In Thompson & Anor, R (On the Application Of) v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2026] EWHC 915 (Admin) the Divisional Court has roundly dismissed an application for judicial review of the Met Police’s “Overt LFR Policy Document” for deployment in London of live facial recognition technology.
The claimants were: 1) a man who “was stopped, detained and questioned by police officers after having been matched by LFR with a different person on a police “watchlist” (a list of “Sought Persons”). That person was his brother who was on bail for a suspected offence of inflicting grievous bodily harm on him”; 2) Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, who “lives in London and has monitored and campaigned against the use of LFR by the MPS since its inception. To that end she has attended LFR deployments. In addition, Ms Carlo often attends or organises protests and is concerned about the potential use of LFR at such events”.
The challenges were on grounds that the Policy violates their rights under Articles 8 (right to respect for private and family life), 10 (freedom of expression) and 11 (freedom of assembly and association) of the European Convention on Human Rights. Specifically, the claimants argued that the Policy was not “in accordance with the law” (Article 8) and not “prescribed by law” (Articles 10 and 11). This was, they argued, because “the Policy leaves too much discretion to individual officers within the MPS to have the quality of “law.””
The fundamental issue was foreseeability, with the appropriate test that stated by Lord Sumption in the case of Gallagher: “The measure [under challenge] must not confer a discretion so broad that its scope is in practice dependent on the will of those who apply it, rather than on the law itself”.
The Court engaged in a painstaking analysis of the Policy, and broadly, the claim foundered because the Policy (which was reviewed and republished as a result of early skirmishes in the proceedings) was sufficiently detailed so that “In the context of promoting law and order in a large metropolis, the Policy provides the claimants with an adequate indication of the circumstances in which LFR will be used and enables them to foresee, to a degree that is reasonable in the circumstances, the consequences of travelling in an area of London where LFR is in use” (at 214).
A notable side point: the Court was highly critical of (rejected) attempts by both sides to admit expert evidence which did not go to the substantive issue of the lawfulness of the Policy, but rather resulted in “a game of ping pong which has assumed, in each round of shots, a “momentum” that is less and less related to the issues in the claim. Neither party should have engaged in this fruitless approach” (at 188).
A final point of note, two big wins in one day for Anya Proops KC, with this judgment and the Court of Appeal’s judgment in RTM v Bonne Terre, where she appeared with Robin Hopkins KC, both of 11KBW.
The views in this post (and indeed most posts on blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
informationrightsandwrongs 