A leading York councillor has slammed plans by a Conservative rival to introduce facial recognition cameras in York and North Yorkshire as ‘Orwellian.’

Cllr Andrew Hollyer, the Liberal Democrat candidate for York Outer at the next General Election, has branded the proposal from Keane Duncan as an "appalling breach of residents' human rights". 

The hi-tech scheme proposals would see cameras rolled out across York, Harrogate and Scarborough to ‘steal’ the biometric data (the unique facial features) of anyone that comes into range of the cameras.

The Haxby and Wigginton city councillor says that despite the Court of Appeal, in 2020, also ruling that the use of such cameras was unlawful and in violation of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), Conservative Ministers have continued to call for further expansion of the use of such cameras. 

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In October 2023, according to The Guardian, dozens of cross-party MPs and peers, including the former Conservative cabinet minister David Davis, the Liberal Democrats leader Sir Ed Davey, the Green MP Caroline Lucas and the former Labour shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti joined a campaign for an “immediate stop” to the use of live facial recognition surveillance by police and private companies.

The paper reported that “the campaign is spearheaded by the privacy advocate Big Brother Watch and is also backed by 31 groups including Liberty, Amnesty International and the Race Equality Foundation.”

The campaign said: “We hold differing views about live facial recognition surveillance, ranging from serious concerns about its incompatibility with human rights, to the potential for discriminatory impact, the lack of safeguards, the lack of an evidence base, an unproven case of necessity or proportionality, the lack of a sufficient legal basis, the lack of parliamentary consideration, and the lack of a democratic mandate.

“We call on UK police and private companies to immediately stop using live facial recognition for public surveillance.”

Cllr Hollyer also cites research by Big Brother Watch that found that over 89% of UK police facial recognition alerts to date have wrongly identified members of the public as people of interest. International research, and the Metropolitan Police’s own testing of its facial recognition algorithm, have identified disproportionately higher inaccuracy rates when attempting to identify people of colour and women, he says. 

The councillor and General Election candidate said: “Far from being brought to York and North Yorkshire, the Conservatives' plans for an expansion of the Orwellian blanket surveillance of citizens should be halted across the country.

“The use of CCTV for enforcement purposes is well-established and can be an important tool in deterring anti-social behaviour. But what the Conservatives are now proposing is a world away from this.

"This surveillance flies in the face of basic British values such as the presumption of innocence. Instead of gimmicks, the Government should be enabling and encouraging local forces to restore proper community policing, where officers have the time and resources they need to focus on preventing and solving crime.

"A good place to start with finding the money for this would be to scrap plans to hand policing powers to the new mayor, who will just pass them to a highly paid 'deputy', and instead constitute a Police Board - made up of local councillors and representatives from relevant local groups - investing the savings in frontline policing."