Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what support her Department is providing to police forces in adopting modern technologies to the identification of trends across complaints, misconduct, training, supervision and welfare data.

The Government does not determine which technology police forces procure or deploy. This is a matter for operationally independent Chief Constables, held accountable by directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners.

The Home Office does recognise the importance of better linking data across multiple systems and using technology to ensure improved operational outcomes. In the recent Government White Paper From Local to National: A New Model for Policing, published in January, we set out our ambitious plans for police reform. This includes launching a new National Data Integration and Exploitation Service and a new National Centre for AI in Policing (“PoliceAI”) which is investing £115 million over the next 3 years.

The Government has been working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council to produce a system which will provide forces with automated intelligence alerts from the Police National Database (PND) on individuals working in policing. The Home Office has provided £1.5m for a proof of concept and an additional approximately £2m towards development of a pilot for this work, known as ‘Continuous Integrity Screening’, which some forces are planning to run before the end of this year. The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is also considering how it may apply AI and automation capability in its processes’

In addition, the Government provides ongoing funding to the National Police Wellbeing Service to provide support to forces and individuals, including a National Police Workforce and Wellbeing Survey. This provides evidence-based insights into wellbeing, helping forces identify patterns in welfare issues and broader organisational risks, benchmark against national findings, and inform targeted wellbeing interventions. On top of ongoing funding, the Government is providing additional funding of £2.4m this year to the National Police Wellbeing Service to increase support to forces as set out in the Police Reform White Paper, including measures to help monitor and prevent welfare issues.