What assessment she has made of the Crown Prosecution Service's response to information on crime scene profiles received from the Dutch authorities in January 2007.

The Dutch authorities submitted 2,159 crime scene profiles from unsolved crimes. When my noble and learned Friend the Attorney-General became aware of issues surrounding the disk, she ordered the Crown Prosecution Service to conduct an urgent inquiry into what had happened. The inquiry has three strands, two of which will be concluded by the end of this month. I shall not be able to comment on numbers of DNA matches, or anything like that, because of ongoing operations.

The Solicitor-General has said in the past that, unlike what happened in recent cases of official negligence, the data have not actually been lost, but how does she know? If the CPS did not know it had the disk in the first place, how can it possibly reassure us that the disk was never copied illegitimately, or that something similar did not occur?

The full facts about where the disk was and how it was handled will become clear from the outcome of inquiry. The hon. Lady should not overlook the fact that this was an excellent example of international co-operation between UK law enforcement offices and those abroad, which is capable of taking off the streets a lot of criminals who would not have been taken off the streets if we did not have our strong DNA database and excellent international relationships with our European partners.

Is not the real lesson that the Government cannot be trusted with sensitive data? They do not know the value of such data and cannot keep them safe. How will the Solicitor-General achieve a real cultural change in the way the Government handle data?

I remind the hon. Gentleman that no data have been lost in this case, so he really should take a calming pill. He should set his feet slightly more firmly on the ground and take his head slightly further out of the clouds. There is an inquiry and it will produce outcomes in due course. It should take only a moment's thought to appreciate that when we delivered our DNA data disk to the Dutch, it was taken by an Association of Chief Police Officers officer. It was handcuffed to him and he was escorted by another officer. When the data came to the CPS, which is—as again a moment's thought would have told the hon. Gentleman—remote from ownership of our database and not the appropriate recipient, it came with no destination except "CPS, Ludgate Hill". The hon. Gentleman is going too far in his criticisms; he needs to wait until he knows a few facts; a little knowledge is a terribly dangerous thing.

I am a little troubled by the length of time the inquiry is taking. On the face of it, if some of the background facts that have already come into the public domain are correct, it would seem that the answers to the inquiry are probably fairly simple, yet as the Solicitor-General will appreciate, particularly from the question she has just received, some of the disquiet centres on the fact that we still do not have the inquiry report. Will she assure the House that it will be brought forward as quickly as possible? I am a little troubled about the length of time it is taking given that the facts seem fairly simple.

Probably the most important fact for me to confirm is that the results of the matching process have been returned to the Dutch. We have completed the inquiry into where the disk was at any given time, and by the end of the month it is expected that the CPS will have looked at responsibility for that. The third strand, to which I have just alluded, is the one on which our ACPO officers and the Dutch police are now able to take matters forward. We will produce the results as soon as we can.

Does that incident not illustrate a more important point about the use of the DNA database? If reports are to be believed, the incident came about because the Crown Prosecution Service could not cover the absence of a prosecutor. Does that not show that resources would be better spent on using the data that we already have more efficiently and effectively, than on endlessly expanding the DNA database to include more and more innocent people, who have less and less likelihood of being involved in crime?

We are determined to use the DNA database in the most effective way, so that it can stamp out crime that would otherwise not be detected. If that is not how the Liberal Democrats see an appropriate criminal justice policy going forward, so be it. The hon. Gentleman's factual basis for his question is wrong. He, too, must wait until he has a little bit more knowledge than the tiny amount that he has at present.