What is the nature of the NPOIU intelligence database?
"The National Public Order Intelligence Unit was established to support police forces in managing the intelligence around the threat to communities from public disorder connected to domestic extremism and single issue campaigning.
"It is responsible for collating intelligence from police forces in England and Wales to identify domestic extremism issues being dealt with by individual forces, and evaluating and analysing them to understand how they relate to other incidents across the country.
"Because domestic extremists don't work within police force boundaries, each force submits their intelligence to NPOIU, who then feed it into a database and analyse the information to identify common incidents, tactics and people committing offences across the country.
"NPOIU is responsible for coordinating intelligence from across the country in order to advise each force of the bigger picture. However, the ownership of each piece of intelligence lies with the force it came from.
"This information is then fed back to the police forces concerned, to allow them to see the bigger, national picture and join up their investigations, if appropriate.
"Police forces hold intelligence databases on all manner of crimes and incidents and there is always information on the database of people who have not committed a criminal offence. This information is used to help police investigate criminal offences, should they be committed, to assist in identifying potential witnesses, people involved, the vehicles they were driving.
"Without this information, police would not be able to investigate criminal offences committed.
"All of the information held on the database is fully compliant with the national guidelines on retaining information for policing purposes (Management of Police Information) and the Data Protection Act, as well as any polices the individual police forces who own the intelligence have."
