Police will be better equipped to track down dangerous criminals as the government launches a consultation on how forces should use facial recognition and biometrics, in what could be ‘the biggest breakthrough since DNA matching’.

Facial recognition is used to locate wanted suspects in public places, find vulnerable missing people and identify offenders more quickly through footage obtained from CCTV and doorbell cameras.

In the last two years, the Metropolitan Police made 1,300 arrests using facial recognition including rapists, domestic abusers and violent criminals and found more than 100 registered sex offenders breaching their license conditions.

The consultation will pave the way for new laws so all police forces can use this new technology with greater confidence and more often

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