You need to get in touch with New Scotland Yard and ask for Data Protection.

National Identification Service, 
Subject Access Office,
Room 331, 
New Scotland Yard, 
Broadway, 
London SW1H 0BG


   tel: 0171-230-2958   fax: 0171 230 3628 

Under the Data Protection Act, Section 21, 1984 it is your legal right to know what, if any, information someone is holding about you in any data base in the U.K. There aresome exceptions but I'll describe them later...they're quite funny actually. Anyway, you have to show proof of I.D. to Scotland Yard in order to get this information. You can send them your birth certificate if you like but remember it could well get lost. They want originals and won't accept a copy. What they want to see is your full name (including middle names) and your address. We sent the top bit of our bank statement which listed both names and also I mailed envelopes to myself and hubby with our full name and full address. Once it has been through the postal system then Scotland Yard will accept this as proof.

So you get your form and your proofs of I.D. and then you need Ten Pounds Sterling for each search. It has to be in U.K. Funds....we sent ours with cash with a friend who was traveling back to England but you could try to get a Sterling bank draft. You haveto specify which database you want them to look in....there are dozens. We chose Prosecution/Conviction History. It seemed the most logical choice. They are obliged to get the answer back to you in 40 days. However, as a word of warning, they put a secondclass inland stamp on our results (we were living Iowa, U.S.A.) so it came by the scenic route in a rowing boat. Presumably that's why this employee of New Scotland Yard works in Data Protection and not as a detective! You eventually get a letter back saying -hopefully - that they have found no trace of you in the database. Then comes the amusing exceptions . I will quote what they say:-

NB: The exemptions in relation to disclosure of information held on Police computers arelimited to where data are held for:- (a) the prevention or detection of crime, (b) the apprehension or prosecution of offenders, and disclosing such data would be likely to prejudice those purposes.

In other words, if you have committed a crime but they just haven't actually nabbed you for it yet they won't tell you anyway, which makes the whole thing a bit useless as far as Canadian Immigration is concerned if you ask me, but fortunately Canadian Immigration didn't ask me so I suppose it doesn't matter.

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