DNA of one million innocent people held illegally by police

DNA samples of up to a million people held by police on a national database may have to be destroyed after the Government lost a landmark European legal ruling today.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that keeping the DNA of people with no criminal convictions was unlawful. The case, which had previously been rejected by the House of Lords, had been brought by two Britons who had demanded that police destroy fingerprints, DNA samples and profiles kept after their arrests in 2001.

The decision was welcomed by civil liberty campaigners but greeted with dismay by the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and by police.

Ms Smith now has until March to decide how to respond to the European ruling. It is highly likely she will be forced to order all samples of people without convictions to be removed from the national DNA database.

Ms Smith said today: "DNA and fingerprinting is vital to the fight against crime, providing the police with more than 3,500 matches a month, and I am disappointed by the European Court of Human Rights' decision."

It is estimated that of 4.5million DNA samples held in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, about 20 per cent are from people without current convictions.

The Home Office admitted today it had no idea how many people might be affected by today's judgment, although the Tory estimate was a million people. Almost a quarter of all samples added each year come from the Met police.

The Association of Chief Police Officers said the judgment could have a "profound impact" on the way police use DNA to tackle crime. Chris Sims, spokesman on forensics and Chief Constable of Staffordshire, said today that 200,000 DNA samples on the national database between May 2001 and December 2005 would have had to be removed "as they were taken from people charged but not convicted of offences".

He said that of those cases, 8,500 profiles of individuals "have been linked with crime scene profiles involving nearly 14,000 offences", including murders, rapes and burglaries. That included 114 murders, 55 attempted murders, 116 rapes, 68 sex offences, 119 aggravated burglaries and 127 of the supply of controlled drugs, he said. The judges in Strasbourg ruled that keeping the DNA of innocent people on a criminal register amounted to discrimination and a breach of the "right to respect for private life" under article eight of the Human Rights Convention.

Michael Marper, 45, was arrested in March 2001 and charged with harassing his partner, but the case was dropped three months later after the two were reconciled. He had no previous convictions. In a separate case, a 19-year-old named in court only as "S" was arrested and charged with attempted robbery in January 2001 when he was 12, but he was cleared five months later.

The men, both from Sheffield, asked for their samples to be destroyed but South Yorkshire Police refused, saying the details would be retained "to aid criminal investigation". The two men were awarded a total of £36,500 in costs but no cash damages.

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: "This vindicates all that we have been saying about the Government's wrong-headed approach to this issue, which has caused so much resentment amongst the law-abiding majority and done so much to undermine confidence in the criminal justice system."