The Weekly Round Up: Police Reform, Prison Education Cuts, Unproven Allegations in Met Police Vetting, and Summary Judgment against Saudi Arabia in the High Court
2 February 2026
In the News
Police Reform Plans announced by Home Secretary
On Monday, the Home Secretary published a white paper outlining her proposals for reforming the police. The proposed changes include the establishment of a National Police Service to oversee policing of organised crime, counter-terrorism and trafficking across England and Wales. This body will also appoint a Senior National Coordinator for public order policing, who will manage police responses to large scale national protests, such as the riots following the Southport stabbings in July 2024.
The Home Secretary also seeks to invest in new policing technologies, establishing a National Centre for AI policing and expanding the use of Live Facial Recognition vans to locate offenders. Meanwhile, on Tuesday and Wednesday this week, the High Court heard a judicial review challenge to the Met Police’s September 2024 Live Facial Recognition policy, on the basis that it violated Articles 8, 10 and 11 ECHR (R (Thompson and Carlo) v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis).
Finally, the white paper also suggests that the policing of non crime hate incidents is to be overhauled, with the aim of ‘reducing unnecessary recording burdens’.
Government confirms 20-25% cuts to prison education delivery hours
In November 2025, the Justice Committee released a report expressing its alarm regarding reports of cuts of up to 50% to prison education budgets. It recommended that the Government clarify the scale of, and rationale for, planned cuts to prison education budgets, and set out how it plans to ensure core education provision continues.
The government’s response was published this week, stating that whilst the budget had increased in recent years, these increases had been outpaced by rising delivery costs. As such, the government has implemented a national reduction of prison education delivery hours of around 20-25%, with some prisons experiencing more significant reductions.
In the Courts
Challenge against Met Police Vetting Code dismissed
The Court of Appeal has found that police decision-makers are entitled to consider unproven allegations of criminal behaviour when deciding to withdraw vetting status from police officers. The case is R (Di Maria) v Commission of Police for the Metropolis [2026] EWCA Civ 28.
The challenge was brought by a police officer in the Metropolitan Police Service. Between 2007 and 2022, three allegations of rape were made against him by two different complainants ([6]). None of these resulted in criminal convictions or findings of misconduct, however in 2023, his vetting status was withdrawn on account of these allegations ([7]). In the court below, Lang J ordered that the decision to withdraw the respondent’s vetting status should be quashed, inter alia, on the basis that the vetting process failed to comply with Article 6 ECHR, and that withdrawal of vetting was not a lawful basis for dismissal ([33]).
The Appellant, the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, did not contest the quashing order. Instead, the appeal concerned the court below’s finding that where a police officer was investigated, and the relevant allegations were not proved, a subsequent vetting review may not find there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the same conduct occurred, save in exceptional circumstances ([59]). The Court exercised its discretion to allow this appeal: it was in the public interest that this issue be resolved, given public concerns about sexual harassment and abuse in the police force ([56]).
The Court found that, as the vetting code only required ‘reasonable grounds for suspicion’, it did not require that an event occurred on the balance of probabilities ([75]). As such, decision-makers could take into account unproven allegations during vetting. In making its finding, the Court applied the approach of the Supreme Court in R (Pearce) v Parole Board [2023] UKSC 13: the decision-maker is entitled to ‘take into account, alongside the facts which have been so established, the possibility that allegations, which have not been so established, may be true’ ([83]). Although R (Pearce) concerned parole rather than vetting, this approach applied because both cases involved assessing the risk of future behaviour ([86] and [88]).
Summary Judgement against Saudi Arabia in spyware case
In Al-Masarir v Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [2026] EWHC 119 (KB), the High Court found that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (“the KSA”) had no reasonable prospect of success of defending claims of, inter alia, misuse of private information and assault.
The Claimant is a Saudi human rights activist and political commentator who has lived in Britain since 2003. His claims arose from two incidents in 2018, which he alleged were orchestrated by the KSA or its agents: first, the hacking of two of his mobile phones using malicious spyware; and second, an assault on him in London.
When the litigation was initially commenced in 2019, the KSA submitted it was immune to this claim under the UK State Immunity Act 1978 (“the SIA”). This challenge failed in the High Court, where Julian Knowles J held that the s.5 SIA exception to state immunity was not limited to purely private claims, and did not require all the relevant acts or omissions to take place in the UK. Following this, the High Court ordered the KSA to provide security for costs, and the KSA stopped participating in the litigation ([8]-[9]). The KSA remained unrepresented at the hearing for this application ([12]).
Central to Saini J’s reasoning was the testimony of Dr. Marczak, whose research focuses on the use of spyware by state bodies. Dr. Marczak found that text messages received by the Claimant had characteristics linking them to a proxy server he attributed to the KSA ([47] and [50]). Saini J also accepted that the KSA has a ‘well-documented history of use of various forms of spyware’ and had purchased the relevant spyware in 2017 ([60]). With regard to the assault, Saini J affirmed Julian Knowles J’s finding, that on the balance of probabilities the KSA was responsible for the attack ([62]). Moreover, the KSA had failed to serve any evidence in response to this application: it was therefore unlikely that additional evidence to support a defence would be available at trial ([62]).
