship with her predecessor Alex Salmond and the row over trans rights that dominated her final months in the job. Here, The Independent looks at the key takeaways from Ms Sturgeon’s explosive memoir. Nicola Sturgeon’s new book went on sale on Monday More

The terror law that saw hundreds arrested for supporting Palestine Action is “not consistent with basic rights to free speech” and should be changed, a former Supreme court judge has warned. Writing for the Independent, Lord Sumption said the Terror Act’s definition of what amounts to support for a proscribed organisation is “far too wide”. He warned that one of the criteria – wearing, carrying or displaying something that supports the group – goes too far and should be rowed back to avoid the more than 500 people arrested at Saturday’s protest against the group’s ban under terror laws from being criminalised.Urging the government to amend the Act, he said, “merely indicating your support for a terrorist organisation without doing anything to assist or further its acts should not be a criminal offence”.Starmer is facing a furious backlash over the row More

A minister has admitted that the government has so far failed to tackle the small boats crisis, as the number of people who have crossed the Channel since Labour took power looks set to surpass 50,000. Education minister Baroness Jacqui Smith said the number of people coming to the UK after making the dangerous crossing is “a problem that, up to this point, we haven’t managed to tackle” – but insisted that it was the fault of the previous government.“The last government enabled this hideous criminal activity to really get its roots across Europe”, she said, adding that there is now “really important action being taken to tackle it.” It comes as the government ramps up its efforts to bring down migration amid growing public anger over the issue, announcing on Friday that the new “one in, one out” returns deal with France was up and running. The Home Office has also expanded its “deport now, appeal later” scheme, which sees foreign criminals deported before their appeals have been heard.Jacqui Smith More

Kemi Badenoch appeared to suggest the setting up of migrant “camps” when speaking about possible alternatives to using hotels to house asylum seekers. As she met members of the community in Epping, Essex, the Conservative Party leader said: “We’ve got to turn things around very quickly. We cannot use rules from 1995, or 2005, or even 2015 for 2025.“Our world is changing very quickly, and we need to adapt to it.”Speaking on a visit to Epping, Mrs Badenoch said: “Is it possible for us to set up camps and police that, rather than bringing all of this hassle into communities?” More