Britain:A senior British Home Office civil servant has been suspended after "volunteering information" to the internal inquiry investigating the department's failure to log 27,500 criminal records of Britons convicted abroad on to police computers.
A Home Office spokeswoman said yesterday the unnamed official had provided information since Friday that warranted further investigation and raised the possibility of disciplinary action.
It came as the home secretary, John Reid, launched an overhaul of all Britain's criminal databases, including separate Whitehall lists covering teachers and those working with vulnerable adults.
A spokeswoman for the First Division Association union, which represents top civil servants, confirmed one of its members was involved.
The minister responsible for criminal records, Joan Ryan, will press her fellow European interior ministers today to agree to circulate fingerprints as well as names when exchanging records of those convicted across Europe.
Mr Reid has written to all his Cabinet colleagues asking for their support in a complete overhaul of the way the jigsaw of criminal record databases operate and share information.
The review will not only cover the Criminal Records Bureau and the police national computer, but also the separate databases held by the education and health departments.
Ministerial sources said that the overhaul at the department, which Mr Reid criticised last year as being "not fit for purpose", would also cover the monitoring of criminals convicted abroad, including sex offenders, when they return to Britain.
The Home Office said over the weekend that an initial check had shown that none of the 540 serious sex or violent offenders convicted abroad whose details had not been logged had been mistakenly cleared to work with children or vulnerable adults. The remaining 27,000 will be checked over the next three months.
Shadow home secretary David Davis described the review of databases as a "desperate piece of news management". "This should have been done on day one, not announced when it was expedient to do so in order to try and get a good headline," he said.
- (Guardian service, additional reporting PA)