Data under Terrorism Act 2000
Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.027256
I note you seek access to the following information:
Please can you tell me how many people were stopped, examined or detained under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 between 2005 and 2020?
Please can you tell me how many people were stopped and searched under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 between 2005 and 2011? And subsequently between 2011 and 2010 under Section 47?
Please can you tell me the number of women who have been stopped, examined, questioned or detained under Schedule 7; Section 44 and Section 47 of the Terrorism Act 2000 between 2005 and 2020?
Clarification - to confirm that the dates in the second part of Request 2 should be 2011 to 2020.
Decision
I have today decided to disclose the located information to you.
Please find below information pursuant to your request above.
In relation to your first query, unfortunately the MPS does not hold the data requested. I would like to take this opportunity to advise why information relating to Schedule 7 stops is not held. Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 provides powers for ‘examining officers’ at ports and airports, to stop, question and/or detain people to determine whether they may be involved or concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. Such investigations are conducted by specially trained Counter Terrorism police officers who record examinations on an IT system that is not used or available to anyone other than Counter Terrorism staff.
Although some forces host the system, they do so on behalf of Counter Terrorism Policing and do not use it to any extent for their own purposes. Accordingly, therefore, Schedule 7 information is not held for FOIA purposes by individual forces and in this case the MPS.
The owners of the information you seek are the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC). However, please be advised if you do choose to submit a FOIA request, exemptions may be applied. For your convenience, below is a link to the team who manage freedom of information requests on behalf of the NPCC.
I have today decided to disclose the requested information where held by the MPS, regarding Request 2 and 3.
Please find below the number of Section 44 and Section 47 stops recorded by the MPS. However, please note the caveats below regarding the data, which is only available from 2008, and that a small number of Section 44 or Section 47 stops are recorded outside of the date ranges specified for the totals:
Total Section 44 Stops (2008-2011) – 13,022
Total Section 47 Stops (2011-2020) – 192
Section 44 Stops of females (2008-2020) – 1,108
Section 47 Stops of females (2008-2020) – 11 (please note first bullet point below)
This data is held on the Criminal Intelligence (CRIMINT) database and there are a number of limitations on extracting the requested information that are detailed below:
- Input of Stops data into CRIMINT is partly based on selections from drop-down lists but input errors can be present even when using this process. Please note that although 11 Section 47 stops of females were recorded during the time period of your request, these have been checked and confirmed to be incorrectly recorded. Six of these should have been recorded as Section 43 stops and five related to the Misuse of Drugs Act. There were therefore no Section 47 stops identified over the period 2008-2020.
- The CRIMINT system has gone through at least one major/minor STEP CHANGE(s)/updates during the course of the past 16yrs+ worth of its existence, which has meant for this request, the titles and wording of the Stops Reason Categories have changed, possibly more than once, such as a hyphen, a space or a full stop being added.
- Some parts of Terrorism Legislation in the Stop Reason Categories may have been repealed during the date range requested and replaced by others. The following Stop Reason Categories are covered by the above data:
- Terrorism (s.44(1) Vehicle/occupants)
- Terrorism (s.44(2) pedestrians)
- Terrorism (s.47A)
- Terrorism (s.47A(2) Vehicles)
- Terrorism (s.47A(3) Pedestrian/Person)
- None of the OLD Stop Reason Category names were back-converted to reflect any current names in use.
- This step change(s) has meant using a structured query instead of the usual drop down selections from the stops form, to capture all variants and spelling syntax of the Terrorism Stop Reason Categories.
- The output of these various but similar meaning Stop Reason Categories as they are extracted from the source system were then grouped into a more consistent naming structure where possible.
- The totals provided are the number of persons subject to either pedestrian or vehicle stops where person details are recorded in the raw data and the Stop Reason Categories relate to Section 44 or Section 47 of the Terrorism Act.
- In a number of cases the gender of the person stopped is not held. The number of women stopped may therefore be slightly higher than the figure quoted.
- The previous recording system called STOPS RT is no longer useable, which means it is not possible to extract ANY stops data from this legacy system prior to 2008 when all stops/Terrorism stops started being entered onto CRIMINT.