THE family of one of the three girls killed in the Southport terror attack last year criticised new police guidance recommending that forces disclose suspects’ ethnicity and nationality.

The interim guidance, issued by the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing, follows pressure on police to increase transparency and comes in the wake of riots triggered by disinformation after the Southport murders.

Michael Weston King, grandfather of Bebe King — who was killed alongside Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar by Axel Rudakubana — said the ethnicity of serious crime suspects is “completely irrelevant.”

“Mental health issues, and the propensity to commit crime, happens in any ethnicity, nationality or race,” Mr Weston King told the Guardian.

“The boy who took Bebe had been failed by various organisations who were aware of his behaviour, and by the previous government’s lack of investment in Prevent.”

Following the Southport attack, posts spread online falsely claiming the suspect was a 17-year-old asylum-seeker who had come to the country by boat last year.

Police confirmed on Wednesday that disclosing a suspect’s race and immigration status will now form part of official guidance.