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.