Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many police forces in England and Wales have (a) an established (i) Police Ethics Board and (ii) equivalent body and (b) a Police and Crime Commissioner who has formally scrutinised that force's use of AI in the last 12 months; and whether she plans to mandate a minimum standard of ethics board coverage before the abolition of PCCs in 2028.

Procurement and deployment of AI at a local force level is the responsibility of operationally independent Chief Constables, accountable to their locally elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs). In April, the government set up PoliceAI at a national level to support Chiefs and PCCs make informed, responsible AI adoption decisions. It is essential that the police use AI responsibly to build and maintain public consent for this tooling. That means deployments must be lawful, transparent, ethical, well governed and based on robust assessments of accuracy and bias.

Both PoliceAI and the Home Office work with the Association for Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) to develop products, resources and training, to support local oversight and scrutiny of AI deployment, with a focus on ethical considerations and arrangements. This year, PoliceAI will establish an independent advisory group, that the APCC will be a member of, to advise on AI ethics at a national level and consider nationally consistent accuracy and bias benchmarks for AI tools.

PoliceAI will also publish and maintain a registry of AI tools in use across policing. This is being developed in partnership with academics and is currently in testing with forces. A version of the public registry is expected to be published by the end of 2026. The registry will include details on the steps taken by the force to deploy the AI responsibly, including ethical assessment and accountability arrangements.

Officials continue to work closely with key partners across the sector to support and oversee transition to new police governance arrangements in May 2028, including using cross government and sector delivery groups, overseen by a project board.