The Labour government has ambitious police reform plans for England and Wales that it says will save money, make police forces “more rooted in local communities,” and increase the use of digital technology and data.
One company that is already benefitting from these efforts is BAE Systems, a company that has been accused of arming countries with “dubious human rights records and unstable political regimes.”
In recent years, the weapons company has been repeatedly targeted by pro-Palestine campaigners, who have blocked the company’s offices and factories and disrupted recruitment events.
BAE Systems produces and sells parts for jets and artillery systems that have been used extensively by the Israeli military in its genocide in Gaza.
A multi-million-pound plan
One of BAE’s many subsidiaries, BAE Systems Digital Intelligence, has won two government contracts worth more than £3.6 million since December 2025. Less well-known than its parent company, the subsidiary hit the headlines almost a decade ago for selling mass surveillance tools to dictatorships.
The recent contracts with the UK government are to support the ongoing ‘Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme’ (PECP). The programme aims to trim £354 million from the country’s £20 billion policing budget for England and Wales. In its bid to make those savings, the government is first spending a lot of money.
The initial contract won by BAE Systems Digital Intelligence (formerly known as BAE Systems Applied Intelligence) ran from December 2025 to May 2026 and was worth nearly £1.3 million.
The Home Office told Statewatch in response to a freedom of information request that the company was to provide “technical and service designs for integrating data across the policing landscape as well as linking policing data across other agencies and other organisations.”
This was followed by a £2.3 million contract running from June 2026 to May 2027. The Home Office’s response to Statewatch’s request offered little concrete information on the aims of this contract, saying:
“The focus of activities is in the following areas:
- National Capabilities Reform (NCR) – Optimising existing national Police Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) capabilities
- Productivity – scaling deployment of productivity enhancing DDaT tools
- Commercial Efficiencies – Optimising commercial arrangements for the provision of DDaT capabilities at the local, regional and national layers of policing”
Improving digital capabilities is clearly a priority for the government. Earlier this year, it awarded the National Police Chiefs Council £4.47 million for its “Reform Programme and the NPCC Digital, Data and Technology (DDaT) Coordination Committee.”
This award came on top of the £5.65 million grant awarded to the NPCC by the Home Office for its annual operations.
New privacy invasions
The contracts with BAE Systems Digital Intelligence are part of plans to create a “police data factory” recently revealed by Computer Weekly. This will bring together data from more than “50 law enforcement agencies, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice,” and a range of other government bodies.
The “data factory” will form part of a ‘National Data Integration and Exploitation Service’. One of the aims of the service will be to integrate data attached to the ‘Single Unique Identifier’ given to every schoolchild in the country. Both the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs Council refused to answer questions from Computer Weekly on whether this would hand data on all schoolchildren to the police and other criminal justice agencies.
Civil liberties and privacy groups have raised serious concerns over the plans, in particular due to the government’s intention to vastly increase the use of AI technologies by the police to assess and analyse data.
The police reform white paper published in March promised “the much more widespread deployment of AI across policing.” The government is investing tens of millions of pounds in a new National Centre for AI in Policing to support this effort.
Statewatch director, Alamara Khwaja Bettum, told Computer Weekly that the output of any AI system will
“…reflect historic and existing biases within these institutions and across wider society… [leading] to over-policing and criminalisation of marginalised communities, particularly racialised groups, migrants and people from low-income neighbourhoods”.
No end to outsourcing
The second contract for BAE Systems Digital Intelligence was signed just as the government announced its intention to end “outsourcing by default.” They claim this is part of their plan to bring “key services back in-house and get the absolute best results for taxpayers.”
When it comes to digital technology and data, the government is unlikely to achieve those aims in the near future.
The BAE subsidiary is one of thousands of “pre-approved suppliers” available for government bodies to sign contracts with, as part of the ‘G-Cloud 14’ scheme, a government framework for procuring cloud-based computing services. While G-Cloud 14 expires at the end of October, it will be replaced by G-Cloud 15 – which the government says offers “an estimated £14 billion in opportunities for small British businesses.”
G-Cloud 14 was also ostensibly designed to benefit small and medium-sized businesses, defined by the government as having “less than or equal to £44m in annual turnover or a balance sheet total of less than or equal to £38m.”
The 2024 accounts for BAE Systems Digital Intelligence report revenue of £470 million and an operating profit of £15.8 million.
Secret police service?
The government and senior police officers aim to make the National Data Integration and Exploitation Service part of the forthcoming National Police Service (NPS), a new law enforcement agency. As part of the government’s police reform plans, the NPS will “fight the most complex and serious crimes,” including terrorism and organised crime.
There are already concerns about a potential lack of transparency, and it remains to be seen if members of the public will be able to request information from the NPS under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.
Martin Wrigley, a Liberal Democrat MP, recently asked the government whether the NPS would be covered by the Act.
The policing minister, Sarah Jones, dodged the question entirely, simply answering:
“As announced in the King’s Speech on 13 May, the Police Reform Bill which will establish the National Police Service will be introduced later this session.”
There are several ways the NPS could be excluded from the FOI Act. For example, the National Crime Agency is classified as a “security body”, while the Police Digital Service was established by the Home Office as a private company.
Both classifications would allow the new service to skirt around one of the commitments in the ‘AI Covenant’ agreed by the National Police Chiefs Council in 2023. The second principle outlined in the covenant is transparency: “All use of AI will be subject to ‘Maximum Transparency by Default’.”
Without campaigning to ensure otherwise, the public may receive maximum police AI without any corresponding level of openness.
