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Police today won a “critical” legal battle to allow them to retain details of offenders' convictions and prevent convicts from deceiving employers about their criminal past.
The Court of Appeal victory means that forces will no longer have to delete about one million minor convictions from the police national computer as an earlier Information Tribunal ruling had stipulated.
Police had warned that such a move would have amounted to a “liars' charter” under which criminals would be free to lie on job applications. In today's judgment, Lord Justice Waller, sitting with two other Court of Appeal judges, backed the police and said that conviction details could be retained.
“If the police say rationally and reasonably that convictions, however old or minor, have a value in the work that they do, that should, in effect, be the end of the matter,” he said.
Ian Readhead, the Association of Chief Police Officers' director of information, said: “The ramifications of losing the appeal were potentially huge. This data assists police officers in their work in preventing crime and protecting the public and the loss of such valuable information would have been detrimental to that.”
