Britain wrote facial recognition into law. Then it pointed the cameras at visa overstayers

On Wednesday the UK government announced it would put police facial recognition on a proper legal footing, with a new watchdog, a code of practice and the power to drag misbehaving forces into court. Read on its own, it sounds like a tightening.

The same day, LBC reported that the Home Office plans to point the same cameras at people who have overstayed their visas.

The law

The Home Office announcement, titled "Stronger laws for police using facial recognition technology," sets out a few things. A new independent regulator will oversee police use of current and future technologies, advise on standards and make recommendations to ministers. In cases of "extreme non-compliance" it can seek a court injunction stopping a force from using the tech at all. A specific law will require police use to be "intelligence led and proportionate, so it is only used when officers believe wanted people could be present in an area." Any system used by law enforcement must be independently tested for bias by age, gender and race.

There will also be a separate legal code for the private sector, which covers shops that already scan faces at the door to catch shoplifters.

And there is money. The government says it is spending £11 million to triple the number of live facial recognition vans available to forces in England and Wales, which it files under "the government's biggest reforms to policing in 200 years."

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was not shy about where she stands.

"Facial recognition technology has been the biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching," she said.

The release leans on numbers to make that case. Static live cameras piloted in Croydon, south London, from October 2025 to March 2026 led to 173 arrests, including suspects wanted for rape, kidnap and sexual assault, and the Metropolitan Police reported a 10.5% drop in overall crime in the area compared with the year before. At this year's Notting Hill Carnival, the government says the cameras helped police stop 86 registered sex offenders, seven of whom were arrested for breaching their conditions. A new algorithm for searching recorded footage, which the Home Office calls "highly accurate and without bias," is due to reach forces from next year.

What the release does not include is any figure for false matches, how many people were stopped and then let go, or when the new law and regulator actually take effect. It names no bill. The safeguards have a press release. The vans have a budget.

The other use

The immigration plan did not come with a ministerial quote. It surfaced in two documents for immigration enforcement officials, an operational guide and a data protection impact assessment, published in October and reported by LBC's Jacob Paul on November 4.

According to those documents, the Home Office wants live facial recognition at transport hubs and public events as part of "general immigration enforcement." The stated target is people "seeking to re-enter the UK unlawfully" who are eligible for removal. People could also be placed on a watchlist for overstaying a visa or entering without leave, which LBC points out are civil matters. Neither is a criminal offence.

The Home Office's own justification is worth reading closely. Scanning crowds, it says, causes less "disruption to the wider public compared to repeated enforcement visits at residential addresses or workplaces." Put plainly, the argument is that it is kinder to check everyone at the station than to knock on a few doors.

That sits awkwardly next to the new law's requirement that police use be intelligence led and only deployed where officers believe wanted people are present. A watchlist of visa overstayers at a railway concourse is a very different thing from a list of people wanted for rape, and the announcement does not say whether the Home Office's own enforcement teams will answer to the same regulator.

A Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner, whom LBC did not name, also made the case for a national watchlist shared between forces. Today each force builds a list for each deployment, and those lists are typically thrown away afterwards. "It's a great example of why I think a national watchlist could make a really big difference," the officer said. A permanent, national list is exactly the kind of thing the current per-deployment model exists to avoid.

Meanwhile, in Bath

The rollout is already moving. On November 5 Avon and Somerset Police said live facial recognition will arrive "in the coming weeks," with the first deployment planned for Bath on Wednesday, November 25, subject to final sign-off. South Wales Police, which has run the cameras operationally for years, is lending equipment and expertise.

The force's description is the reassuring version. Watchlists cover people wanted by the courts, suspected of serious offences, or at immediate risk of harm. They are built for each deployment and deleted afterwards. Faces that do not match are "automatically and permanently deleted." There will be marked vans and signs, and every deployment needs a senior officer's authorisation. Inspector Stuart King, who leads the program, said it "will only be used where it is lawful, necessary and proportionate to do so."

Clare Moody, the area's police and crime commissioner, said she will be "monitoring the police use of LFR closely."

That is the model the new law is supposed to lock in. But the money is going into tripling the vans, the Met is asking for a national list, and the Home Office has written down that it wants the cameras for people whose only offence is a lapsed visa. The rules arrive with no date attached. The cameras have one: November 25, Bath.

Sources: GOV.UK (Home Office), LBC, Avon and Somerset Police.