DNA: Databases

Home Department written question – answered at on 15 July 2014.

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Photo of David Ruffley David Ruffley Conservative, Bury St Edmunds

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many requests for information held on the National DNA Database were received by her Department from other countries in each of the last five years. [Official Report, 1 September 2014, Vol. 585, c. 7-10MC.]

Photo of Karen Bradley Karen Bradley The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department

The first category relates to searches carried out against the National DNA Database (NDNAD) of DNA profiles from outstanding serious crimes or for the identification of an unknown deceased person believed to be a UK national. The following figures are for requested searches undertaken on the basis of a direct request from the National Crime Agency (NCA) formerly Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), with the report as to the outcome of each profile search being issued directly to the United Kingdom National Central Bureau for Interpol (UK NCB).

  Number of searched profile responses provided to NCA/SOCA1,2,3
2009-104 5377
2010-11 548
2011-12 469
2012-13 443
2013-14 4,094
1 The data have been extracted from logs produced by NDNAD (validated as the only source of this information) by the application of the specified criteria (requests directly received from NCA/SOCA). The data were extracted by the manual filtering of Excel Spreadsheets. 2 The UK NCB is not currently able to provide data on the number of requests received from other countries so these data relate solely to information supplied by the National DNA Database Delivery Unit (NDU). 3 The data were extracted on 17 June. 4 Data are not available for the period October 2009 to January 2010. 5 These figures have been verified on a 1:1 comparison basis.

The second category includes requests for the DNA profile held for a subject on the NDNAD, where fingerprints have been provided to the country that the individual currently resides in. Again this is information provided to NCA/ SOCA.

  Number of requests for subject profiles release to NCA/SOCA1,2,3
2009-10 1,384
2010-11 85
2011-12 19
2012-13 14
2013-14 3
1 The data have been extracted from logs produced by NDNAD (validated as the only source of this information) by the application of the specified criteria (requests directly received from NCA/SOCA). The data were extracted by the manual filtering of Excel Spreadsheets. 2 The UK NCB is not currently able to provide data on the number of requests received from other countries so these data relate solely to information supplied by the National DNA Database Delivery Unit (NDU). 3 The data were extracted on 17 June.

The third category relates to database management information. This provides the number of subject and crime scene DNA profile records held on the database and the number of match reports generated. Countries which do not have a DNA database use this information to demonstrate the success of the UK Database to support their case for legislation in their own country for a DNA database.

Requestors are directed to the most recent published statistics on the Home Office NDNAD website, at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-dna-database-statistics thus no figures are kept for the numbers of such requests.

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