Guidance
on police disclosing suspects’ ethnicity should change, Cooper says
Home
secretary says Law Commission is looking into change amid row over case of
alleged rape in Warwickshire
Jessica
Elgot Deputy political editor
Tue 5 Aug
2025 09.36 BST
Official
guidance should change to permit police to release the ethnicity or immigration
status of criminal suspects, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has said.
Cooper
said the government had asked the Law Commission to review this six months ago.
The row
over information withheld by police has been reignited after the Reform UK
leader of Warwickshire county council said police were refusing to confirm
details of two suspects charged after an alleged rape in Nuneaton.
Keir
Starmer has previously said such information should be given as part of
rebuilding public trust in the wake of the spread of mass disinformation after
the Southport murders last year.
Speaking
on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Cooper said she hoped the Law Commission
would accelerate its review around contempt of court and the information that
could be released when a trial was pending.
“We do
think the guidance needs to change,” she said, adding that it was already the
case that where police deemed it necessary more information on nationality was
released.
She
referred to a case where Iranian nationals were charged with spying offences in
May, and the Crown Prosecution Service revealed that three of them had arrived
either on small boats or a lorry.
She said:
“It is an operational decision for the police and Crown Prosecution Service on
an individual case, what and when information can be revealed in a live
investigation. However, we do think that the guidance needs to change, the
College of Policing is already looking at this, and Home Office officials are
working with the College of Policing.”
Two men
have been charged in connection with the alleged rape of a 12-year-old girl in
Nuneaton last month. Ahmad Mulakhil has been charged with rape and Mohammad
Kabir has been charged with kidnap and strangulation. Warwickshire county
council’s leader, George Finch, has alleged that the two men are asylum
seekers.
In a
statement after the charges, Warwickshire police said: “Once someone is charged
with an offence, we follow national guidance. This guidance does not include
sharing ethnicity or immigration status.”
Cooper
said the data collected on crimes committed by people of different ethnicities
and immigration status was “patchy” and that changes had been started late last
year to improve it.
“There is
some data recorded but often it’s not really robust enough. So I think we’re
going further than any government has done before in terms of trying to make
sure that there is robust and transparent data,” she told the Today programme.
She said
ministers had to take care not prejudice a trial by the release of information.
“We do need to recognise that there are times in court processes where there
are legal issues where the Crown Prosecution Service will currently say: that
particular pieces of information cannot be provided, where we may well think
that they should be provided.
“But I
have been clear. We do think there should be greater transparency. We do think
more information should be provided, including on issues around nationality,
including on some of those asylum issues,” she said.
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