§ Mr. Andrew F. BennettTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department which Government Departments(a) presently have access to the police national computer and (b) will have access to the new police computer.
§ Mr. Peter LloydIn addition to the Home Office, HM Customs and Excise investigation division and the Drivers and Vehicles Licensing Agency have terminals giving them direct access to some of the information on the police national computer.
Consideration is being given to a proposal to allow a number of other Government Departments to have direct access to the criminal names index on the new police national computer. This would enable Departments to undertake their own preliminary inquiries, thus reducing the work load of the National Identification Bureau. In cases where this preliminary inquiry indicates that the subject might have a criminal record, the Department would ask the NIB to undertake a detailed check of the records.
§ Mr. Andrew F. BennettTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether a date has been set for the new police computer (PNC2) to become fully operational; what is its potential full capacity; and approximately how many individual records are likely to be held on the PNC2 at the date when it becomes fully operational.
§ Mr. Peter LloydA firm date has not yet been set for the "cut over" from the present PNC system to PNC2. It will be set only after all the components of the new system have been delivered and fully tested.
As the hon. Member was told in reply to his question on 24 July at column 132, the PNC2 system will be capable 720W of handling 62 million instructions per second, its main memory will be capable of storing 190 million bytes of data and it will have sufficient disk capacity to store 80,000 million bytes of data.
PNC2 is expected to hold records on about 45 million vehicles, 6 million persons and 4 million fingerprints.