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See other news storiesHome Secretary makes foreign convictions statement
10 January 2007
Home Secretary John Reid made a statement to Parliament Wednesday about how foreign convictions are recorded in the UK.
After holding urgent meetings Wednesday morning about reports that some records of crimes committed abroad by British residents were not added to the police database, Dr Reid told MPs that the problem was an old one that police have been working on for some time.
The background
Until 2006, he explained, all of Europe struggled with an archaic system for sharing information about crimes committed by people outside their home country. Information sharing was patchy and unclear (sometimes nothing more than a name was provided), and it was difficult for UK officials to identify precisely which British citizen was really involved.
In 2006 a new system was put into place, ensuring that information about crimes committed abroad is now more clear and comprehensive. But the government was left with a backlog of thousands of cases in which the identity of the criminal had to be verified.
'It was decided by my predecessor, in my view completely correctly, in March 2006 that the central authority in this country would be the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). I think I'm correct in saying that we were among the first in the European Union to appoint such an authority for this purpose,' Dr Reid said.
The backlog of names was passed to ACPO, and by May 2006 an ACPO team was sorting through the cases and working to identify the offenders.
'Since May, ACPO have sifted through all the approximately 27,500 notifications, and carried out a priority risk assessment on all of those. This process identified the 540 most serious offenders,' he said
A complex process
Taking those 540 serious cases first, police then tried to fully identify the offenders involved, to verify if they had already been added to police records because of Interpol notifications, and put the names of those who were fully identified on the police national computer database.
So far, 260 of those cases have been added to the police database, the Home Secretary said.
'The remaining 280 cannot be entered on the police national computer and are the subject of enquiries to the notifying countries to get the information needed to identify the offender,' he said.
Because these cases go back many years, Dr Reid said, 'These 280 are not necessarily notifications from May of last year, or even since this government came in.'
The right system is in place
Saying that he regarded protecting the public as his highest priority, Dr Reid said, he believed 'the system now operating puts responsibility in the right place', and he thanked the Association of Chief Police Officers for its help with this situation.
'I have met today with Ministers and my officials, the president of ACPO and the chief executive of the Criminal Records Bureau. I've asked ACPO for an assurance that every one of the most serious offenders that they've identified, and on whom there is sufficient information, has now been entered into the Police National Computer, and I've been given that assurance,' Dr Reid said.
Actions taken
In order to ensure that the remaining offenders are identified and properly entered into the system, and to ensure that the situation did not happen again, Dr Reid told MPs that he's asked the permanent secretary in the Home Office to set up an enquiry to:
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determine the precise chronology of events in this case
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study the procedures that were in place
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identify whether appropriate action was taken
He's asked that a report should be made within six weeks.
He's also asked all of the agencies involved to ensure that all appropriate public protection steps were taken. In particular he's asked:
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the Criminal Records Bureau to make sure all the appropriate information has been provided to employers
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police to ensure that all sex offenders identified as part of this process are subject to appropriate monitoring
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police and the Criminal Records Bureau will speed up their processing of the backlog of less serious offenders. They'd been expecting to process all of them within 12 months, and they've now been asked to do so in three months
Finally, he said, 'As I hope is now clear to the House, this is a problem that was some years in the making. By May 2006, a better system had been established and was operational. I take full responsibility now for ensuring that this new system operates effectively to protect the public, and that the lessons of past failings are properly learned.'
