To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department with reference to the statement of 10 January 2007, Official Report, column 285, on the criminal records backlog, how many of the paper records of crimes committed by British citizens in other EU member states had been entered on the Police National Computer at the latest date for which figures are available; how many of the subjects of such records were convicted of an offence in the period between the receipt of their record by her Department and its entry on the Police National Computer; and for which offences those individuals were convicted. (257742)

[holding answer 26 February 2009]: The paper records concerned contained some 22,000 notifications relating to UK citizens who had been convicted abroad. Of these notifications 1,722 offenders had committed offences equivalent to non-recordable offences in the UK and as such their details would only have been entered on the Police National Computer (PNC) where they accompanied a recordable offence. All the other notifications have been input on the PNC where a suitable matching UK offence exists.

We would only be able to obtain information relating to how many of the subjects of such notifications were convicted of an offence between receipt of their notification and the entry of the record onto the PNC, and the offences for which those individuals were convicted, by individually interrogating those subjects' records on the PNC. We are therefore unable to provide this on cost grounds.