It was great to see Sussex MPs Tim Loughton and Nick Gibb speaking out against the increasing use of fingerprint recognition technology in primary schools (The Argus, March 6). Yet Mr Loughton is chairman of the company Classwatch, a supplier of CCTV and microphones to schools for use in classrooms. It seems to me he has a vested interest in speaking out against one of his firm's main competitors.

I wish to condemn both VeriCool's fingerprint collection business, Classwatch and the headteachers and school boards who are so quick to adopt these technologies, foolishly believing they are a quick-fix solution to bullying in schools.

It demonstrates that school leaders are incapable of assessing the genuine risks to democracy in Britain posed by conditioning young children to submit sensitive personal data to the authorities without questioning the need to do so. At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, these scanners, CCTV and microphones in classrooms should be banned.

Technology is not going to solve bullying in schools. While many people in Britain seem happy to have their every movement subjected to scrutiny as a means to root out bad behaviour, I am not. For every bad act that is prevented I believe that at least one good one will also disappear.

How long will it be before letters like this one are declared evil and their writers subjected to Asbos?

  • James Stephenson, Marine Parade Brighton