Opposition demands answers in new data row

|PIC1|Opposition parties homed in on the latest row over government handling of sensitive data on Wednesday, demanding to know why the DNA details of 2,000 foreign crime suspects went unchecked for more than a year.

The profiles of missing suspects linked to serious crimes including rape and murder in the Netherlands had been sent by Dutch police in January 2007 to check against Britain's national DNA database.

But the data was only checked two weeks ago, when it was found 15 suspects had been in the UK and 11 had committed crimes in the past 12 months, the BBC reported.

The Conservatives have called for the government to make a statement in the Commons while the Liberal Democrats said the incident was "another hammer blow to public confidence" in the government's handling of information.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said in a statement: "It is difficult to know what sort of data they will handle with any security whatsoever when they manage to lose critical information on foreign murderers and rapists potentially at large in this country."

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the government talks tough and invests a lot of money and hope in databases but "it has not got the basic human organisation right".

"At the end of the day the political responsibility lies with the Home Office," he told BCC radio.

"But I think there is a more systematic political failure of this government to get to grips with its database culture which it has created.

Media reports said the discs had remained in a drawer of a junior civil servant who was on long-term sick leave.

Labour MP Keith Vaz told BBC radio it raised the issue of administrative errors and called for better checks and balances.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), to whom the discs had been sent, said in a statement: "This is not a data security issue as this information was always in a secure building and did not leave the possession of the CPS."

The Home Office declined to comment, saying it was a CPS matter.

The government's handling of personal data has come under attack after a spate of recent scandals.

In December, nine NHS trusts lost 168,000 patient records, while a month before, the details of 25 million child benefit claimants went missing. Information on three million learner drivers also disappeared during that time.