Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing a cross-Departmental body with responsibility for missing person investigations, in the context of the multi-agency responsibilities for those investigations.

The Government recognises the need for an effective multi-agency response to missing person investigations.

The Missing Persons Authorised Professional Practice (APP), issued by the College of Policing, sets out best practice guidance for all missing person investigations for police forces in England and Wales in order to prevent missing incidents as well as ensure that all safeguarding partners play a role in an investigation. This includes multi-agency enquiries. The APP for missing persons is publicly available on the College’s website.

In addition to the APP, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for Missing Persons has developed the ‘Multi-agency response for adults missing from health and care settings’ framework, which is being rolled out, and the ‘Missing Children from Care’ framework, which has been piloted in West Yorkshire. These frameworks outline good practice that can be adopted by local areas when setting up their own multi-agency protocols for the strategic and operational response to a missing incident, with an aim to ensure that the appropriate safeguarding partner responds in the best interest of the missing person.