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28 Feb 2007 : Column 287WH—continued
Bichard Inquiry
2.30 pm
Mr. Eric Illsley (Barnsley, Central) (Lab): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Bercow, in what I hope will be an interesting and informative debate about the recommendations of the Bichard inquiry. I shall concentrate on the first two recommendations, which relate to the provision of a police central intelligence computer system and a national system for cross-referencing that intelligence.
The debate that I have been lucky enough to secure this afternoon follows on from the first time that I raised the issues, just over one year ago on 8 February 2006. Today, I hope to update the House on issues relating to Bichard’s first recommendation, and in turn listen to the Minister’s response and gain an update on Home Office progress in meeting those recommendations.
The points that I made when I first raised the issue in 2006 can be summarised as follows: in June 2004, Sir Michael Bichard reported to Parliament in the aftermath of the Soham murders; despite the fact that he called for the urgent implementation of a computer intelligence system, there were delays in achieving those recommendations; the proposed business plan for achieving the system was also somewhat delayed; the costs of implementing a system escalated throughout that period; it appeared that the system the Home Office wished to introduce was becoming far too complex, and that simpler and cheaper systems, which were more readily available, could have been used to meet the Bichard recommendation; and systems could have been set up as an interim measure and could have been up and running much more quickly. One year on, we are still in roughly the same situation—we still do not have a national police intelligence system. Incidentally, we should not forget that the first plan for a national police intelligence system was suggested 10 years before the Bichard inquiry in 1994, so in reality we have been waiting some considerable time for the system to be developed.
I shall go through a chronology of events since the Bichard report, explaining where we are in relation to his recommendation and how the Home Office has tried to meet it. Unfortunately, because the matter relates to computers and computerised systems, a bit of jargon is involved. However, wherever possible I shall try to explain some of the more complicated acronyms.
The Bichard report was published in June 2004, and Sir Michael stated that it was his intention to reconvene his inquiry six months after the report’s completion in order to assess the progress made on the recommendations—it goes without saying that the Government had accepted the recommendations. The first recommendation was that
“a national system for England Wales to support police intelligence should be introduced as a matter of urgency.”
It called for the Home Office to take the lead and to report
“by December 2004 with clear targets for the implementation of the system.”
The second recommendation stated that the “PLX system”, a cross-referencing intelligence system
“which flags when intelligence about someone is held by particular police forces, should be introduced in England and Wales by 2005.”
As you may well remember, Mr. Bercow, during the inquiries into what happened in Soham, Cambridgeshire police force made inquiries of Humberside police force to try to obtain intelligence on a suspect in that murder inquiry. The intelligence was not forthcoming, and Bichard’s recommendations were designed to address that issue.
The Home Office produced a progress report six months later in December 2004 outlining the steps that it had taken to date to meet the recommendations. The Home Office said that
“there has been a comprehensive buy-in across all 43 police forces in England and Wales to the IMPACT programme.”
IMPACT stands for information, management, prioritisation, analysis, co-ordination and tasking of intelligence.
It was decided that the programme would be delivered in stages, from 2005 until its completion date, which was originally suggested as 2007. The report said that
“in the interim, the PLX system was on track to provide an index of individuals about whom information is held by police forces.”
The first version of that system, known as a national nominal index, was to be available from March 2005. It was plain from the outset that a clear timetable had been set for what is now a complicated system. It is clear now that that timetable was wildly optimistic.
In January 2005, the Bichard inquiry reconvened to assess the progress that had been made in meeting the recommendations. Sir Michael acknowledged the Home Office’s advice that the business case would not be considered until September 2005, and that it had been downgraded to an “outline business case”. However, he still called on the Home Office to ensure that a national IT system was delivered “on time, by 2007”. It is now clear that that timetable will not be met.
The Home Secretary, in a written ministerial statement published on 15 March 2005, acknowledged Sir Michael’s comments and agreed to issue two further progress reports in six and 12 months’ time. So, in November 2005 the Home Office issued a second progress report, announcing that the IMPACT nominal index, the cross-checking reference system, would
“start rolling out to forces’ Child Abuse Investigation Units from December 2005”,
but that it would not be completed until July 2006.
That is important because the cross-referencing system, the IMPACT nominal index, was designed to cover all aspects of police work. However, even by July 2006 it was available only in child abuse investigations. The index did not cover any other aspect of policy work, such as crime or motoring offences, and it related only to child abuse investigations. It is obvious that the progress made in achieving those systems was limited.
The IMPACT programme also assessed another system called the cross-regional information sharing project, or CRISP. That project had been developed by Cumbria police, along with some others, to allow police officers directly to access information held by
other forces without having to contact the force holding the information, which was the case with the IMPACT nominal index.
To explain it more simply, I shall return to the example that I used the last time we debated this subject. Under the index system, if a police officer in South Yorkshire were to enter my name into his intelligence system, it might flag up my name in another police force area—Essex, for example. The system would tell the police officer in South Yorkshire that my name was held by Essex police force, but it would not tell them exactly what that information was. The police officer in South Yorkshire would then have to telephone Essex and ask for the information record to be provided. In doing that, the information record from Essex would be sent to Yorkshire, thereby duplicating the information held on the system.
The index system would simply flag up that that information is available. The idea of CRISP was to put all that information together in a central system, so that when the officer in South Yorkshire inquired about my name, it would not only show that intelligence was held about me, but would say exactly what it was and allow the officer to access it there and then. Unfortunately, neither of those systems is fully operational at the moment. It is worth saying that the initial estimates for the funding of the CRISP and IMPACT nominal index system were £163 million.
The business case that I mentioned should have been presented in March 2006—already a year overdue—and when it was, it confirmed that the completion date for the IMPACT system had moved from 2007 to 2010. A year ago, I raised all those issues during a debate in Westminster Hall, and the then Minister, who is now the Minister without Portfolio, confirmed that the IMPACT system was a series of “interim, incremental programmes”, leading to a bigger programme by 2010. The first step was the nominal index, available to child abuse units, and the next step would be to roll out the CRISP system so that eventually, by 2010, we would have a police national database—the all-singing, all-dancing model envisaged by Bichard—which would deal with every aspect of police intelligence.
The Home Office made a statement in April 2006 in which the Minister at the time gave an overview of the final business case. She said that the Home Office had a very clear vision of the IMPACT programme. She stressed that the programme would meet the Bichard recommendations, improve police performance and operational efficiency, and make considerable savings. By the time of that statement in April 2006, the cost estimate had increased to £367 million. Although neither aspect of the system was anywhere near fully operational, the cost estimates had more than doubled. The Minister also stated that the Home Office would focus on the continued development within police forces of the CRISP database system to give them the capability to extract data from local force databases in a format that they could use.
I raised the issue in June 2006, at Prime Minister’s questions. The Prime Minister stated that while the full IMPACT recommendations would not come in until later, data-sharing arrangements should be in place from the end of 2007. He said that the Government would look at how they could speed up the
recommendations and added that, if necessary, they were perfectly happy to reconvene the Bichard inquiry.
In September 2006, the IMPACT programme supplier newsletter was published. It is one of the most recent publications from the Home Office on the progress in achieving the IMPACT system, and it highlighted a number of changes. The most significant was that the system would now hold only a minimum amount of information. It would still mean physical contact with the police force or other organisation in question in order to access the intelligence referred to. It also stated that the roll-out to child abuse investigation units throughout the country had only just been achieved. Again, there had been delays, even within the minimalist approach to the interim national index. The newsletter also confirmed that by mid-2007—in two or three months’ time—an interim data-warehousing capability based on the CRISP software would be deployed, allowing direct, inter-force access to intelligence records. However, it also said that
“the functionality which will be delivered by IMPACT...is necessarily constrained by the current state of development of the...product and the work required to ensure that it is fit for purpose”.
In the newsletter, certain doubts were apparent in relation to the development of this programme, and there were questions about whether it could be developed in the way envisaged by the Home Office.
An independent technical review of the IMPACT technology choices then took place, which was intended to take stock of the approach at that stage. It stated that the programme team would be contacting a range of suppliers to seek advice and views ahead of a supplier day this winter.
The Home Office answered a series of questions about the IMPACT system in October 2006. It stated that it had yet to give approval to the programme to contract for the CRISP service or to initiate procurement of the police national database as it was awaiting the outcome of further work that was due to be considered in March this year. It also stated that accountability for the IMPACT programme would change in April this year and that the programme would be part of the new National Policing Improvement Agency. Not only were there further doubts about whether the system would be commissioned by the Home Office, but there was also a change in ownership of the product, which will move into the new agency that should come into being in April.
At this point, the Home Office had begun inviting tenders from industry for some of the work to be done on the data-warehousing system and improving the nominal index. It appears that a number of sources within industry have reported that the Microsoft Corporation, on whose software the system is based, has said that the CRISP system is not sufficiently robust to scale up to the size required for a national database. A test showed that after loading 1.5 million records on to the system, the response times for a search were of the order of 20 minutes. If we consider that a national intelligence system would contain something like 7 million vehicle records alone, we can see just how big a delay there would be if the system were scaled up and used nationally.
There are some considerable questions about the whole IMPACT system. We have the IMPACT nominal index, which is the indexing system, and it already contains 43 million entries. Given that this country has a population of 60 million, it is easy to see that there is a lot of duplication on that system. Every time a record is accessed from the index, it is of necessity duplicated. It is available only for child abuse investigation units, and it has not been rolled out into any other aspect of police work. On top of that, the CRISP system will be the data warehouse and hold all the records to enable police officers to access them as and when they wish. As I have mentioned, however, there are now doubts about scale and whether it can go ahead.
In my speech last year, I mentioned that there were alternatives, the first of which was the Scottish system. Scotland had that system fully up and running in 2004. Sir Michael Bichard considered that system, but he was persuaded against it because he was informed that it could not properly evaluate intelligence, which was clearly wrong because it can. The system is used in the whole of Scotland, and one or two English forces use it, too. Last February, we were told that the cost of scaling that system from Scotland out to the rest of the UK would be £55 million and that it could have been done in 13 months. If we had started scaling it out at the time of my debate, we could have looked forward to its coming into being next month.
The Scottish system was developed by a company called ABM, which has been interested in the issues, as they relate to its field and it is interested in whatever business it can tender for as part of the IMPACT scheme. I pay tribute to its group managing director, Alistair Luff, who has provided some of the information that I have cited today. When I contacted him recently to get an update on the current situation in respect of his company, he told me that it was taking no further part in dealing with IMPACT, that it is not anticipating tendering for any other such work and that it had, in effect, been warned off taking any further interest in the police system.
Here we are, with a cost estimate of £367 million for a system that does not exist, yet last year we could have paid £55 million for a system that would have been up and running in the space of a year. Obviously, other companies take an interest in the field of computer intelligence, one of which is Memex. I had not been aware of its existence until it contacted me after my debate of February last year. A Memex computer intelligence system is used by the Metropolitan police, the British Transport police, the Los Angeles police force and the new Iraqi police force that is being developed. British Transport police liaises with 14 other police forces in this country that are also signed up to the Memex system. British Transport police is our only national police force. It deals not only with fare dodging, but security issues, especially in respect of what has happened in the capital in the past two years, so there is a serious element to its involvement.
Metropolitan police has been using the system for some years—let us bear in mind that the Met deals with 30 per cent. of the UK’s total intelligence. Add to that the intelligence with which British Transport police deals, and we can see that the Memex system, which is fully compliant with the Bichard recommendations, is dealing with a third of this
country’s intelligence. During the delays and problems of the IMPACT system, the Memex system—the Metropolitan police system—has been up and running and working well. As I have said, it already covers a third of this country’s intelligence.
I had the privilege of seeing the Metropolitan police system in operation in the service’s new buildings in Earls Court. My hon. Friend the Minister, a London Member, will know more about Metropolitan police systems than me, and I urge her to take a look at the system. She will see in operation a police intelligence computer system that meets all the requirements of Bichard and is fully up and operational.
In conclusion, I ask again why we are persisting with the IMPACT system, which appears to reinvent the wheel, when much cheaper commercial systems are available and could be implemented over a much shorter time scale. As I have mentioned, the responsibility for the system will pass to the National Policing Improvement Agency in April. I suggest that that offers a good opportunity for a complete review of the whole system with a view to considering whether there is an easier, cheaper and faster way to meet the Bichard recommendations.
2.56 pm
Mr. Jeremy Browne (Taunton) (LD): I am grateful to you for calling me to participate in this debate, Mr. Bercow. Let me start by making three observations before I get to the substance of my contribution.
First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) not only on raising this subject but on pursuing and taking an interest in it for an extended period, and, as a result, accumulating wisdom that he shared with us this afternoon. It is an immense credit to him that he should have continued to take such a diligent interest in this very important subject. Inevitably, I shall go over some of the ground that he has already covered. However, I do not wish to speak for as long as he did; I fear that I shall not speak with the same degree of expertise either. None the less, I shall go over some of the key points, if repetition adds emphasis.
My second observation is that the deaths of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were particularly harrowing not only for people in this country, but internationally. People were disturbed and distressed by what happened. Of course, the people immediately connected with the case—most particularly, the parents of the two girls—are uniquely affected by what happened. However, even people who had no link with the family, or even with Soham or Cambridgeshire, will remember the case for the remainder of their lives. It is particularly important that we should have the opportunity to discuss it and its ramifications in this House.
Thirdly, I pay tribute to the work of the Bichard inquiry, which is widely regarded as having reached many balanced and thoughtful conclusions, which are informing our debate.
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