Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether it is her policy to make the publication of police custody data mandatory for all police forces.

Information on adults and children detained in police custody and strip searches that have taken place in police custody has been collected by the Home Office for the first time this year (2021/22).

As is usual practice for all new data collections added to the Annual Data Requirement (ADR), these data have been collected on a voluntary basis for 2021/22 to allow forces time to embed recording processes and make changes to their systems as required. As such, not all forces have provided data or have provided partial data, with some forces reporting issues with extracting the data from their custody systems.

Data that have been collected from forces are scheduled for publication on 17 November 2022 in the ‘Police Powers and Procedures’ statistical publication: Police powers and procedures: Other PACE powers, England and Wales, year ending 31 March 2022 - National statistics announcement - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).