§ 28. Sir J. Langford-Holtasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how long it takes the Metropolitan Police Criminal Records Office to search a single fingerprint against the main collection of prints.
§ Mr. TaverneThe search time depends on whether it is known from which finger the print came and how common is the pattern, and varies too much for it to be practicable to make an estimate.
§ Sir J. Langford-HoltIn view of the Home Secretary's efforts to try to give the police the weapons with which to fight crime, would he not agree that the systems now practised in other parts of the world, using computers, would be one of the prime weapons in his armoury? How much longer are we to have to wait for this? I know that inquiries are going on, but how long will he have to wait before inquiries turn into action?
§ Mr. TaverneI can assure the hon. Member that in this area we are as advanced as anyone. Research is being sponsored to devise a means of automatically scanning a single fingerprint with a view to searching it through a large collection. This is a problem which no country in the world has yet solved.