

A major expansion of the criminal DNA database to include people accused of even minor offences such as dropping litter is being considered by the Home Office.



Ministers confirmed that they wanted to add significantly to the four million profiles now held after a senior judge called for the DNA of everyone to be stored.



DNA: Judge calls for all Britons to be put on a DNA database

The DNA database grows by 30,000 samples each month



Lord Justice Sedley, an Appeal Court judge, even proposed that all foreign visitors should have their DNA taken.



His suggestion provoked the anger of civil liberties campaigners but was backed by police chiefs.



Tony McNulty, the security minister, said there were no plans for a national, universal DNA database but he was ''broadly sympathetic'' to the idea. "There is a logic and cohesion to what Sir Stephen is saying,'' he said. ''We would never say never.''



He said a review of the DNA database was due to report in February.



A consultation paper on police powers suggests that suspects be fingerprinted, photographed and have their DNA sampled, regardless of the offence of which they are suspected.



At present, fingerprints and DNA samples can be taken only in relation to so-called recordable offences - generally those that carry a potential prison sentence.



The Home Office wants to give the police that power for all criminal offences, including anti-social behaviour, littering and shoplifting.



The consultation paper also suggests that there should be scope to "remove the operational constraints" on inputting DNA into other anti-crime databases.



Lord Justice Sedley's comments came in a BBC interview, though he has been advocating a national database for several years.



He conceded that such a move would be ''authoritarian'' but said the current random additions to the database were unfair and indefensible.



"We have a situation where if you happen to have been in the hands of the police, then your DNA is on permanent record. If you haven't, it isn't,'' he said. "It also means that a great many people who are walking the streets, and whose DNA would show them guilty of crimes, go free".



He was concerned, too, about the disproportionate number of ethnic minorities on the database. There are more than four million profiles on the database, which was set up in 1995 and is now the world's largest.



Shami Chakrabarti, a director of Liberty, said a database with DNA from convicted sexual and violent offenders was a "perfectly sensible crime-fighting measure".



But she added: "A database of every man, woman and child in the country is a chilling proposal, ripe for indignity, error and abuse."



Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "Whilst Lord Justice Sedley's disregard for concerns about privacy is misplaced, at least he has the honesty to put forward a suggestion for a universal DNA database.



"This contrasts with the Government's cloak and dagger strategy of creating a universal database behind the backs of the British people."



Sir Stephen is ex-member of the Communist Party



Unusually - perhaps uniquely for an Appeal Court judge - Lord Justice Sedley is a former member of the Communist Party.



In the 1970s and 1980s, Stephen Sedley was renowned as a radical lawyer.



Born in 1939, he was called to the bar in 1964 after coming down from Cambridge and became a QC in 1983.



He became a High Court judge 10 years later and joined the Appeal Court in 1999.



The judge was a strong supporter of the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law through the Human Rights Act.



He has long had an interest in the retention of DNA.



In 2002, he was among the Appeal Court judges who dismissed a case brought on behalf of a 12-year-old boy whose DNA was kept on the database even though he had been declared innocent of any offence. The court said it did not breach human rights laws.







