There is a trick used here- and it shows the reason that mainstream TV is full of carefully crafted propaganda drama revolving around forensics and so-called 'cold-cases'. You are indeed 'innocent' until proven 'guilty', BUT even as an 'innocent' person, while the state considers you worth investigating, they have the right to keep 'evidence' about you.

So, your DNA is taken, but you haven't gone (yet, if ever) to court. Only a court verdict of 'innocent', without the New Labour Nazis claiming the right to 're-try' you, creates a clear-cut circumstance for your DNA record being erased.

Without a clear-cut court verdict, your future may yet involve further action by the state- all the (legal) excuse they need to keep your DNA in the meantime.

Remember all those 'statute of limitation' plot devices from old US films and TV shows? Essentially, Blair is using the same rational when it comes down to the holding of your DNA.

Now, you will argue, there are plenty of situations where you are arrested, but later the state cannot possibly claim that you are still under investigation, and you would be right. However, what mechanism do you use to prove such a position? How much will this cost you in legal fees, given that you'll get no financial assistance from the state for such a claim?

Never mind. The New Labour Nazis will create another official state run complaints body (with the word 'independent' in its title) that handles request to remove your DNA. It will be as sympathetic to requests to remove DNA samples, as the House of Lords was to the original court case- ie., it will laugh in your face 99.99% of the time, same as the IPCC does already over complaints of police misconduct.

Anyway, most people affected won't dare to rock the boat by requesting their DNA is removed in the first place. They already know the risks of angering the authorities in our police-state. Their DNA will be kept for the default period- a period that will increase for each type of investigation year by year.

Oh, and one last thought. While the DNA sample MAY be destroyed at some point, Blair is still allowed to extract general DNA data that describes your genetic family heritage, and keep that forever. These 'safe' DNA records, that will never be destroyed, mean that many of your close relatives, along with yourself, will be arrested as suspects in the future, if your DNA is ever claimed to exist at the scene of a crime (given that on some earlier occasion your DNA had been collected and then 'destroyed').

PS it is worth comparing this ECOHR verdict with the one that ended the state's right to physically torture your kids (or yourself) in school. The British government twisted every which way to avoid a total ban on school corporal punishment, even though the government had acknowledged from the 1960s that CP was horrifically abused in some schools, especially in Scotland where the vast majority of students, males and females, were 'belted' every single year, for the most trivial of reasons.

The European Court had then, as now, given an absolute judgement for limited cases (for CP, parents had the absolute right to deny schools the ability to beat their kids, but that was the limit of the ECOHR judgement). Kids whose parents were happy to have them beaten were NOT protected by the ruling, allowing the British government to fudge the issue for years. Likewise, the ECOHR has not ruled on the reasonable timeframe of 'innocent as a consequence of a legal investigation formally ending', but has merely stated that if such a situation pertains, the DNA evidence should be destroyed.