Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 27 October 2014, to Question 211467, what capability has existed for police forces to electronically match seized child abuse images against known such images seized (a) in the UK and (b) by Interpol partners in the period since the Childbase image database was disbanded in 2011; and what technological process is required in order to produce such a match.

The interim National Hash Set Database provides the capability for police forces to electronically match indecent images of children against those
already in the Database. The Database was compiled from images provided by police forces. The process itself uses commonly available computer forensics tools.