HC Deb 20 February 1987 vol 110 cc1233-40

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lightbown.]

2.38 pm
Mr. Harry Cohen (Leyton)

The debate on the Access to Personal Files Bill and my Adjournment debate on the weeding of police computer records means that Friday 20 February 1987 will go down in parliamentary history as the only sitting in the lifetime of this Government when most of the business on the Floor of the House has dealt with the promotion of civil liberties. There have been plenty of debates on the Government's abuse of civil liberties, but today—not surprisingly—Back Benchers, not the Government, have raised this matter.

Mr. Jeremy Hanley (Richmond and Barnes)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Cohen

No; my time is short.

Why do police records need to be weeded? First, the public need to be reassured that police records are not kept for too long and that they are being used properly. In an increasing number of cases that is not happening. Too many records are held at the moment. The records of one in eight of the adult population are held on the police national computer and they are operational for far too long.

There is also the widespread risk of such data being used for all sorts of different purposes that have more to do with big brother than with effective policing. The Government's intention to replace the police national computer and the Government data network will increase that risk.

The safeguards are insufficient. The Data Protection Act 1984 does not help. In fact, the data protection registrar is prohibited by the Act from serving notice on the police regarding a wide range of data. I intend to seek to introduce a Data Protection (Amendment) Bill to increase the safeguards for the public. The need for the weeding of police computer records is accepted by the Home Office, but the problem is that it is not taking it seriously.

As for the number of police records, 5,119,354 names were on the criminal names index of the police national computer last year. That information was given to me in the Official Report on 9 July 1986. That figure represents one in 10 of the population as a whole — perhaps as much as one in eight of the adult population.

As further records on cautions, bind-overs and juvenile records—not to mention criminal intelligence records—are held on local police force computer systems, it is reasonable to suppose that the police have records on one in five of the population or, to put it another way, on one member of each family in the United Kingdom.

The written answer that I received on 14 March 1986 from the Minister shows that the records of the police national computer are being weeded out. By 19 November 1986 the weeding out had resulted in 23,059 records being deleted. However, the written answer also showed that the number of records had increased by approximately 50,000 during the period in which weeding out took place. Thus, despite the weeding out of the index, it is still growing. That says a great deal about the rapidly rising crime rate under this Government. Another inevitable conclusion is that a feeble weeding policy is being pursued.

In another written answer, on 1 December 1986, the Minister told me that the Metropolitan police had 16 people weeding records as a significant part of their duties. All I can say is that the non-significant part of their duties must be sleeping. It seems that 16 officers have weeded out 23,000 records in eight months. Put another way. one officer has weeded out fewer than seven records per day—less than one record per hour. Perhaps the Minister will arrange for the Audit Commission to look into the efficiency of the Metropolitan police. With a little effort, it might increase to eight records per day. In addition, there is no indication of whether the weeding policy extends to the local police force computer systems. I bet that it does not. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that point.

How many times are these records used? The number of accesses to the criminal names index alone on the police national computer is 8.6 million per annum. The figure for the vehicle data index on the police national computer is 25 million accesses. Furthermore, many constabularies have computer equipment whose design is meant to increase the availability of criminal information—that is, criminal records. Most of the constabularies are connected to the police national computer by network and this increases the utilisation of such records. Given this volume and scope of use—nearly 33 million accesses on the police national computer alone—it is reasonable to conclude that every person in the country may expect to be checked every year on a police computer. I refer to recent abuses of PNC data, especially for illegal purposes. Cases are proceeding about that at the moment. The possibility of that abuse is extended by increasing the data kept, and its availability.

What are the prospects for the future? The PNC is 10 years old and due to be replaced soon. If technological improvements are taken into account, there will be at least a tenfold increase in processing power and data storage capability. In fact the consultants PACTEL, who assisted the Greater Manchester police force with its computer, reported that the use of criminal records might increase tenfold during the life of the system". In addition, the report said that more detailed and still formal information on the force criminal records office". will be given to ordinary police officers. Therefore, technological change will make more data available and it will be used more often.

For the PNC alone, ignoring any other use of police data, we can estimate that a tenfold increase would mean 86 million inquiries about people on the PNC, and 250 million vehicle checks per annum. On that basis, the average citizen, who now expects to be checked against police records every year, could expect that delightful prospect every five weeks. There will be added implications as a result of the widespread use of the criminal records index, which provides extra information and complements the criminal names index and, in future, details of bind-overs, juvenile records and cautions, which will be either centrally held on the new PNC, or accessible by its network from local police force computers.

My estimate is that the number of adults on whom data is already held on police computers—one in five of the population—may well become as many as one in two. That is the path that the Government are travelling Inevitably, that will meet with a negative public response. Those figures present a shocking vista and clearly demonstrate the need for proper controls on police data.

What can be done and why are records weeded? The Government will not countenance the control and reassurance that would be possible if elected members of the community were partly responsible for the police force and were a focus for complaints. They have even ignored the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, which lays down the criteria for when an individual's criminal record can be forgotten, and the crime expunged from society's memory. Under this Act the criminal record will not be expunged for years. A fine, for example, is not expunged for five years and a minor prison sentence is not expunged for seven. Instead the Government have set up criteria by which the police can keep records for at least 20 years, well beyond the period stated in the 1974 Act. The Government should recognise that people who have old, minor offences, and who try to start afresh should get better treatment.

The Minister knows that I am not asking the police to erase all their records. They have a statutory duty to keep records on criminals, and that is not in dispute. It is valuable, and, wherever possible, the process should be automated. However, the bureaucratic necessity of keeping those records for statutory purposes is completely different from allowing the myriad use of them for all policing purposes for the next 20 years. If data are automatically used for all policing purposes however irrelevant it might be, cases will arise that are similar to the complaint that I passed on to the Home Office. A man was stopped by the police, who were able to discover that he had stolen a bottle of milk 22 years earlier when he was a teenager. That record should not have been available to the police officers when they stopped him in his car. Perhaps in the future, at the whim of a Minister, such information may be made available to the DHSS or to another Government department via the Government data network.

A balance must be achieved. It is obvious that records which say "Mr. X attacks police officers" should always be available to police officers performing their duty. However, a record that says "Mr. Y stole milk" should be expunged quickly. At the moment, the only weeding out criteria is the 20-year period. My complainant, who is now 40 years old, at last qualifies to have his record removed, at least if the Metropolitan police staff get their fingers out.

Failure to implement efficient weeding out leads to problems of policing the streets. Suppose that someone is stopped by the police and the officer discovers that that person was arrested for a shoplifting offence eight years ago. His record would be spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, but not under the 20-year rule for weeding. The availability of this record could prejudice how the police officer deals with the incident. The person's bag might be searched, or some comment made to remind the person of his criminal past.

The mathematics of stops and searches make that argument compelling. The report of the Policy Studies Institute on the Metropolitan police in 1983 showed that only one in 12 stops resulted in an arrest. In future, a stop may be co-ordinated with a criminal records check for information. The increased availability of criminal information, which is held on one in five of the population, will mean that, of the 11 people stopped randomly and who would not normally be arrested, two will have a record which will be given to the police officer on the street. Those two people will be harassed and will feel alienated because their past will prejudge them, and the likelihood of their being arrested will increase.

Unless the system is modified or changed drastically, it will not only abuse individual civil liberties but will promote erroneous policing, based on the assumption that once a criminal, always a criminal, or once on police records, always of interest to the police. That is wrong for policing and wrong for civil liberties.

There is a balance between the needs of the police and the protection and reassurance of the public. The Government must justify the massive police record-gathering capability that they have created, but as a small step in countering his trend towards a police state, the Government should at least reflect on the need for more sophisticated criteria in the choice of records that should be operationally active and the circumstances in which they should be available to ordinary police officers on the street.

2.51 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hogg)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) on raising this important matter so clearly. But I hope that by the time that I have finished he will think that some of his anxieties are less than well-founded. I hope that he will forgive me if I say to him, through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. that he has exaggerated some of the problems and that he has understated or failed to state at all the number of safeguards that exist.

Before I deal with the hon. Gentleman's point, it might be helpful if I outlined briefly the sort of information about individuals and their property which is held on computer systems by the police nationally and locally. Then I shall say something about the safeguards on the use of that information.

I shall deal first with the information held on the police national computer. Since 1974, the police national computer has provided police forces in England, Scotland and Wales with immediate access, day and night, through an extensive communications system, to information of national and local significance. The computer contains information on a range of topics, such as details of people convicted of criminal offences and, in some cases, a list of their convictions. It holds records of the registered keepers of motor vehicles and a comprehensive list of stolen vehicles. It holds information on the fingerprints of criminals. It holds details of people wanted by the police or who are missing from home in suspicious circumstances. This is of special value to the police when they are searching for children abducted from their homes. As the hon. Gentleman said, the police service relies heavily on the information held on the police national computer. The police access it about 30 million times a year, or about 80,000 times a day.

In addition, there are force computer systems. Police forces make extensive use of local computer systems, and many have introduced crime reporting systems which hold information about crimes committed in a local force area. Information held on those systems includes details of the victims of a crime and, in the case of theft, details of stolen property. Such information is useful in enabling the police to return recovered stolen property to its rightful owner. Computerised criminal information systems have also been introduced by some forces. They contain additional information about local criminals whose names appear on the police national computer, for example, a complete list of convictions. They may also contain information about people convicted of offences not sufficiently serious to warrant inclusion on the national criminal names index on the police national computer, or who have been cautioned. The police need to have access to this information should an individual re-offend.

In addition, although this was not mentioned by the hon. Member, I must mention the use of the HOLMES computer. Perhaps the major advance of the use of computers by the police in recent years has been the introduction of HOLMES — the Home Office large major enquiry system. This is a standard computer system developed by the Home Office scientific research and development branch which is being acquired by forces. It allows full details of witnesses' statements in a major inquiry to be held on computer, and accessed and cross-referenced quickly and efficiently.

The senior investigation officer can know instantly what actions are outstanding in the inquiry and with this can deploy his officers in the most effective manner. Investigating officers can follow up leads and make comparisons between witnesses' statements which would have been impossible under a manual system. HOLMES is a powerful tool which has greatly enhanced the police service's capability for investigating major incidents.

The Government fully recognise that the use of new technology in police work requires safeguards. We recognise that, as more and more police information is held on computer, the public expect safeguards which ensure that only relevant information is held by the police; that the information is used properly; and that it is not disclosed to unauthorised people. Effective safeguards exist. They are three in number. These are the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1984, the code of practice for the protection of personal data on the police national computer and the weeding criteria for police records drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers. I should like to describe how each of these safeguards work in this context.

The Data Protection Act 1984 applies to police computer systems. All such systems are registered under the Act and the police must conform to the eight data protection principles. These require, for instance, that personal data held for any purpose shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to that purpose; that personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date; and that personal data shall not be kept for longer than is necessary. The data protection registrar has the power to investigate if he believes that the police are failing to comply with data protection principles.

As from 11 November this year, individuals will have the right to demand access to any data held about them on police computer systems and, where appropriate, to have such data corrected or erased. The exceptions to this right are limited and clearly defined. First, access may be withheld where my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary determines that national security is involved. In such cases he may issue a certificate of exemption from the provisions of the Act. Secondly, access may be withheld by the police if personal data are held specifically for the prevention or detection of crime, or the apprehension or prosecution of offenders, and when, in the opinion of the police, granting access would be likely to prejudice these matters. The data protection registrar is responsible for monitoring claims for exemptions by the police. Individuals may make a complaint to the registrar, and the registrar has the power to look into it.

There is a second area of safeguard. As I have mentioned, there is a code of practice for the protection of personal data held on the police national computer. That was published in 1982 and a copy is available in the Library. It may well be that the hon. Member for Leyton has had an opportunity to read it. That code sets out the nature and purpose of the data which may be held on each of the applications on the police national computer. It instructs forces as to who is responsible for adding data to the application and on those circumstances when data may be removed. For example, it specifies that the index of criminal names is to comprise an index to criminal records held by the national identification bureau of persons convicted of recordable offences. Broadly speaking, those are offences which can lead to imprisonment. The index of criminal names is also to include particulars of accused persons awaiting trial, to ensure that other alleged offences are correctly attributed.

The code of practice is being revised by a working party of the Association of Chief Police Officers in the light of the Data Protection Act 1984, and its scope is being widened to cover all police computer systems. That work is being undertaken in consultation with the data protection registrar and it is well advanced. I expect that the revised code of practice will be ready later this year and a copy will be placed in the Library. Therefore, there are two major safeguards. First, the Act and, secondly, the code of practice to which I have referred.

The third safeguard is the weeding out criteria on which, understandably, the hon. Gentleman concentrated in some detail. The revised code of practice will incorporate that third safeguard. Revised criteria have been prepared by the Association of Chief Police Officers. Those for recordable offences were announced by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on 14 March 1986. Those criteria guide chief officers of police as to how long information should be kept. They apply to information held both on computers and manually.

There are different criteria for different types of offence. I will deal first with the criteria for recordable offences—those offences which can lead to a sentence of imprisonment. The criteria for those offences provide that records will normally be weeded out, where offenders have not been prosecuted for an offence of this kind for 20 years since their last conviction, whatever the number of convictions before that. There are exceptions to this 20-year rule, where retaining information on offenders seems justifiable, for example to help in the investigation of major crime. Records are not, therefore, deleted if they include evidence of mental illness; indecency; offences of homicide; and custodial sentences of more than six months. I must stress that records which are kept in this way are, of course, confidential like other police records, and access to them is limited in the same way.

The hon. Gentleman has concentrated, understandably, on the question of civil liberties. It is not easy to strike a balance between the length of time for which the police should hold information about an offender, to help them in the prevention and detection of crime, and the important need to protect the rights of individuals who may have offended in the past, but who have become law-abiding members of society. There is inevitably a tension between those two purposes. However, the police have concluded, on the basis of their operational experience, that they need to keep a record of an individual for 20 years after his or her last conviction for a recordable offence. They consider that many offenders may well commit further offences during that 20-year period, particularly if the first offence was committed early in life, and that that information needs to be readily available to them—I stress, available to the police, not anybody else—during the whole of that time. But the revised criteria recognised public concern that an individual should not be prejudiced by youthful misdemeanour. Under the previous criteria, no records of anyone under 40 were weeded, irrespective of the length of time since that offender had been convicted. Now, the criteria provide that the record of an offender is normally to be removed after 20 years, irrespective of his or her age. This is an important step forward that I feel sure the hon. Gentleman will wish to acknowledge.

Mr. Cohen

Will the Minister acknowledge that we are talking about small-scale offences and that the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 criteria could apply? Does he accept that these offences could be weeded out after a shorter time instead of being held for the arbitrary 20-year period?

Mr. Hogg

I would make three points in reply to the hon. Gentleman's question. First — I make no bones about this — I am not particularly friendly to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. The Act was placed on the statute book at a time when we were applying rather different principles. Personally, I would not wish to enact such a measure again. Having had the opportunity to reconsider it, I think that it was a mistake. Secondly, minor offences are non-recordable offences, to which different criteria will apply. Thirdly, we must set down principles. There may be occasions when such a long period is not justified, but we must apply a principle. The one that we are applying seems to make a great degree of sense.

What is the approach to lesser offences — in other words, non-recordable offences — and, for example, occasions when an individual has been cautioned and has not subsequently reoffended? Normally these offences would be weeded out after three years, which is the sort of period that I think the hon. Gentleman would support. Information relating to someone convicted of only a non-recordable offence should normally be weeded out after 10 years if he or she has no further conviction. When there is a caution and no subsequent offence the weeding out process will take place after three years. When there is a conviction for a non-recordable offence, the weeding out process will take place after 10 years, assuming that there is no further conviction. We are seeking to strike a balance. I do not expect the hon. Gentleman will agree with me entirely——

Mr. Cohen

indicated assent.

Mr. Hogg

The hon. Gentleman signifies by nodding that he does not. I hope that he will accept, however, that we are trying to pursue a balanced approach.

The Government are committed to giving the police the technology and back-up that they need to fight crime, and undoubtedly computers and computer systems make an important contribution to that. The Government believe that it is essential that safeguards should be built into the system to protect human rights. There is always a necessary and proper tension between the two objectives, but I believe, I hope the House believes, and I hope that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, believe, that we have reconciled the two competing objectives and that the balance is about right.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes past Three o'clock.