Britain’s policing minister on Monday said that “human error” led to hundreds of thousands of DNA records and other data on criminal suspects being erased from the national computer.
Kit Malthouse told the House of Commons that the mishap occurred during a “regular housekeeping process” on the computer, which holds 13 million records.
Mr Malthouse said about 400,000 records were wiped, including 213,000 for offences and 170,000 for arrests.
“Clearly, this situation is very serious,” he said. “We will know the full extent of the impact of this issue over the next few days.”
Labour MP Yvette Cooper 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".
Mr Malthouse said officials were trying to recover the data but he could not guarantee that criminal investigations would not be harmed by the error.
He said the government was working “to make sure that any operational impact is obviated or mitigated".
