Boris Johnson admits he ‘doesn’t know’ the extent of damage from loss of police files
Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has admitted the government simply “does not know” what the impact of the loss of hundreds of thousands of police files might have on the fight against crime and the administration of justice.
It was revealed on Tuesday (January 19) that just over 400,000 files held on the Police National Computer (PNC) had been lost due to a coding error.
The PNC is used in police investigations and provides real-time checks on wanted people, vehicles and crimes in general.
The lost records include 213,000 offence records, 175,000 arrest records and 15,000 person records.
In addition, a total of 26,000 DNA records relating to 21,710 people are believed to have been deleted, as well as 30,000 fingerprint records and 600 subject records.
According to the Home Office, the faulty script was introduced into the PNC system last November but it did not run until earlier this month when the coding error was finally discovered.
Addressing the House of Commons during Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday (January 20), Johnson made the following statement: “The Home Office is actively working to assess the damage and... they believe that they will be able to rectify the results of this complex incident and they hope very much that they'll be able to restore the data in question."
But when asked by the opposition Labor Party leader, Keir Starmer, how many “convicted criminals” might have had their records wrongly deleted, the PM conceded: “We don’t know how many cases might be frustrated as a result of what has happened”
"Of course it is outrageous that any data should have been lost", the PM added for good measure.
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