The Home Office has denied that the Criminal Records Bureau
(CRB) will set up a database to collect and store the fingerprints
of people who apply to work with children and vulnerable
people.
A Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) spokesperson told Computer
Weekly, "There are no plans for the CRB to take or retain
applicants' fingerprints in a database."
Computer Weekly reported last week that the Independent
Safeguarding Authority (ISA), which from October will
keep a register of some 11 million applicants and will use CRB
checks and other sources to evaluate a person's suitability for
the role.
The Home Office said ISA would not be submitting applicants'
fingerprints to the CRB.
It said the police already fingerprint a small number of
applicants where there was an issue with verifying their identity,
and check them against relevant criminal records. "The CRB is
working with the police to make the process faster and easier for
these applicants each year," the spokesman said.
He said only 0.04% of requests for identification were at risk.
"The CRB's overall accuracy rate remains extremely high with 99.96%
of disclosures issued accurately, although the CRB's aim is always
to issue 100% of disclosures free from error," the spokesman
said.
The government has consistently denied that fingerprints in the
national identity register, which are currently collected from
e-passport and identity card applications, will be linked to CRB
records.
Phil Booth, national coordinator of No2ID, a privacy lobby
group, said the only two databases the CRB could use are Ident 1,
the CRB's database, and the National Identity Register (NIR), which
is being populated as people enrol for electronic passports and
national identity cards.
Booth said early documents relating to the NIS show that the
government was keen to link the NIR with the CRB.
The Home Office's strategic action plan for the NIS, published
in December 2006, said it had prioritised several joint projects
for early development. For the CRB, it said, "The National Identity
Scheme will help to make identification within the CRB process
quicker, and will help with cracking down on criminals applying for
jobs working with children and vulnerable adults."
Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said in March 2008 that a
trial conducted by IPS and the CRB showed that the time taken to
perform a criminal records check could be cut from four weeks to as
little as four days, with "extremely high levels of user
satisfaction".