Police chief admits misleading MPs, blaming AI for decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans

It comes ahead of the Home Secretary releasing a statement later today

Chief constable Craig Guildford apologised to MPs for giving them "erroneous" evidence for the decision to prohibit fans of the Israeli team from attending a Europa League match in Birmingham last November.

Police had been accused of misinterpreting the threat posed by the fixture to stop fans of the Israeli club from attending the match.

Guildford had blamed the use of AI for the decision to take actions against Maccabi fans, claiming that he thought the intel had been gathered from a Google search.

He told them: "Within my narrative, which I have compiled over the weekend, the one assertion in relation to West Ham is completely wrong.

"I am told that is a result of some social media scraping that was done, and that is wrong. That was one element in a document that was eight or nine pages long, but we stand by the key tenets in the document."

He was then asked by Paul Kohler MP: "Hold on, so you did an AI search, got something about West Ham and just whacked it into the..."

Guildford replied: "No, not at all. We do a very comprehensive assessment."

He again denied the use of AI last week.

The chief constable said: "There was a definite note that we have got to the bottom of in terms of the West Ham game.

"The summation in the House, it was a question that was asked in the House, was that West Midlands Police may have used AI on this particular occasion. We do not use AI.

"On the West Ham side of things and how we gained that information, in producing the report, one of the officers would usually go to... a system, which football officers use all over the country, that has intelligence reports of previous games.

"They did not find any relevant information within the searches that they made for that. They basically Googled when the last time was. That is how the information came to be."

Chair Karen Bradley asked: "Was it the AI function on Google?"

Guildford replied: "I am being really candid here. I am told that they just did a Google search on that because they could not find it in the normal system."

Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is due make a statement to MPs later today on the matter.