Police National Computer

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Facial images have to be manually removed from the database, whereas the DNA database allows for automatic deletion. That is the answer.

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

This is an embarrassment and, sadly, not the first. My noble friend must be as frustrated as anyone about this. Does this not suggest some impenetrable and deep-rooted shortcomings in the Home Office structures, as the noble Lord, Lord Reid of Cardowan, pointed out so forcefully 15 years ago? If, after all these years, with attention from all sides, we have still not been able to make the Home Office fit for purpose, do we not need to stop kidding ourselves that our Civil Service structure is a Rolls-Royce operation that just needs a fine tune? Without entering into a blame game, do we not need to ask the really difficult questions about why it keeps breaking down—and, in the interests of Ministers, civil servants and, not least of all, the public, do more to find an updated model that works?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, we need to get to the heart of what happened here, which was human error in the coding of a programme. As I said earlier, all the best IT in the world cannot prevent human error—it will happen. I am not in any way undermining the seriousness of what happened, but it was indeed human error.