LONDON: Ministers face a parliamentary inquiry over the storing by police of 20 million mugshots - including of many people not convicted of any crime - after a senior MP warned the practice raises “fundamental civil liberty issues.”

A Commons committee is poised to launch the probe after running out of patience with the government, which has failed to act on the controversy almost six years after it was ruled unlawful by the High Court.

The court warned of the “risk of stigmatisation of those entitled to the presumption of innocence”, adding that it would be particularly harmful in the cases of children.

But the Home Office urged forces to carry on retaining the facial images, promising new laws would follow. At least 20 million mugshots are stored - a staggering one-third of the UK population.

Meanwhile, a “biometrics strategy” has been delayed for five years, prompting a watchdog’s warning that the number of retained images would rocket, breaching “individual privacy.”

Now Norman Lamb, the chairman of the Commons science and technology committee, has told The Independent that his committee is ready to step in and investigate.

Condemning the situation as “intolerable,” Lamb said: “There are no real rules surrounding this.

“The police can store these facial images without any proper consideration of them, which raises fundamental and significant civil liberty issues about what they are retaining about us.

“It includes people who have not been charged with any crime, or people who have been exonerated.”

The Liberal Democrat MP said an additional worry was the disproportionate targeting of ethnic minorities, adding: “There are also concerns about bias - and also about the accuracy of identification.

“This is not to say the technology doesn’t have it place, or potential value, but it needs to be operated within a clear legal and regulatory framework.”

Lamb said he would push for Baroness Williams, the Home Office minister responsible for biometrics, to be hauled before his committee, when it discusses the controversy on Tuesday.

If the minister failed to provide satisfactory answers - which she failed to do in a letter sent before Christmas, he said - a full inquiry by the committee would follow.