The
Tribunal was issuing a judgment on three appeals brought by the
Chief Constables of West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and North
Wales, in effect representing all the police authorities in England
and Wales. It ruled that in the three cases before it, the data in
question should within six months of its judgment be restricted to
police users only.
The appeals concern offences which, though of some age, involved
in each case either a sentence of imprisonment or a serious
offence, e.g. one involving violence and which under the present
so-called Weeding Rules remain on the Police National Computer for
100 years or the death of the data subject, whichever occurs
earlier. The present Weeding Rules are the result of agreed
arrangements reached in 1995 under the previous Data Protection Act
1984 between the Association of Chief Police Officers, ACPO, and
the Information Commissioner.
The Tribunal’s ruling in practical terms represents the
implementation of certain proposals put forward by ACPO to the
Commissioner during negotiations conducted in the period leading up
to the appeals and which failed to result in a new code of conduct
regarding the deletion of criminal convictions.
The negotiations had in turn been triggered by certain
recommendations which are now in the process of being implemented
and which were made by the Bichard Inquiry set up in the wake of
the Soham murders. With this fluid situation in mind, the Tribunal
stated that its decision was not binding on future cases.
It wrote: "The Tribunal feels that the evidence presented by
both parties to these appeals at the same time was both sparse and
over generalised. This is a predominant reason why the Tribunal
stresses that the three instant appeals do not necessarily form the
basis or any useful basis for future cases which might on the
surface appear the same".
In the course of a lengthy and detailed judgment the Tribunal
also made certain specific recommendations in an effort to prompt
workable improvements to the operation of the PNC and to complement
the recommendations of the Bichard Inquiry. It remains to be
seen whether these are implemented.
