Police National Computer

Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I am slightly surprised by the noble Lord’s question because there has been quite strong feeling in your Lordships’ House, particularly from the Liberal Democrats, that DNA information should be automatically deleted after a certain period of time. The DNA records that were deleted required “no further action”. I totally understand the noble Lord’s point; I saw something about a conviction in Wales that went back years, and it was DNA that convicted that individual. On the holding of DNA, in most cases the data of unconvicted people has to be deleted.

[Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)]

My Lords, this is a serious matter. I was going to ask about alternative sources of data, but such is my disappointment at the attempt by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, to take an unfortunate event caused by human error and seek to score political points, that I feel compelled to remind him of his own party’s policy, as stated on 11 June 2018 by the then shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbott. She said:

“The state has no business keeping records on people who are not criminals.”—[Official Report, Commons, 11/6/18; col. 640.]


I believe that the police should have access to all the data and technology they need to arrest criminals. Does my noble friend agree?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

We have just seen from the previous question that there is a bit of contradiction in some of the points raised by noble Lords on the Opposition Benches. Personally, I would allow my data to be kept for as long as anybody wanted for the purposes for which it might be used. Those pleas from the Opposition Benches have certainly been quite contradictory over the years.