Family Wins Fight to Delete Child from Met’s Anti-Radicalisation Records
A primary school-aged child has had details of their referral to the government’s controversial anti-radicalisation Prevent programme deleted by the Metropolitan police following court action, the Guardian can reveal. Following a settlement that remains confidential, the child will see all relevant records deleted, including from the Prevent case management (PCM) database, the existence of which was revealed by the Guardian and Liberty in October. The referring authorities also agreed to correct and delete relevant records. As details of the case are disclosed, the Guardian can reveal that Counter Terrorism Policing Headquarters (CTPHQ), the Home Office and several police forces across England and Wales have refused to reveal how many individuals are on the database following requests made under the Freedom of Information Act.
Lawyers at Deighton Pierce Glynn (DPG), acting for the parents and the child, said their client feared the records could be used against them in the future, even though they were based on a mistake. The Met refused to give any reassurance that the records would not be used again in relation to the child and would not feature in any Disclosure and Barring Service criminal record checks against them as an adult. The legal team relied on the Data Protection Act and Human Rights Act to secure deletion of the relevant Prevent records. Without deletion, DPG said, the records would have been retained for at least six years under the police’s national retention assessment criteria (NRAC) policy, which does not differentiate between records of adults and children
Daniel Carey, partner at DPG, said: “The police’s data retention policy – the national retention assessment criteria – fails to recognise the non-criminal nature of Prevent referrals and doesn’t distinguish records relating to very young children, creating real concerns and worries for parents that these records will continue to affect them in later life. “My client’s parents were concerned that it took a lot of legal action simply to erase Prevent records based on a clearly mistaken referral. There are obvious implications for the many other Prevent referrals made regarding schoolchildren and the effect that such enduring records may have on them in the future.” DPG threatened the Met police with a judicial review and the force agreed to settle and delete the details before the case came to court. The Met declined to comment.
Read more: Jamie Grierson, Guardian: https://is.gd/eNMQ38
