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UK Borders Bill

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Carnegy, because she has highlighted the two issues of the reliability of fingerprint technology per se and the reliability of its use regarding children. I am glad that she quoted the case in Scotland, because as a result of that case I looked more closely at the science of taking fingerprints. Perhaps I, like so many lay people—even though I had been a magistrate—had assumed that when matching fingerprints there was a standard number of points that one used to achieve a match. It was only as a result of the case in Scotland that I appreciated that different methods are used in different parts of the world. It would be very helpful if the Government were able to tell us how points of reference would be used for the matching process in regard to fingerprints.