This paper sets out the Home Office position regarding the Chief Constable of Suffolk Constabulary's (Alastair McWhirter) suggestion for setting up a database to track those individuals who commit crime, cause damage to the environment and avoid VAT or Income Tax.

  2.  Alastair McWhirter, Chief Constable of Suffolk Constabulary and ACPO lead on Gypsies and Travellers has suggested a cross-cutting information system which would allow multi-agency access to information for those who are involved in unauthorised camping and who cause damage to the environment, commit crime, avoid VAT or Income Tax. The aim of the system would be for the police, local authorities, the Environment Agency, Customs and Excise, Inland Revenue and Trading Standards to share information.

  3.  We have been carefully considering the need for such a database. As the courts have ruled that discrimination against Gypsies and Irish Travellers is unlawful racial discrimination, it is therefore important that any database should not exclusively target members of these ethnic groups.

  4.  However, Project "IMPACT" will deal with the issues identified by Mr McWhirter. IMPACT is the programme of work to meet two of the 31 recommendations made by Sir Michael Bichard that there should be a national intelligence IT system for the Police in England and Wales (Rec 1) and that investment should be made to secure the future of the Police National Computer (Rec 4). The name stands for Intelligence Management, Prioritisation, Analysis, Co-ordination and Tasking. The four key elements to the proposed new system are:

—  Data Sharing: All Police Services in England and Wales will be able to share the intelligence and information they gather as part of their day-to-day policing, investigations and special operations. This data will be taken from forces' own local systems and stored in a common format which can then be searched within each force, between forces and nationally. The National Centre for Policing Excellence is working with the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Home Office and other partners to draw up a Statutory Code of Practice as to how this information should be gathered, stored, searched, retrieved and weeded.

—  Intelligence Analysis: Leading edge tools to link intelligence information in ways which are meaningful to the prevention, detection and solution of crime—locally, regionally or nationally. This will provide the tactical and strategic input into forces' use of the National Intelligence Model.

—  Tasking, Briefing and De-Briefing: Applications to take analysed intelligence and use it to prepare operations and policing action, with feedback on outcomes.

—  Record Keeping: The new PNC will contain more information on criminals and greater functionality to handle, for example, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders. Its usability will be improved to reduce bureaucracy and speed up enquiries. It will contain the special registers (Violent and Sexual Offenders, Firearms etc) and integrate with the wider community of criminal justice and law enforcement agencies. Then the police will be able to couple criminal intelligence with up-to-minute records on offenders, available across a secure network where every access to data is appropriately authorised and fully audited.

  5.  Responsibility for delivering IMPACT has been accepted by the Home Office, along with the Association of Chief Police Officers and advised by the Police Information Technology Organisation. The aim is to provide a rolling release of new systems and capabilities over the next two to two-and-a-half years. In the short term the Criminal Records Bureau will have an index of police records so that it can tell which forces hold information on a particular person for vetting purposes.

  6.  Project IMPACT should assist forces and reduce the need for a separate database on Travellers. It will enable:

—  Datasharing—Forces will be able to carry out searches of each others databases and discover intelligence carried on individuals.

—  A Traveller can be tracked via intelligence reports across force boundaries.

—  All Force Intelligence Reports will be available quickly and easily via a search function.

—  An enhanced ability to tackle national, regional and local crime across force boundaries in support of the National Intelligence Model.

September 2004