MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th January, 2021) The accidental deletion of thousands of records from UK police databases, including fingerprint and DNA data, is "outrageous," Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday, adding that his government was working to assess the damage.
Earlier in the week, Home Secretary Priti Patel announced that a coding error led to the deletion of more than 400,000 records from the Police National Computer. Speaking in parliament, Johnson said that work was ongoing to retrieve the data.
"Of course it is outrageous that any data should have been lost but at the moment ... we're trying to retrieve that data," the prime minister said.
Labour leader Keir Starmer, also speaking in parliament, warned that the data loss could compromise ongoing criminal investigations.
Kit Malthouse, the United Kingdom's policing minister, confirmed on Monday that the data was lost after "defective code" was introduced to the database system during maintenance work.
