An interesting exchange took place yesterday in the House of Lords, when Lord West of Spithead, a Junior Minister in the Home Office and Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, was challenged by Conservative Peer Lord Naseby on the DNA database.
Question asked By Lord Naseby:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many innocent people are on the police national DNA database; and when they will be removed.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord West of Spithead):
My Lords, as at 24 April 2009 there were some 4.5 million persons on the national DNA database, of whom some 986,000 had no current conviction or caution record held on the police national computer. This included those convicted but whose police national computer record has been deleted, cases where proceedings are ongoing and those with no convictions.
We are currently considering DNA retention policy in our response to the European Court judgment.
The full transcript can be read here courtesy of Hansard.
Needless to say, the Under-Secretary of State justifies the continued presence of the DNA of nearly one million innocent people on the database, by saying that it both aids in solving crimes and can be used to prove innocence when the wrong person is being accused - failing to note the inherent big brother state implications.
However the real star of the show was the titanic Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, who asked the following question at the end of the exchange:
My Lords, in December the European Court of Human Rights declared that the retention of innocent people’s profiles was illegal. It is outside the law now to do that. Since then 300,000 profiles have been added to the list. How many of those people are innocent and how many of them have been added since July? We are running at a rate of roughly 40,000 a month. Does the Minister not accept that it is now time to change the system and that the time for consultation should come to an end?
To which the Junior Minister hastily replies:
My Lords, the judgment in fact said that it was wrong for us to keep them indefinitely. It did not say that it was wrong to take them. It is an issue of timing and how long these should be held for. I cannot give details of the exact numbers but I shall get back in writing on that.
An artful dodge if ever there was one...
by Dylan Sharpe
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