Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to her Department's statistics Police Powers and Procedures, published on 17 November 2022, what recent discussions she has had with police forces in (a) Essex and (b) Merseyside on the number of children detained in police custody without an Appropriate Adult being called.

The collection and publication of data on police custody will bring additional transparency and accountability to custody in England and Wales and help us better understand how and why police powers and procedures are used within the custody process. The Home Office only received data from a subset of forces so the findings should be interpreted with caution as it is partial and not representative of the national picture. We will work with police forces and the NPCC to improve data quality in the future and use the data published on 17 November to inform conversations with the police and other stakeholders to promote wider policy development.

All data collections are reviewed each year by the Policing Data Requirement Group (PDRG) to ensure that the amount of data requested from the police is proportionate and that forces have the technical capabilities to provide the data requested. We will be considering the feasibility of collecting data on the period of time between a child being detained in police custody, an Appropriate Adult first being in attendance and the average time taken for an AA to arrive.

Police custody is a core element of the criminal justice system and is critical for keeping the public safe. Children should only be detained in custody as a last resort and any opportunities to divert children away from custody should be taken. The data published on 17 November suggests that children were more likely to be detained in custody for robbery offences, possession of weapons offences and theft offences and less likely to be in custody for non-notifiable offences. It is positive to see that the number of children in police custody has decreased significantly, by 84%, over the last 10 years.

We hold regular discussions with policing and wider stakeholders on the availability of Appropriate Adults and custody policy in general. The data published on 17 November shows that, for the forces who provided data to us, an Appropriate Adult was called for 99% of children in custody. We expect forces to act in accordance with the statutory safeguards for children in custody, including the provision of appropriate adults. Procedures in custody are subject to independent scrutiny and oversight by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services. We expect forces to take recommendations from HMICFRS seriously and act in response to them.