U-Turns in the Government's DNA

However, Home Office minister James Brokenshire admitted to MPs on a committee which is considering the legislation that police forces will retain innocent profiles.

Mr Brokenshire said he had won agreement from the information watchdog that the DNA profiles could be retained by forensic science laboratories.

This would mean that the profiles would “be considered to have been deleted (even though the DNA profile record, minus the identification information, will still exist)”.

However Mr Brokenshire admitted that it would be still be possible to identify the anonymised profiles.

Emphasis added and Sir Humphrey would be proud. A U-turn in practice then if not quite, were one to take a finely Jesuitical approach to this, in theory.

Those Conservatives who think Nick Clegg is exercising undue influence on the Tory leadership might a) review their own attitude towards civil liberties and b) reflect that whatever its ambitions this government is not making very much progress on this part of its so-called agenda. Nor should we expect it to do so in the future, not now that it has been decided, apparently, that the government is insufficiently tough on crime.

Of course, in this instance Scotland is happily, if also unusually, a more liberal place than England. This is something but should also depress our southern friends and neighbours.

[Thanks to SM]