Running a DNA record upon arrest in my view is reasonable but the long term retention of innocent samples is not. This person committed crimes for 19 years and was never picked up so your point about retention of innocent DNA is quite flawed. A million innocent yet this chap not on it and I bet you any money he does have criminal convictions when this comes to court probably just pre-dates routine sampling. If he is completely innocent and has never been convicted you have a case. The police to my knowledge have not stated the man’s criminal history at this point in time so I suggest you wait and see.

It is quite obvious that if the entire population – indigenous and immigrant – of this country had had their DNA profile held on a database then this offender would have been caught much – probably 10 years – sooner, and far fewer old people terrorised and harmed.

Which would you prefer? Is the rape and burglary of our elderly folk a reasonable price to pay for the supposed freedom afforded by not having a proper national DNA database?

Holding onto the DNA of innocent people really goes against everything the this country stands for. It is intrusive, unnecessary, offensive and will actually make the police’s job harder in the long run. Quite frankly if I was asked for a DNA sample in ths situation above I’d tell the police to get stuffed if they were intent on hanging onto it for 6 years (or even longer as at present). I don’t care how horrific the crimes are by the person they’re trying to catch – there’s still no excuse for storing any innocent person’s DNA after they’re cleared.

We’ve got so many politicians in the Labour Party wishing to store everyone’s DNA, and undermine the judicial process in others ways such as wanting to lower the burden of proof to a much lower standard than all other crime. Even if Lynne had been posturing at least she’s got some common sense on this matter, which is more than you can say for most MPs.

My only criticism would be Lynne’s failure to state it is of course black MEN and young MEN who are disproportionately represented on the database, though of coruse it’s never politically correct to highlight men being the victims of anything.

Supposing the all consuming time spent on getting ‘volunteers’ to give DNA samples had been spent on chasing burglars – the perpetrator might have been caught earlier – as that is how he was caught yesterday.

And quite frankly – it’s facile to try and denigrate my interest and effort to ‘anti-racist posturing’ particularly as it was not the DNA trawl, as far as I am aware, that netted the suspect. They certainly had DNA from the various crime scenes which they will now be able to use as corroberative evidence – but all that time wasted might have been better spent.

Moreover, cooperation from within a community is the best way of getting intelligence – so the idea that being concerned about how evidence is taken is in some way wrong or posturing – is bizarre.

You are clearly only interested in posturing on my blog – rather than addressing key and serious issues.