Doubling in innocent people branded criminals by Criminal Records Bureau This is a latest saga of endless changes based on the mass monitoring of millions of people. So the fact that this has happened comes as no big surprise. Any mistake has a devastating effect on people's careers, even if it is later rectified, the damage is done and they can lose job offers and ruin reputations. It is amazing how nothing has changed despite the rhetoric. The increase comes despite pledges by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in Opposition to deal with the problem. Mistakes were likely to have happened because people with the same name were given a wrong CRB check or there was an error on the Police National Computer. The CRB's annual report, published in Parliament this week, said that "the accuracy of the CRB checks remained a top priority for the CRB during the period." It said that accuracy levels were "extremely high," even though at 99.982 per cent they were down from 99.995 per cent in the previous period, adding: "The CRB appreciated that there is always room for improvement in this area." It said that the new Disclosure and Barring Service would "always aim to achieve 100 per cent accuracy of our checks; continuing the commitment to give this a high priority throughout the end-to-end process." The BBSsaid that errors can occur at any stage stage of the process, adding: "The CRB recognises, as does the DBS, that we are not always in control of the quality of the data held by the data sources that we check. The CRB aimed to manage customer expectations in this respect and ensure that the dispute process is effectively managed to help customers. Last year Lynne Featherstone MP, who at the time was a Liberal Democrat Home Office minister, admitted that mistakes by the CRB was having a "devastating" impact on the lives of innocent people. She told Labour MP Madeleine Moon in a letter that mistakes could be "devastating." The Daily Telegraph has repeatedly highlighted the problem over a number of years. In 2009 Damian Green MP, who is now a Home Office minister, said that it was "just as unfair to label someone as a criminal they are innocent as it is to let an offender slip through the net."