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UK home secretary launches probe into ignored crime files

Britain's top law enforcement official on Wednesday launched an inquiry into how files on hundreds of criminals were ignored instead of being entered into police computers.

The gaffe means that criminals convicted abroad, including rapists, murderers and pedophiles, would not be recognized when applying for jobs dealing with vulnerable people, such as school children.

Home Secretary John Reid summoned senior officials from the Home Office, which is responsible for public safety in Britain, to an urgent meeting after the Association of Chief Police Officers said that the information -- more than 27,000 pages -- was "left sitting in desk files."

Officials are now checking whether any of the more than 500 serious offenders included in the files have eluded detection.

Reid told parliament he expected that process to be complete in a matter of days.

"This is a problem that was some years in the making," Reid told lawmakers on Wednesday.

In a statement, the police chief's association said it alerted the Home Office about the problem in October and submitted a bid for funding to correct it.

The bid was rejected, and officials projected it would take at least a year to clear up the records backlog, the association said.

Reid claimed he was not informed by his officials when the police association first reported the problem.

Opposition politicians criticized the government's handling of the files -- the second major criminal records scandal in less than a year.

Reid took over at the Home Office in May, after a series of errors that led to the dismissal of former minister Charles Clarke.

Foreign criminals had been released from prisons without being considered for deportation.

"You've confirmed that yet again the government has failed in its central duty of protecting the public," Conservative party leader David Cameron said.

Reid defended the government, saying the system for providing information from other jurisdictions was "patchy."

He said nearly half of the serious offenders' names had been placed in the police computer; the rest of the names required more investigation.

"This blunder not only exposes this government's administrative incompetence, it puts the British public at greater risk from these offenders," Liberal Democrat spokesman Nick Clegg said in a statement.
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