The UK's reputation for spying on its citizens has just got worse after the police admitted that one in four Brits are on the police central database, despite most of them never committing a crime.

More than 12,000 users from Britain’s police forces and law enforcement agencies will share intelligence on criminals, suspects and those with criminal links when the Police National Database (PND) goes live next week. Civil liberties campaigners are concerned that people with no criminal connections are included on the £75million PND database.

The database was built after the 2002 murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambridgeshire. It is being updated by all 43 forces in England and Wales, the eight forces in Scotland, the British Transport Police and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

More than 15million people will be on the database and 6million will have a criminal conviction. Others will be victims, suspects, or mates of criminals.

The idea is that it would stop murderers like Soham killer Ian Huntley, slipping through the net when he moved from Humberside to Cambridgeshire and got a job as a school caretaker and committed further crimes.