Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Elystan-Morgan (Crossbench). It was answered on Tuesday, 2 June 2009.

Police: Protests

Question: My Lords, while it is entirely proper and lawful that such photographs should be taken, should not a line of distinction be drawn between circumstances of general public order and other circumstances which go much deeper into the whole issue of the security of the state?

Answer: My Lords, I may have missed the point of the question, but I assume that the noble Lord is talking about automatic number-plate recognition, CCTV and the like. There is a difference, but equally, in areas such as automatic number-plate recognition, we intend to look at the exact rules for how this is handled and how the information is kept and dealt with, because there is a real risk with some of these things of increasing our capability exponentially. Police forces rightly try to use these techniques because they make us safer and enable us to get serious criminals and others, but the techniques have to be properly monitored and controlled. There is a real issue there.

Secondary information