Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Metropolitan Police will be required to publish the algorithms they will use under the recently announced plans for data integration and exploitation on the Algorithmic Transparency Reporting Standard.

AI has the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of policing, including by supporting investigations, reducing administrative burdens and helping officers make better use of evidence.

The Government is committed to enabling the responsible adoption of AI across policing through the new National Centre for AI in Policing (PoliceAI). PoliceAI will support forces to adopt AI responsibly, ensuring that tools are subject to appropriate technical testing, evaluation and scrutiny, to minimise bias and inaccuracy. It will support forces in demonstrating compliance with responsible AI adoption principles which includes public transparency and accountability measures.

To support transparency, PoliceAI will publish a public-facing national registry of police AI use, which will provide information about how tools are used, the benefits they deliver, the risks associated with their deployment, and the safeguards in place to mitigate those risks. It aims to produce a first version of the registry by the Autumn. The registry is intended to increase public confidence through maximum transparency by default, and PoliceAI will withhold funding for AI tools for those forces that have not completed registry entries for their deployed tools.