In response to this Government Consultation, Dr Asress Gikay recommended that the new legal framework should set out a proportionate, evidence-based, and context-sensitive governance framework for the use of biometric and inferential technologies by law enforcement authorities.
The UK Home Office had an open Consultation on a new legal framework for law enforcement use of biometrics, facial recognition and similar technologies (accessible) from 04/12/2025 until 12/02/2026, where they welcomed representations from professional bodies, interested groups and the wider public.
Dr Asress Gikay is a Senior Lecturer in AI, Disruptive Innovation, and Law at Brunel University of London. He is an expert in legal and policy aspects of artificial intelligence including facial recognition technology, privacy and data protection. As such, he had relevant expertise, citing his recently published research, to respond to this consultation.
Executive Summary of Dr Gikay’s response to the consultation:
- The new legal framework should set out a proportionate, evidence-based, and context-sensitive governance framework for the use of biometric and inferential technologies by law enforcement authorities.
- To ensure agility, a layered approach should be adopted, combining primary legislation that sets out general rules, oversight mechanisms, and key safeguards, with secondary legal instruments that provide detailed rules for specific use cases.
- Four-pronged graduated proportionality assessment rules should be introduced, setting legal thresholds for the use of biometric and inferential technologies, and excluding certain categories of criminal offences from justifying deployment.
- Graduated deployment authorisation rules should be introduced, where the current internal authorisation process for facial recognition technology is supplemented by independent authorisation for specified deployments that require heightened independent scrutiny.
- A risk-based, tiered authorisation model should apply to facial recognition searches of non-law-enforcement databases.
- An independent oversight body should be created that, amongst others, sets and enforces regulatory standards, and a one-stop-shop complaints and redress mechanism for affected persons.
Download the full response here (pdf): Response_Home Office_Consultation_Biometrics_FRT_Dr Gikay_2026-01-12.docx