Comment on restrictions in the name of data protection on private investigators’ use of the electoral register.
Some months ago Kenneth Rogers mentioned in his column that open access to the electoral register should cease as, in his opinion, it was an infringement of the Data Protection Act and Human Rights legislation. Congratulations, Ken, you have succeeded. HM Government has now decided to support your cause. No longer will I, or other investigators, be able to purchase copies of the electoral registers and use it to trace witnesses to crimes, road traffic accidents, debt skippers, fraudsters etc. The only people who will have access to the full register will be, of course, HM Government, Police, local authority officials etc. What happens when a person charged with an offence says that he has a witness and the prosecuting authorities, say they cannot identify that witness’ At present the defence would engage an investigator who would check the electoral register and locate ‘possibles’ – but not in the immediate future. The defence will be operating with both hands tied behind its back and blindfolded with the prosecution holding all the cards tighly to its chest. May I give you one example’ We received instructions to investigate a road traffic accident on behalf of an insurance company which was facing civil proceedings for alleged vehicle repairs and alleged personal injury. The police accident report revealed four witnesses who had not been interviewed because the police could not contact them. By intelligent searching of the electoral register (electronic version) and armed with an A-Z of the appropriate town we quickly realised the officer had misspelt the names and addresses of all four witnesses. Within 15 minutes we had the correct identities of all four witnesses. Subsequent interviews resulted in statements which exonerated our client and raised grave suspicions about the veracity of the claim (to put it mildly). That was ONLY a road traffic accident but just imagine if your relative was sent to prison simply because the defence was not able to locate potential witnesses! Various groups of investigators have raised this issue with MPs and we receive stock answers to the effect the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights legislation are more important. What is more important than justice being seen to be open and fair’ What about the human rights of the individual who is incarcerated or wrongly convicted simply because the defence has been shackled’ But at least Ken Rogers can sleep sound at night knowing his address is now a State secret.<br><br>
Neil L Longsden
RTA Investigations<br>
Rochdale, Lancashire
