DNA database placed on a statutory footing
Cross-party demands for changes to the Crime and Security Bill ignored
DNA database has been given a statutory footing
The government has used its Commons majority less than a month before the likely date of the general election to push through changes in the law placing the government's DNA database on a statutory footing.
This follows a debate on the Crime and Security Bill, which is currently at the report stage in the Commons.
Crime and Policing Minister David Hanson flatly rejected cross-party demands for a retention period of three years for data from those not subsequently convicted of a crime. Further demands for the data to be held for a longer period (as in Scotland) - where the suspect was arrested for a serious violent or sexual crime - were also denied.
The only government concessions have been to reduce the retention period from 12 years to six and add a new clause to the Crime and Security Bill, which has now completed its passage through the Commons.
The clause provides a procedure through which in exceptional circumstances the "innocent" can "request" the destruction of their data, thereby taking this process out of the hands of the chief constables whose discretion will vary.
The process, which will be upheld by the National DNA Database Strategy Board, is widely expected to be applied to just a handful of those wrongly arrested or who volunteered DNA data to eliminate them from a crime.
During the debate former Tory minister Douglas Hogg said there was "a strong case for a national database including all citizens". However, most of those contributing to the debate deemed the government's reduction of the retention period from 12 to six years to be insufficient.
Tory shadow Home Office minister James Brokenshire said about a million records on the existing database are from those never convicted, cautioned, formally warned or reprimanded, including 100,000 children.
"It is the impact that this has on those who feel they have been criminalised that is so damaging," he added.
Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne contrasted the increase in the size of the database from 2.1 million in 2002 to 5.6 million last year while the number of detected crimes for which a DNA match was available had fallen from 21,000 to 18,000 in the same period.
Earlier yesterday [08.03.10] a report from the cross party Home Affairs Committee accused the government of failing to detail more than a handful of cases where DNA data on file had been pivotal in securing a conviction.
The Tory proposals were defeated by 264 to 185 on a whipped vote.