Recommendation 14

HM Government Not Addressed

The Home Office continues to support the police to ensure they have the powers, tools and technology they need to support communities and tackle crime effectively. The public rightly expects the Government to support operational partners in making use of technology to tackle serious harm such as knife crime, rape and serious sexual assault, child sexual exploitation, terrorism, and other serious offences. The Home Office will therefore back and empower the police to use new technologies to tackle crime in a way that maintains public trust. As part of this commitment, it is vital that there are processes and governance in place to ensure that new technology is used fairly and proportionately. The Home Office supported the appointment of the National Policing Chief Scientific Advisor, Professor Paul Taylor (CSA), who took up post in June 2021, because ensuring that all technological developments in policing are based on good evidence and the best understanding of science is crucial. Professor Taylor chairs a police science and technology investment board, which demands rigorous quality assurance of all proposals. Professor Taylor is also represented on the relevant NPCC committees and is developing national research and development guidance with the College. The Home Office also supports the adoption of artificial intelligence procurement guidance produced by the Government Office for Artificial Intelligence and, more broadly, the principles of open science. Inclusive Britain also sets out a series of concrete actions across Government and the wider sector to harness Artificial Intelligence for an inclusive future. The Home Office will work with the NPCC, the College and the police to support the development of a national ethics framework for policing. The Home Office expects this framework to underpin the need for high-quality impact assessments and be applied to all new applications of technology and data processing intended to support operational decisions that have significant implications for individuals. The way in which people lead their lives is becoming increasingly digital and this is changing society, criminality, and the communities policing serves. The Government will support innovation to confront ever more sophisticated criminality, protect people from harm and enable police to work effectively and efficiently in a rapidly changing world. Racism and the police twenty-two years on Replied together with We recommend that training involves an explicit focus on anti-racism which should include examining racial disparities and seeking to reduce differences in experience and outcomes by racial and ethnic group. We would like to see consistency in the quality and content of training delivered at a local and service wide level. To this end we recommend a comprehensive review and overhaul of training on racism, diversity and equality, led by the College of Policing and assisted by the Home Office. Its purpose should be to draw up clear national standards on anti-racist training for all police officers and staff. It should consider specifically how to involve local communities in drawing up training programmes and ways to draw on the experience of those who face the consequences of racism in the communities the police serve. It should include training to identify and question racial disparities within structures, policy and institutional culture, in addition to unconscious bias. At a national level, policing organisations and the Home Office should be holding forces accountable for doing so. Recent comments by Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, Dame Cressida Dick and Martin Hewitt, as well as new initiatives from the NPCC, HMICFRS, the IOPC and from individual PCCs and Chief Constables suggest that police leaders recognise the importance now of taking a ‘big step forward’—but they must now make good on their intent by rigorously examining their institutions, explaining the disparities we have highlighted, or changing their organisations and practices to eradicate them.