Last year, my uncle was tragically murdered. The purpose of this post is not to seek sympathy, not least as my cousins Peter and Stephanie are the ones who have really suffered. The crime, committed at my uncle's home in Walsall was perhaps a burglary gone wrong or some kind of mistaken identity and has not yet been solved, and I doubt ever will be. My uncle Les (pictured here in 1962) was a good man who certainly never deserved the fate that befell him.
This post is really about the national DNA database, which I am on as a result of Les's murder. A new report shows that I am one of more than a million entirely innocent people on the database, which also includes 100,000 children.
I am not an instinctive civil libertarian. Indeed, I have a great deal of sympathy with the Home Office argument made in the Independent press report linked to above that the database provides police with 3,500 DNA matches each month in solving crimes.
I do, however, think there should be a national debate about the database, and I cannot recall the current or previous governments having a manifesto commitment to create such a database. The issue has, however, been debated in the fringes of Parliament, particularly effectively by my colleague, Adam Holloway, shortly after our election.
My real issue is this, that this government is using subterfuge to create this national DNA database.
I will use my own case as an example. A few weeks after Les's murder, the West Midlands police came to interview me at the House of Commons. They explained that they were interviewing all the family members to eliminate them from the inquiry. This seemed logical enough, because, as they explained, 80% of murders are committed by family or close friends. They had the courtesy to inform me in advance that they intended to take a DNA sample and a complete set of fingerprints. I imagined that they must have DNA and fingerprints of the assailant(s), and a quick cross-check should swiftly eliminate me from the inquiry, or so I thought. So far, so good.
The interview seemed to me to be unusual, however. The two officers made no attempt to seek any information as to whether I might be the guilty party. They never asked where I was in the days around the 21st February 2007, the likely date of the murder. The main purpose of coming to see me appeared to be to gain a DNA sample, and the prints of all ten fingers, which they duly did.
I asked the officers if I could have back my DNA sample and prints after I was eliminated from the inquiry. They stated in writing that I would have my samples returned after the inquiry was completed, which isn't quite the same thing. Problems started after months went past, and the inquiry wasn't completed. It is still ongoing, and probably will be for ever. The police have now promised to return my samples, but this was now many weeks ago, and I am still waiting.
So that is my story of how I came to be on the national DNA database. Doubtless, there are cases amongst the other four million Britons on the database of people whose connections with crime are even more obscure or peripheral than mine.
A few weeks ago at the Conservative Party awayday, I had the good fortune to sit next to Michael Howard at dinner. The DNA database cropped up in conversation, and I explained my case to him, and I told him my story and my concerns with the national DNA database. As one would expect from a QC and former Home Secretary, he asked me some careful questions, and probed which aspect or aspects of my story particularly concerned me. I told him it wasn't neccessarily the database itself, but the methods seemingly being used to obtain the samples. It just seems to me that the Home Office doesn't want to announce that they intend to create a complete nationwide database by getting a DNA sample from all 60 million Britons, but that this is in fact their intention, which they will achieve by stealth.
Much of the media coverage of these issues describes DNA samples coming from those arrested but not charged, or those found guilty of minor infractions, like traffic offences. What is most disturbing about my case is this: there was never a moment's suspicion that I was guilty of any crime or had even the slightest connection with any offence, other than that the husband of my father's late sister was the victim of a crime committed 200 miles away.
I am still in correspondence with the West Midlands police. I am still waiting for my samples to be returned. Maybe my samples are some of those which have been passed to private companies in the latest example of our government's inability to protect the data of its citizens. Who knows? What I do know is that the taking of my DNA sample has been of no assistance in solving the murder of my uncle Les, which was supposedly the point of the whole exercise in the first place. Meanwhile, a bit of honesty and competence in handling important personal data from this government wouldn't go amiss.