Soham case leads to police data review
George Jones, Political Editor
Daily Telegraph
(18/02/2004)

Police forces are to receive new guidelines on the storage and use of information on suspects after the failure to pass on details of sex allegations against Ian Huntley, who murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

The Home Office announced yesterday that it was setting up a working group of Whitehall officials and police chiefs to review the police code of practice on data protection.

Ministers want to set up a national database of allegations and intelligence on reported crimes to complement the police national computer, which has details of convictions and cautions.

Huntley got a job as a school caretaker in Soham, Cambs, despite facing previous accusations of rape and indecent assault in the Grimsby area.

David Westwood, the Chief Constable of Humberside, said his force believed that the Data Protection Act prevented officers from keeping details of a string of sex allegations against Huntley.

They included four allegations of rape and one of indecent assault on an 11-year-old girl. Senior Humberside officers said they had adopted a policy of "weeding" out or deleting Huntley's records because they thought that they were required to do so by the Act, a misunderstanding described by one MP as "catastrophic".

In a memorandum to the inquiry headed by Sir Michael Bichard into the way police intelligence was handled, the Home Office said: "The Huntley case has suggested the need for additional, and clearer, guidance to forces on the implications of the Data Protection Act on the retention and use of criminal conviction and local intelligence information."

Hazel Blears, Home Office minister, said the Act's requirements had to be "crystal clear". She added: "I was concerned there appeared to be a lack of clarity around the interpretation of its provisions.

"We need to make sure there is no room for misinterpretation because, if this information slips through the net, then it can have disastrous results."

Humberside Police welcomed the new guidelines being drawn up.

Mark Oaten, the Lib-Dem home affairs spokesman, said the new guidelines were an acknowledgement that things went badly wrong in the Huntley case. The critical issue was how much information should be kept and by whom.

"A national database would avoid different interpretations by local forces but would have to balance the requirement to keep some data on unproven allegations and the need to make judgments on which allegations are passed on to potential employers," he said.

Further concerns were raised about the confusing legislation following the deaths of elderly couple George and Gertrude Bates. They were found dead in their home weeks after their gas supply was cut off, leaving them without heating, for non-payment of a bill.

British Gas claimed that the Act prohibited them from passing information on the desperate situation to social services.

The Act came into force in March 2000 to give individuals greater rights to access information kept about them. It was designed to prevent personal details from being released to third parties without consent and to regulate information holders such as banks, local councils and hospitals.