Items seized of people entering Palace of Westminster from September to November 2023
Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.23.034774
I note you seek access to the following information:
Could you please provide me with information on items/substances seized by officers during a search of people entering or on the grounds of the Palace of Westminster from 01/09/2023 – 30/11/2023?
Further to the above could you also provide a list of crimes charged against persons on the Parliamentary estate over the same timeframe - Prefer both actual charges and allegations, but happy with actual charges?
Decision
I have today decided to disclose some of the requested information. Some data has been withheld as it is exempt from disclosure and therefore this response serves as a Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act).
In addition, the Metropolitan Police Service can neither confirm or deny whether it holds any further information relevant to this request, as the duty in Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) does not apply by virtue of the following exemptions:
Section 30(3) – Investigations and Proceedings
Section 40(5) – Personal Information
Reason for decision
Section 30(3) – - Investigations and proceedings conducted by public authorities - To confirm or deny the existence of any further information relating to crimes reported as occurring on the Parliamentary Estate, would be commenting on information which might or might not form part of an investigation. This would hinder the prevention or detection of crime. The MPS would not wish to confirm or deny that any further data is held relating to an offence which had been investigated and where the outcome to the judicial process has not yet concluded, as this would clearly undermine the law enforcement and investigative process.
The most persuasive reasons for confirming or denying any further information is held would be greater assurance to the public that any reported crimes to the police are investigated thoroughly and would give an indication of the level of crime that is being reported in this area.
However, this needs to be weighed against the strongest negative reason, which, in this case, is to confirm or deny any further information is held would compromise and undermine the MPS’s law enforcement capabilities in its ability to prevent and detect crime. The effectiveness of any ongoing investigations may be compromised as potential offenders would be alerted and able to identify the focus of police activity. They could then take steps to disrupt this investigation and evade prosecution, which could ultimately lead to the need for more police resources.
Alternatively, by confirming that any further criminal investigations have taken place, but the judicial process was still ongoing, would allow perpetrators to identify whether their involvement in a crime had been detected.
Therefore, it is our opinion, after weighing up the competing interests, I believe that the balance test favours neither confirmation or denial.
Section 40(5A)&(5B)(a)(i) - Personal Information - Under section 40(5), the MPS is not required to comply with the requirements of section 1(1)(a) i.e. the duty to inform the applicant whether or not the information is held.
In most cases Personal Data is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act as I will explain below.
To confirm or deny whether personal information exists could publicly reveal information about an identifiable individual or individuals, thereby breaching the right to privacy afforded to persons under the Data Protection Act (DPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018.
Where an individual is requesting his or her own personal data the information is always exempt. Such information can be requested under other legislation.
Where an individual is requesting third party personal data the MPS must ensure that any action taken adheres to the principles of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the GDPR. To clarify, the Freedom of Information Act only allows disclosure of personal data if that disclosure would be compliant with the principles for processing personal data. These principles are outlined under section 34 of the DPA 2018 and under Article 5 of the GDPR.
Section 40 is a class based absolute exemption and there is no requirement to consider the public interest in this case.
Disclosure
Please note below the following criteria for the data returned:
Live data was extracted from CRIS on 17/10/2024.
There is no standard/set way to identify crimes recorded within the Parliamentary Estate (PE).
The many buildings on the PE are spread over an area of approximately 0.08 sq. miles.
• A .tab file polygon layer was created within MapInfo ™ following the building outline of each of the relevant buildings/locations replicating an internal MPS Official Sensitive document/map of the PE.
• This report is based on GeoCoded Notifiable Crime data extracted from within a number of building polygon shapes created in a MapInfo layer drawn around a selection of buildings/locations on Westminster Borough identified by the MPS as the PE.
• "Seized" items are based on Notifiable Offences of Possession of Offensive Weapon (includes Firearms - such as CS gas or pepper spray) and/or Drugs and is a count of items.
Seized items may be discovered by police officers at one of the many search points or gates around the PE, often before the Accused has got to their intended destination such as for a tour inside the House of Commons/Parliament.
• Any items that would not be an offence to possess but are not allowed on the PE as a condition of entry, such as flour or flags, are not included in this report.
• Outcomes are by the Outcome Changed Date, limited by Charged/Summonsed or Charged with an Alternative Offence and is a count of Offence Outcomes.
• People Proceeded Against are by the Proceedings Date, limited to Charge or Postal Charge and is a count of Accused.
• PPA are accused persons that have had FORMAL ACTION taken against them and as many of the "seized" items are removed from Foreign Tourists, they are often dealt with by way of Community Resolution, or other NON FORMAL disposals, which is not regarded as a FORMAL ACTION, so PPA charges may be very low or NIL during this period or were in the street, so not relevant to this request.
Generally MPS Notifiable crime data is GeoCoded at 97-99% accuracy, depending on crime sub categories.
• There will be crimes that an MPS Borough owns in terms of investigations but which are actually located on a neighbouring Borough or outside the MPS boundary.
In theory, the GeoCoded crime data set extracted from within the PE building polygons should have a relationship to those buildings, however after dip sampling a random number of VEN Address and CLASS Method (summary of the crime) fields, some of those crimes had occurred elsewhere or nearby.
• It is also possible that the location of the crime recorded on CRIS is due to it being the nearest prominent landmark to where the actual offence occurred and in some cases may have had nothing to do with that specific building location.
The VEN Address Location can be prefixed with "Outside", "Opposite" or "Near" when being recorded and may or may not be available depending on the system used to extract the raw data.
• The way parts of Central London have been built over time, one building on top of another building/arcade of shops/tunnel/London Underground, etc., does cause some counting & accuracy issues.
• The same is true for some of these PE building polygons which can be on top of public thoroughfares (such as London Underground) where other crimes have been recorded.
This means that all the crime reports counted in this report would have to be manually read to determine they only occurred on the PE.
Therefore this report is a proxy measure and could represent an over count. Reading all records would go over costs.
Question 1 – Seizures
The table below shows the items seized at the House of Parliament via access gates or search points on the Parliamentary Estate between 01/09/2023 – 30/11/2023.
| Items Seized |
| BLADED ARTICLE |
| KNIFE |
| LOCK KNIFE |
| PEPPER SPRAY |
Please note the following important contextual information regarding the above weapons seized. In the vast majority of cases these would have been found on visitors to the estate through security screening. These visitors are usually foreign nationals having such items in their possession and unknowingly committing an offence in the UK.
Question 2 – Crimes Charged
In regards to this part of your request the MPS is only able to collate data on charging outcomes and People Proceeded Against by outcome. Please see response below.
There were 0 notifiable charged outcomes recorded by the MPS geocoded to specific locations on the Parliamentary Estate by the outcome changed date between 01/09/2023 and 30/11/2023.
There were 0 notifiable People Proceeded Against by way of charge or postal charge recorded by the MPS geocoded to specific locations on the Parliamentary Estate by the proceedings date between 01/09/2023 and 30/11/2023.
In relation to these zero returns, I would again like to provide some context to support this information. Many of the accused (often visiting tourists) were dealt with by non-formal means such as, a Community Resolution. As stated in our response to Question 1, these visitors are unknowingly in possession of weapons, which are deemed to be an offence to carry in the UK.