Mark Oaten: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the most recent percentage failure rates are for biometric (a) fingerprint, (b) iris scan and (c) facial recognition data.
Meg Hillier: In biometric systems, the term 'failure' can be defined in many different ways depending on the specific application. As a result it is difficult to give a definitive answer to a question such as this.
For instance, in a fully automated biometric access control application it may be preferable to configure the system such that there is a possibility of occasionally allowing aacess to some unauthorised individuals (false match) than to risk rejecting those who are entitled to it (false non-match).
Mark Oaten