No independent pre-deployment testing infrastructure for police surveillance algorithms

The only substantive UK accuracy/bias evaluation of police LFR is the 2023 National Physical Laboratory study commissioned by the Met and South Wales Police themselves; subsequent Home Office equitability reports were published buried inside the December 2025 facial recognition plan. There is no UK equivalent of the US NIST's continuous face-recognition vendor testing, no requirement that algorithms pass independent evaluation before operational use, and the ICO's 2025 police FR audit was retrospective and governance-focused. Meanwhile police run 'skyrocketing' volumes of retrospective FR searches against passport and immigration databases (Privacy International, 2025) with no published accuracy figures or audit at all.

Deployment decisions rest on vendor claims and one police-commissioned study. Without standing independent evaluation, demographic error differentials and mission creep (passport-database searches) go unmeasured, making both public debate and litigation evidence-poor at exactly the moment of national rollout.

A statutory pre-deployment testing regime: biometric and algorithmic policing tools must pass independent evaluation at a designated facility (NPL and/or Alan Turing Institute) with published per-deployment performance and demographic-differential statistics, plus a standing audit of FR searches against passport/immigration databases. Fundable now as a pilot facility (~£5-10m) ahead of the expected biometrics bill.

// Build together: Counterparty: host lab (NPL/Turing) plus vendors and forces submitting algorithms; pilot facility fundable now, statutory regime is the end-state.

Deployment decisions rest on vendor claims and a single police-commissioned study; an independent testing facility is buildable but supporting in nature, with no dated trigger forcing action now.