Home Office will not back down on DNA database

The Home Office has refused to back down in the face of a concerted campaign from Labour MPs to retain the DNA profiles of suspects, who are not subsequently convicted, on the DNA database.

Junior Home Office minister James Brokenshire accused Labour MPs demanding continued retention of the records of being "very casual with people's liberties".

He added: "They seem to assume that simply because someone is arrested for a crime, they are guilty. We take a different view."

He said it would remain possible for the police, in cases where an individual is arrested for a sexual offence such as rape, but not subsequently charged, to apply to a new biometrics commissioner for the retention of the DNA profile for three years.

Brokenshire insisted: "The government's approach is based on putting on the national DNA database more people who are guilty of crimes, rather than those who are innocent. Simply increasing the size of the DNA database does not necessarily result in more detections."

He was responding to questions from Labour MPs putting the case for prolonged retention of the records.

Shadow Labour home affairs spokeswoman Yvette Cooper claimed there was "growing concern" over plans to scrap records.

She said: There are about 5,000 rape cases each year where the police think that they have enough information to pass a case on to the Crown Prosecution Service, but the CPS decides that it cannot charge.

"In those cases, the government's plans mean that DNA will not be held even though rape has a notoriously low charge rate and we know that some people go on to offend again."

Birmingham, Selly Oak Labour MP Steve McCabe warned that the police had said there would be 1,000 fewer cases solved without the records.

Delyn Labour MP David Hanson cited the case of a man with no previous convictions sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment for raping an 84-year-old woman who was caught because his DNA had been taken and retained.

The exchanges followed a warning from Big Brother Watch over the launch of a new Police National Database linking intelligence and criminal records information.

BBW director Daniel Hamilton claimed it would hold information on up to 15 million people, six million of whom had no convictions, and warned it contained information about victims, insisting: "Ordinary members of the public should not have their personal details logged in this way… The risk of this data falling into the hands of criminals is too horrifying to comprehend."