Deleting 'innocent' DNA will cost £5m
Batches blamed for multi-million pound bill
Posted in Government, 31st March 2011 14:35 GMT
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Removing innocent people's records from the DNA database will cost almost £5m, the House of Commons was told yesterday.
MP Diana Johnson asked crime prevention minister James Brokenshire how the batch loading system for getting records onto the national database worked.
He explained that DNA samples are first converted into a numerical profile. This profile is then added to a file, along with up to 1,000 other profiles, and this is then loaded onto the National DNA Database.
This means batch files cannot be altered retrospectively.
Removing records connected to innocent people, and the destruction of the physical DNA samples, will cost a one-off charge of £4.8m.
Additionally the government will in future destroy all physical DNA samples within six months.
There's more on DNA deletion costs from Hansard here. ®
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