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UK blames ‘human error’ after some 400,000 criminal records deleted from police database
About 400,000 records were accidentally deleted from Britain’s national police computer after a “human error,” a top government official said Monday.
The data, which includes DNA records and information on criminal suspects, were wiped during a “regular housekeeping process,” said Kit Malthouse, who serves as the country’s minister for crime and policing.
“Clearly this situation is very serious,” he told lawmakers in the House of Commons, noting that “we will know the full extent of the impact of this issue over the next few days.”
Malthouse said about 213,000 offense records and 170,000 arrest records are now missing. Some of those records pertained to ongoing investigations, but he told lawmakers in a statement last week that the loss “related to individuals who were arrested and then released with no further action.”
The Home Office and other government agencies are still working to try to recover the data.
Opposition leaders were furious at the mishap and lashed out at Home Secretary Priti Patel for not attending Monday’s hearing herself.
“Where is the home secretary?” Labour lawmaker Nick Thomas-Symonds said. “The loss of hundreds of thousands of pieces of data — data so important for apprehending suspects and safeguarding vulnerable people — is extraordinary serious. It was the home secretary who needed to show leadership and take control.”
Yvette Cooper, another Labour lawmaker, said it was “very hard to understand how 400,000 records could be deleted from such a crucial system without there being a proper back-up system in place.”
Malthouse said authorities were working “to make sure that any operational impact is obviated or mitigated.”
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