The Home Office says there are are no plans to make a compulsory national DNA database despite the convictions of Mark Dixie and Steve Wright.

Suffolk serial killer Wright and Sally Anne Bowman’s murderer Dixie were both captured because their DNA was taken after unrelated offences.

Speaking after Dixie’s guilty verdict, the policeman who led the hunt for Miss Bowman’s killer called for a national DNA register.

But a Home Office spokesman said: “There are no Government plans to introduce a universal compulsory, or voluntary, national DNA database and to do so would raise significant practical and ethical issues.”

DNA samples and fingerprints are already taken on a routine basis following arrests.