Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has held with chief police officers on lawful business monitoring within police forces to help improve the internal operating culture of those forces.

The Home Secretary has been clear that standards and culture in policing must improve. In the wake of the horrific murder of Sarah Everard, the Home Secretary commissioned His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) to inspect forces’ vetting and counter-corruption arrangements. Their report on vetting, misconduct and misogyny was published in November last year and found that, whilst most forces have the capability to use IT monitoring to gather corruption intelligence, there was little evidence of it being used to proactively identify corruption-related intelligence

HMICFRS issued a recommendation that, by 31 March 2023, all Chief Constables should ensure that their forces are able to monitor all use of its IT systems and that forces use this to enhance investigative and proactive intelligence gathering capabilities. The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has committed to implementing all of the inspectorate’s recommendations. The Home Secretary has recently asked the inspectorate to conduct a rapid review of forces’ responses to recommendations from that report.