CLAIRE CURTIS-THOMAS, the MP for Crosby in Merseyside, is an engineer by training, and has built up a record of putting a wide range of important and interesting questions to ministers. Recently she asked Home Office ministers what is being done to monitor the national DNA database that the police are creating, based on samples taken from suspects and crime scenes.
Caroline Flint, whose many responsibilities at the Home Office include policing and crime reduction, replied that an assessment of the usefulness of the DNA database is being carried out through the ongoing evaluation of the Home Office DNA Expansion Programme. This was set up in April 2000 to distribute funding to police forces to enable them to increase the collection of DNA samples from suspects and to help build up the number of DNA profiles on the database.
The programme has provided 拢182.6 million to police forces. The bulk of this has gone towards covering the costs of processing DNA samples in forensic laboratories, and providing additional scene-of-crime and intelligence staff and equipment.
Advertisement
The database currently holds 2.73 million DNA profiles taken from 2.45 million suspected offenders, said Flint. The police achieved more than 45,200 DNA 鈥渙ffender-to-scene鈥� matches in 2003-04, and the DNA detection rates for common crimes show striking increases, she added. For example, while the national detection rate for burglary of shops and factories currently stands at 10 per cent, the rate is 53 per cent when a DNA sample can be recovered from the crime scene, said the minister.
I am aware that police DNA databases are often less than popular in some quarters. But it is worth keeping in mind that these techniques can bring benefits to innocent people, freeing them from what can otherwise be months of unwarranted suspicion.
IS NUCLEAR fusion to be tomorrow鈥檚 source of energy? Great hopes are pinned on international collaboration to build the ITER experimental fusion reactor, but where to site it has long rankled among interested nations.
Lately a consensus has emerged, if only by Chinese whispers, that the best chance of technical success would be to locate it in France. This seems to be the European Union鈥檚 position and, I gather, the general view of the scientists involved, whose overwhelming interest is in the viability of the project. Doubts still remain on the project鈥檚 future. But participation in the ITER project should be a prime objective of the UK government鈥檚 energy policy.
I mourn the death in October of the eminent Bas Pease, who had much to do with the early work at the UK Atomic Energy Authority鈥檚 Culham Laboratory, where he was director of fusion. Pease always maintained that scientific considerations should be paramount in such uncertain projects. I strongly agree with that view and believe ITER should be sited at Cadarache, France鈥檚 nuclear power research centre in Provence.
