Police law in the UK: AI-driven claims and other trends

Police law is a broad area touching on a wide variety of legal issues where police forces are litigants or where on-duty actions are concerned, from human rights to data protection, and from inquests to employment law. It has been a busy time for solicitors and barristers on both the claimant and defendant side of this practice area, and the consensus is that it is likely to get busier. Alongside a steady growth in everyday claims for wrongful arrest, excessive force and failure to investigate, various major public inquiries in which police forces are core participants are likely to deliver findings within the next twelve months, while police forces have also been involved in an array of public law challenges and appeals.

Solicitor, UK law firm

Artificial Intelligence has already begun to impact on all corners of the legal profession, and police law is no exception. Respondents told us that access to LLMs has driven a rise in litigants in person for actions against the police. Some of these claimants were able to develop what would previously have been relatively quotidian allegations into sophisticated claims invoking areas such as human rights and equalities law.

Police defence lawyers interviewed for our research conceded that AI could widen access to justice for those unable to afford traditional representation (not to mention bringing them plenty of instructions from police forces). The recent AI-driven victory in a County Court debt recovery case will have been observed closely by practitioners across practice areas. However, in the realm of police law, sources were concerned that a growing volume of questionable claims will be a “drain on the public purse”, and that many AI-authored claims are of dubious quality, with substance lost in masses of excess text and false citations – “hallucinations” – a noted risk.

Solicitor, UK law firm

In one such case, the CPS and Sussex Police faced claims under the Data Protection Act and Human Rights Act after a CPS advocate disclosed XGY’s confidential address during the bail hearing of an ex-partner accused of rape and violent abuse. Both respondents sought protection under the core immunity protecting participants in legal proceedings from civil liability for the statements made during them. Later this year, the UK’s top court will consider the scope of that immunity in such claims.

The link between privacy and new technology is another current topic, with the Met recently winning a challenge to its use of Live Facial Recognition technology brought by campaign group Big Brother Watch and an individual who was wrongly identified as a suspect. This result is likely to prompt a greater embrace of these technologies, but the case itself is representative of what one source regarded as a new area of “legal action challenging how people respond to a changing technological world […] there are technologies available to police now which there weren’t before”.

Sources anticipated the potential for High Court challenges surrounding how police forces come to interpret and implement the legislation around protest, as the government seeks to expand police powers and widen the scope of the Public Order Act. A trend towards mass protest actions presents particular difficulties to police forces with limited resources. For one solicitor, “the police will have to come up with a different approach, [as they have] no resources to process all those people. The sheer bulk of some of these actions will be a challenge for practitioners”.

The link between free speech issues and police impartiality has also been under scrutiny. Last summer, the High Court found that Northumbria Police’s participation in Newcastle Pride breached the duty of impartiality on questions of gender. While the force defended its participation under Public Sector Equality Duty, the judicial review determined that impartiality was the duty of precedence. Campaigners have sought to bring similar claims against other forces.

Another interesting case with a civil liberties dimension, this time concerning the Met’s own personnel, came in the form of an unsuccessful High Court challenge to the force’s policy that officers must declare present or previous membership of the Freemasons. Like the Pride challenge above, it highlighted the ongoing potential for legal challenges exploring how the rights of individuals and groups are balanced with the need for broad public trust in the police.

New enhanced vetting procedures in the wake of high-profile serious crimes by serving officers could also be placed in this category. Earlier this year, in Di Maria v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, the Met was successful in appealing a High Court decision that had determined that unproven misconduct allegations could not be used in vetting decisions except in exceptional circumstances. With demand for more police weighed against demand for more stringent vetting, some sources expected this to be an area of ongoing legal activity.