§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many police forces have intelligence computers and which ones they are; and which other police forces intend to have or to develop a criminal intelligence system.
§ Mr. WhitelawIn addition to the police national computer, there are in England and Wales 17 computer systems wholly operated by police forces, which directly assist the police in the prevention and detection of crime and in the management and deployment of their resources. These systems hold information in varying degrees about crime and criminals, but none is dedicated to handling information of an intelligence nature. Two systems, however, have a predominance of such information in so far as brief details about crime and criminals are assembled in such a way as to enable authorised officers to retrieve information more efficiently than is possible with manual systems. One system is operated by the Metropolitan Police. The other is an experiment conducted jointly by Thames Valley police and the Home Office.
I understand that 12 forces are planning the installation of computers for police operational purposes. So far as I am aware, none is contemplating systems dedicated to criminal intelligence.
§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what interconnections there are between the intelligence computers operated by some police forces; and whether it is intended to develop a national criminal intelligence record linking all police forces with computers in due course.
§ Mr. WhitelawThere are no connections over which information can be exchanged between computers operated by police forces. In the future I would not wish to exclude the possibility of utilising technology to assist the exchange of information between particular forces for specific purposes, such as the investigation of a series of major crimes. But I do not have in mind the development of a computerised national criminal intelligence record to which all police force computers would be linked.