Home Office promises national intelligence system
Published: 23 Jun 2004 11:50 BST
The Home Office has pledged to improve the way police handle sensitive intelligence by implementing a national intelligence system and enforcing a nationwide code of practice for police information handling.
The pledge came from Home Secretary David Blunkett in response to the publication on 22 June by Sir Michael Bichard of his findings into the way the investigation of Soham murderer Ian Huntley was carried out by Cambridgeshire and Humberside police.
Sir Michael's report included several recommendations on ways to improve information handling and sharing by police forces in England and Wales, including the introduction of a national intelligence system "as a matter of urgency" and a code of practice on creating, keeping and sharing information.
Sir Michael also called for a review of the efficiency of existing IT procurement procedures, to ensure national IT systems are being delivered where appropriate. If a national IT system is appropriate, "it makes no sense to allow local forces to frustrate or delay its development," he said.
The Home Secretary said he accepted all the recommendations by Sir Michael and has announced the first national police intelligence computer system, called Impact, as well as use of an interim, local exchange system to flag up intelligence being held by particular police forces and a statutory code of practice to cover information handling by the 43 police forces of England and Wales.
Scotland already has a centralised database to handle intelligence information and there have been calls to use the Scottish system as a base for the proposed national system for England and Wales, rather than beginning development from scratch.
Sir Michael said data protection laws could not be blamed for the failures in the Soham investigation and said he did not believe radical revision of the existing laws was necessary.
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