Member

As noble Lords noted in our previous debate in Committee, this amendment is so wide-ranging in its reach as to render it disproportionate in the obligations it would place on forces. It would apply to all suspects and all arrested persons charged, cautioned and convicted, as well as victims. Our position remains that the Home Secretary already has some powers available to obtain relevant personal data, such as age, sex and ethnicity, from police forces. This power is exercised through an annual data requirement, which sets out what data should be recorded and provided to the Home Office. We remain of the view that this is a more appropriate route to specify how data should be recorded than the wide-ranging legislation proposed in the amendment. That said, we are committed to legislating to mandate the collection of ethnicity data on suspects and, as part of that, we will explore whether wider powers are needed to mandate different categories of data.