POLICE are holding the DNA records of more than 1m innocent people — eight times more than ministers have previously admitted.

Official figures slipped out by the Home Office last week show that almost one in three of the 3.4m individuals whose details are kept on the database do not have a criminal record or a police caution. The government has now been accused of trying to bury “the bad news” among last week’s police announcements over the murders of five prostitutes in Ipswich.

Earlier this year, the Home Office reported that the figure was just 139,463. But in a parliamentary answer last week, ministers said that of the 3,457,000 individuals on the database, just 2,317,555 had a criminal conviction or caution recorded on the Police National Computer. That means that 1,139,445 people have their personal details stored without having been found guilty of any crime.

The new figures were slipped out by John Reid, the home secretary and Joan Ryan, a junior Home Office minister, on Monday as the news agenda was dominated by the hunt for the Ipswich killer.

This weekend opposition MPs and civil liberties groups accused Reid of trying to hide the admission that innocent people are being secretly criminalised by “Big Brother” government.

The Tories have called for a parliamentary vote on whether details of people who were innocent or not charged should be included against their wishes.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said the timing of the Home Office release was unacceptable. “This is a cynical piece of news management, one of the pieces of bad news rushed out last week.”

He said the eightfold increase suggested that the much smaller figures released by ministers in March must have been inaccurate. “This is a matter which ought to be debated in parliament.”

Tony Blair has said the public supported expansion of the database because it was “helping us to track down murderers (and) rapists”.

But the database’s rapid growth has alarmed experts as well as politicians. Sir Alec Jeffreys, a pioneer of DNA forensic science, has said the expansion is out of control. He has condemned the “mission creep” behind the project, protesting that the database was never intended to include innocent civilians.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics, an independent think tank, has said the country risks being transformed from a nation of citizens into a nation of suspects.

Civil liberties groups say the DNA database is just the latest example of the gradual creation of the “surveillance state” by Labour. They warn that innocent people could find themselves under suspicion if their DNA is found at a crime scene through no fault of their own, for example on a stolen mobile phone.

The DNA database was set up in 1995.

Additional reporting: Anna Mikhailova

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