Reid’s Men Had Four Meetings On Offenders
Home Office civil servants held at least four meetings with police chiefs to discuss the foreign convictions backlog that ministers say they knew nothing about, it became clear last night.
{mosimage}They took place last October as a new police unit struggled to deal with the details of thousands of British citizens convicted of offences overseas.
This information — including data about 540 serious criminals – had never been entered on to the Police National Computer (PNC) despite being submitted to the Home Office over a 10-year period.
Last May, responsibility for dealing with the data passed to the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), which set up a unit in Hampshire.
But the backlog was so great that Acpo asked the Home Office for more money to ensure the information could be more swiftly entered on to the database.
A letter was sent to Tony McNulty, the police minister, last October to update him on the work of the new unit but the Government said this did not mention the problem with the backlog.
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