ACPO lead on data communications ACC Gary Beautridge said:

"Law enforcement within the UK and the Home Office have been talking with various communication providers in the United States in relation to lawfully obtaining communications data in order to prevent the loss of life and prevent and detect crime.

"During the recent parliamentary select committee hearings in relation to the Communication Data Bill, it was made clear by Law Enforcement that the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) process failed to meet the need of policing due to the costs and the amount of time some requests could take to be returned to the investigators.

"We are making steps to streamline the process in order to reduce costs and the delays. We hope that the new Communications Data Bill will assist us in this process and provide policing with a workable process that will be of agreement to both Law Enforcement and overseas providers.

"The 25 requests made to Twitter although are a small number, any one of these requests could be critical to saving a life and we therefore need to be able to obtain this data in an acceptable time scale at a reasonable cost to the public."