Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will submit details of new AI-enabled IT systems to be procured for the proposed National Police Service for select committee scrutiny.

We will be establishing a programme of work with policing to deliver the National Police Service. The immediate priorities are to develop the legislation to bring about the new police force; and to deliver the integration of existing capabilities and systems in phase 1, such as National IT, Commercial, Forensics and National Police Air Service. These will form the initial functions of the National Police Service. Parliament and its select committees will be able to scrutinise the development of the National Police Service and its systems in the usual way

We recently announced over £115 million over the next three years to support the rapid and responsible development, testing and rollout of AI tools across all 43 police forces in England and Wales. This will be spearheaded by the creation of Police.AI, a new National Centre for AI in Policing. Police.AI will support forces to adopt AI tools and software by testing and assuring AI models, helping with scaling implementation, and providing public facing transparency through a registry of AI tools in use by policing.

The Home Office are now working closely with the NPCC AI portfolio to establish Police.AI. This includes recruiting its staff and securing a host organisation. Police.AI will transition into the National Police Service when it is appropriate to do so.