Her call comes amid concerns different approaches are being taken by forces in England and Wales.

It also follows some newspapers' claims that not naming suspects until they are charged amounts to secret justice.

But Mrs May adds that "there will be circumstances" when naming a suspect will be in the public interest.

The home secretary also insists that "there should be no right to anonymity at charge apart from in extremely unusual circumstances".

In her letter, addressed to the College of Policing, she writes: "I believe that there should be a right to anonymity at arrest, but I know that there will be circumstances in which the public interest means that an arrested suspect should be named."

The letter comes as the Association of Police Officers (Acpo) finalises new guidance on how officers should engage with the media.

A draft of the guidance, due to be approved by the college next week, states that, "save in exceptional and clearly identified circumstances, the names or identifying details of those who are arrested or suspected of a crime should not be released by police forces to the press or the public".

The exceptional circumstances could include a threat to life, the prevention or detection of crime, or a matter of significant public interest and confidence, according to the guidance.

However, senior officers have asserted that all suspects should be named when they are charged with an offence.

Some journalists have expressed concern that preventing police officers from revealing the names of suspects they have arrested but not charged amounts to a sort of secret justice.

Former Metropolitan Police commissioner, Lord Blair, has also said that naming on arrest can encourage other victims to come forward.

But the author of the proposed new guidelines, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police Andy Trotter, says he has spoken to the director of public prosecutions (DPP) about the potential risks of such a policy.

"I asked the DPP how defence lawyers would react to police arresting and naming a person and then asking if anyone has got any information about this person that might lead to a charge," he said recently.

Keir Starmer QC - the DPP - is understood to be content with the new guidance on anonymity, which stresses how "police forces must balance an individual's rights to a private life, the right of publishers to freedom of expression, and the rights of defendants to a fair trial".

Meanwhile, the Society of Editors, representing newspapers, has put out a statement suggesting that the police's decision to name the former TV celebrity Stuart Hall when he was arrested for sex offences demonstrates why anonymity may not be in the public interest.

Executive director Bob Satchwell said: "If Stuart Hall had not been named when he was arrested he might never have been brought to court. None of his victims knew one another."

Mr Trotter has since responded by pointing out that Hall was arrested at 10:00 BST and charged at 19:00 on the same day - during which time only one victim came forward having heard his name.

After his charge a further 12 people contacted the police.

"How do you select whose name to release?" Mr Trotter asks. "What is our criteria? An MP's son? A VIP? How many of the 1.2m people we arrest each year should we name?"

His view is that naming everyone arrested risks tarnishing the reputations of innocent people.

"People can be arrested one minute and de-arrested the next. We had someone who was arrested for the theft of a mobile phone who we later proved had found it and was trying to hand it in to police."

Mr Trotter is highly critical, though, of police forces which do not name individuals who have been charged.

When Warwickshire Police recently refused to name a former officer charged with the theft of £113,000 from the force headquarters they were widely condemned.

"It is atrocious that forces are not naming on charge," Mr Trotter says.

In a reply to the home secretary, the chief executive of the College of Policing, Alex Marshall, writes: "It is clear that a balance must be struck between the principle that a person is innocent until proved guilty and the understandable media expectation of openness."

But there are two common factors. Child victims left exposed and adult perpetrators granted protection.

The activities of the men who preyed on troubled young girls in Oxford over many years, convicted at the Old Bailey on Tuesday, leave a nation shaking a collective head in disbelief once again.

People will look for someone to blame. If only local police, social services, schools, neighbours, community leaders, politicians (add your group of choice) had done more, all would have been well.

But what this series of scandals has forced us to confront is a much more uncomfortable truth. The sexual abuse of vulnerable children is endemic and our society has allowed too many of those responsible to get away with it.

For the most part it is a passive form of protection - suspicions ignored, questions unasked, activities unchallenged. It is easier to do nothing, not to get involved, not to rock the boat. There are none so blind as those that will not see.

More on the report

Groups unite to tackle grooming

Guilty verdicts in sex grooming case

Perhaps there is an unconscious and misguided calculation that to act risks damage to something of broader value than the well-being of a single child - public confidence, institutional reputation or community relations.

One wonders if that last concern has a bearing on why we have seen a series of high-profile court cases in which men from predominantly South Asian backgrounds have been convicted of sexually exploiting young girls.

This week it was Oxford. Last week the full details of a similar case in Telford emerged. Before that we had Rochdale, Rotherham, Oldham and Derby.

Hundreds of children and young people have suffered in these towns and others over many years - their almost unimaginable torment apparently invisible to the world around them.

Did concern over how exposure might inflame racial prejudice lead people to stay quiet when they should have spoken out? Far-right groups have been quick to suggest exactly that.

Britain First, an organisation "committed to preserving our ancestral ethnic and cultural heritage", claims to have distributed 20,000 leaflets condemning what they characterise as the "the scourge of Muslim grooming and exploitation".

The British National Party has held rallies and launched a campaign around the issue.

The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, based at King's College London, recently detailed how the English Defence League (EDL) had been attempting to link child sexual exploitation with Muslims.

"This 'rape jihad', as it has become known, is a significant concern for the EDL," says the centre's report, Neo-Nationalist Network. "Interest has risen since revelations in the British media about the existence of sex-grooming gangs made up of Muslim men of South-Asian origin."

After the conviction for sex trafficking of a group of predominantly Pakistani men in Rochdale last year, the Education Secretary Michael Gove asked the children's commissioner in England to conduct an urgent inquiry.

A briefing paper was published in July and a fuller report four months later, reflecting on the high-profile court cases that have "mainly involved adult males of British Pakistani origin and white British female victims".

The reason for the spate of similar cases, the inquiry suggested, was that police and other agencies responded to publicity around previous trials by investigating whether the same problem existed in their area.

The authorities were indeed "effective in readily identifying perpetrators and victims with similar individual characteristics", the inquiry panel concluded. "Data is gathered more assiduously on perpetrators identified by professionals as Asian, Pakistani or Kurdish," the report asserted.

But the focus on one particular type of perpetrator, model and approach to child sexual exploitation, disguised "a much more difficult and challenging truth".

The abusers "come from all ethnic groups and so do their victims - contrary to what some may wish to believe", the inquiry panel said. "The failure of agencies to recognise this means that too many child victims are not getting the protection and support they so desperately need."

Source: Report from Children's Commissioner

Of the victims who gave evidence to the inquiry, 42% were described as white British and 28% were from black and ethnic minority backgrounds.

Where the ethnicity of perpetrators was provided, 545 were recorded as white, 415 were recorded as Asian, and 244 were recorded as black. Given that most of the victims were unable to provide details of the ethnicity of their abuser, such data should be treated with caution. But black and particularly Asian perpetrators remain over-represented.

Last week in West Yorkshire, the Islamic Society of Britain, alongside the civil rights movement Hope not Hate, launched the Community Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation. It is an initiative supported by a wide range of Muslim groups.

In Oxford, an imam who knew some of the grooming gang as they were growing up, has talked of the responsibilities of the wider community. "I can say it's a problem of the whole Muslim community and we have to rectify it," said Sheikh Hojjat Ramzy.

"I say to them, my brothers, my sisters, wake up. You are in England. You are British. You must integrate. You must look after the children. There is an issue and we cannot put it under the carpet. Enough is enough."

The cancer of child exploitation is more widespread than our worst fears - no part of our society appears free from its taint. There may be many more uncomfortable truths revealed before we can honestly say we expose perpetrators and protect children, rather than the other way around.

And to do it without costing the tax-payer a bean - what's not to like?

Chris Grayling's oft-repeated vision of "the old lag gone straight", volunteering to help those lost souls leaving jail with just £46 in their pocket, has all the life-affirming warmth of the classic redemptive drama. The only question would seem to be "why didn't we do this years ago?"

But there are questions. Away from the ministry and those organisations hoping to get a slice of the "rehabilitation revolution" action across England and Wales, there are some concerned voices.

What is being proposed is that private companies and charities will bid for contracts to supervise former inmates for a year after they leave jail. Those chosen by the ministry will only get paid if the ex-prisoners they take on stay out of trouble - payment by results.

Some of the supervision replaces what has been done up to now by the probation service, but the responsibility is being extended to cover 65,000 short-term prisoners who leave jail each year and currently receive no probation support.

Among former inmates who serve fewer than 12 months, 58% commit further crimes within a year of release. With reoffending rates like that, you can see why the justice secretary is so keen to encourage fresh ideas in the delivery of rehabilitation services.

Imagine, then, that you are charity with an interest in using peer mentors (old lags gone straight) to help ex-offenders, and you are considering bidding for one of the contracts. Since, under current plans, you get paid nothing until the time you can demonstrate your charge has not re-offended, you will need to find some capital to get the project underway.

Charity trustees will, quite rightly, want to see evidence that your business plan is going to work before agreeing to dip into the institution's reserves. Here, though, you will encounter your first problem. There is very little evidence that mentoring works in cutting reoffending.

Analysis of mentoring schemes around the world, conducted by the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion (CESI), found "there is no consensus that mentoring has a significant positive effect on mentees".

In her blog, CESI researcher Lydia Finnegan recently summed up the shortage of evidence behind the justice secretary's big idea: "When referring to the mentoring that many voluntary organisations provide, Grayling said 'I strongly believe it is making a real difference'."

Faith, however, is not the same as hard science, as the blog points out. "We found that evidence to support the efficacy of mentoring when measuring hard outcomes, such as its effect on employment and re-offending, can be inconclusive," Finnegan writes.

It is not Dragon's Den, but it is doubtful that responsible charitable trusts or institutional investors will be committing wads of cash to a payment-by-results mentoring scheme for ex-offenders without good evidence that it can get those results.

There will be people who are prepared to invest, though. Private-sector companies like Ingeus, G4S and Serco - already providers of a wide range of public services - will be looking longer-term. The contracts may prove to be loss-leaders in the early years, but they may calculate it is worth the hit just to be players in the game.

The next question, though, is how much is all this going to cost? I am told there is as yet unpublished Ministry of Justice research on the logistics of the supervision programme that casts real doubt on its cost-effectiveness.

It is a point also made by the CESI research. "The support, supervision and training needed by the co-ordinating organisation to ensure the smooth running of a mentoring programme for both parties, i.e. the mentors and the mentees, requires huge investment," it points out.

Of course it does. Think for a moment of what it means simply to ensure there is someone at the prison gates to meet every one of the 200 plus offenders released each day. Then add in the cost of managing the continuing supervision for each of your charges for a year. This is going to be expensive.

The government's hope is that a lot of the work can be done by volunteers - the Big Society meets Public Enemies. There are indeed some humbling stories of ex-offenders giving up their time to keep others on the straight and narrow. But are there enough of them? And are they all up to the job?

This is a serious point. Although the research on mentoring is troublingly inconclusive, it does suggest that professional, trained mentors tend to get better results than even the most willing and reliable amateurs.

People coming out of prison will often have a range of complicated problems - issues around mental health, housing, substance abuse, violence, literacy, employment. Giving them the best chance of staying out of trouble will require a lot of professionals to pull them through. You can't have a situation where an unpaid mentor goes missing.

Finally, there must be questions about the payment-by-results model after the bumpy start of the Work Programme. In a blog post today Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the RSA, sets out "several reasons to question whether PBR for probation will deliver".

It may be that, even without encouraging pilot studies or tested economic models, providers will be able to turn Chris Grayling's vision into a glorious reality. Few will not wish them well in their efforts.

But even if the financial risk is shifted from the taxpayer to private or charitable institutions, what the public really wants is a scheme that makes a real difference to the prospects of those who nervously sniff the air as they walk out of the prison gate. And that remains far from certain.

At its heart, though, is a piece of relatively mundane Parliamentary business, the Queen's Speech, setting out the legislative priorities for the forthcoming session.

It is a job that could be conducted with a simple press release, but for governments across the ages, the speech has been a wonderful opportunity to send the electorate a message - one wrapped in ermine, studded with jewels and adorned with ostrich feathers.

The theatre of these speeches can often be as important as the substance, particularly mid-term. The great reforms will usually be in train, and so a speech in the middle of a parliament will tend to be more decorative than architectural in its ambition. It is more about communicating government priorities than constructing a new legislative framework.

For the current government, the staging of this piece of parliamentary theatre is complicated by coalition. The messages risk appearing mixed, the clarity of communication blurred by contradictory interests.

So, for avoidance of doubt, Downing Street put out news release, trying to ensure idiot reporters didn't miss the meaning behind the speech: "The Government will today publish a Queen's Speech that is expected to be all about backing people who work hard and want to get on in life. The Queen's Speech will focus on legislation that unlocks the potential of the people of our country to unleash their talents."

The phrase "people of our country" is a less-than-subtle first hint at how No 10 wants this speech to be read. "We want to attract people who will add to our national life and those who will not should be deterred," the joint message from the prime minister and the deputy prime minister states.

The story of this speech, journalists are being told, is that this government has heard the concerns about immigration and is doing something about it. There's plenty of other stuff in there, of course, but the new Immigration Bill gets star billing in the official release from Downing Street.

The government wants to respond to public concerns about foreigners "who abuse public services" by introducing tough new laws - ministers' best way of saying "we get it". The problem is is that any tightening of controls requires someone to check the immigration status of people and the Treasury doesn't want to spend any extra taxpayers' money on that.

The burden, therefore, is anticipated to fall on others. We are told that, subject to consultation, the Immigration Bill will include provisions to "make landlords of private housing check the immigration status of tenants and face fines if they don't".

It sounds straightforward enough. But for an expanding industry worth billions to the economy, having to check the immigration status of everyone who moves into rented accommodation may well be criticised as a huge amount of extra red-tape. There are roughly four million households in the private rented sector in the UK - 15% of the population - and with no national register of landlords, it will be interesting to see exactly how ministers intend to make this happen.

The bill also promises to "enable tough action against businesses that use illegal labour, including more substantial fines". The law already provides for a fine of up to £10,000 for each illegal worker found to have been employed accidentally, and unlimited fines and imprisonment for "rogue employers knowingly and deliberately using illegal labour", so it is difficult to see how this will make much difference.

Another key component of the Immigration Bill is a proposal designed to "regulate migrant access to the NHS, ensuring that temporary migrants make a contribution". This sounds sensible enough, but introducing systems that distinguish between temporary and permanent migrants, or anyone else for that matter, will not be easy to implement.

We learn today that ministers will be examining whether GPs should be obliged to check passports to assess the nationality of patients - a policing job that many doctors see as contradictory to their caring role.

There will be questions as to whether the cost of employing NHS managers to check the precise immigration status of everyone who uses the health service, distinguishing between temporary and permanent migrants for example, is worth the cost for what is thought to be a tiny fraction of the NHS overall budget.

Government sources said this morning that, at the moment, there are no detailed figures on the cost to the NHS of treating non-UK nationals and they will conduct an audit, but few think it will amount to more than a penny out of every £1,000 the health service spends.

There is one other significant component in the Immigration Bill, as highlighted by No 10: "It will contain provisions to give the full force of legislation to the policy the Government has already adopted in the Immigration Rules to ensure Article 8 (the right the stay in the country because of family connections) is not abused so courts balance the crime committed against the right to remain in the country".

This is a measure responding to public and government anger that foreigners who break the law here can apparently run legal rings round the wishes of Parliament who want such people deported, by citing their right to a family life.

Last February, Home Secretary Theresa May wrote an article for the Mail on Sunday expressing her fury at the way some judges were ignoring changes she had made to the Immigration Rules. The amendment meant, she asserted, that "in the usual case, any foreign national who was convicted of a serious crime should be deported, regardless of whether or not the criminal had a family in the UK".

Mrs May quoted one judge, who had declined to deport a foreign criminal, as having said that "Parliament has not altered the legal duty of the judge determining appeals to decide on proportionality for him or herself".

So it is that the Queen's Speech will include plans for a new law specifically aimed at judges who remain unconvinced, as Mrs May puts it, "that the law is what Parliament says it is, not what they think it should be".

The State Opening of Parliament has always been a reminder to the powerful of how far their writ runs.

It has found "significant evidence of systemic and serious sexual and physical abuse".

We had a huge police investigation in the 1990s and we had a public inquiry led by a former judge, as well as other inquiries.

And here we are all these years later, we look at this again and discover that it is far more widespread - over four decades, going right back to the early 1960s.

Previously, we thought it started during a period from the mid-1970s and the investigation now covers, not just three or four children's homes, but 18 children's homes.

We are talking about systemic, serious sexual and physical abuse that, it would appear, has been conducted by a large number of people.

There are 84 names - 75 men but nine women as well.

If the allegations are true, it's an appalling scandal and a scandal that, as some victims have said, was left unresolved for far too long.

Having set itself this conundrum, however, the UKPI - published by the Institute for Economics and Peace - cannot come up with a convincing answer, not least because the decrease in violence is not confined to Britain. In fact, a similar phenomenon can be seen in almost every developed nation.

The report notes that "there is no commonly accepted explanation by criminologists for the fall in violence in many of the world's regions including the US, Western Europe, Eastern and Central Europe, as well as the UK".

It goes on to admit that "many of the more common theories" refuse to stand up to scrutiny. The global financial crisis has seen many countries suffer severely in economic terms and yet levels of peacefulness have increased. The idea that violent crime goes up when the economy goes down is not backed by the evidence.

Do more police officers mean fewer acts of violence? "The result is seemingly counterintuitive," admits the peace index report. The correlation between policing levels and violent crime in the UK is "very weak", it concludes.

Any specific relationship between police numbers and murder, gun crime or public disorder is "even weaker", the analysis finds. "This suggests that the reductions in police numbers have not played a significant role in either reducing or increasing crime."

The link between violent crime levels and criminal justice policy seems thin. After all, violence has fallen in most developed nations irrespective of their use of prisons, the severity of sentences or the activities of law enforcement officers.

The analysis searches for correlations between violence levels and other factors. Looking at the list of most and least peaceful local authorities, it is obvious that relatively prosperous rural areas are more peaceful than deprived urban areas.

And least peaceful - all in London:

The 17 most violent authorities in the UK are all London boroughs which contain pockets of extreme poverty, while the most peaceful places tend to be wealthier areas in the south and east of England.

The analysis concludes that "peace is strongly linked to deprivation in income, employment opportunities, health and disability, education and in access to housing and services". However, inequality does not seem to be such a strong correlate with violence.

"The disparity between income levels (the Gini coefficient), while still significant, has a much weaker correlation with peace than poverty'," the report notes.

This goes against a number of research papers which have suggested it is the gap between rich and poor that matters, rather than poverty itself, when it comes to public disorder and violent crime.

The researchers claim that when individuals and families live below a certain level of income and struggle to meet day-to-day needs, this "increases the chance of living in violent communities with anti-social behaviour".

And least peaceful

If this is correct, it would suggest that during tough economic times, one might expect to see violence levels rise. But as the report itself points out, this does not appear to be happening during the current downturn.

Perhaps it is too early for the impact to have fed through, but I do wonder whether the analysis is focusing on traditional social and criminal justice theories when the answer to the quite remarkable drop in violence may lie somewhere else entirely.

If one accepts that this phenomenon is affecting developed nations across the planet irrespective of their domestic policies, it seems logical that we are seeing the consequence of a global effect.

Could it be that global communication, particularly the internet, is having a civilising and calming effect on people's behaviour? We live in an age when, for the first time in history, people from all backgrounds can get an understanding of how the rest of the world lives without needing to leave the comfort of their living room.

This mass socialising may be changing attitudes. In the UK there is good evidence that people are becoming more tolerant of difference and less tolerant of violence.

And least peaceful

Behaviour that may once have been accepted with a sad shrug now demands a political response. Attitudes towards domestic violence, child abuse and drunken aggression have changed enormously in the past few decades, both at an administrative and social level.

It will be interesting to see, for example, how the international outrage at the rape and sexual abuse of some women in India affects behaviour in the sub-continent. In the UK, scandals around historic acts of violence - notably the Jimmy Savile case - may also reflect what might be called a new morality.

I am often impressed by the way in which school children campaign against discrimination and prejudice. Youngsters are very quick to accuse parents of being sexist or racist or some other -ist following the most innocuous remarks.

The riddle of peacefulness remains a riddle. But there is huge value in trying to understand what is happening - not least for the day when the figures start to move the other way.

In the doorway of a sports shop near St Paul's Cathedral, I met 62-year-old John, who had put on a union jack shirt before heading to the funeral from Suffolk.

"I am here to represent the silent majority," he said. "Mrs Thatcher always stood by her views. These days there's no difference between the three current party leaders."

"The current political scene is so bland," agreed his friend Tim, a former bank manager from Essex who yearned for the passion which defined the political scene during the Thatcher years.

Asking why people had made the journey, again and again it came back to this same idea. Mrs Thatcher embodied something they felt had also died - conviction politics. They grieved for a time when leadership was defined by a single-minded, straightforward sense of purpose and direction.

"She was a strong leader, in contrast to what we have today," Julia told me. A solicitor on maternity leave, she had brought five-month-old Freddy to witness a moment in history. "I wouldn't vote Conservative today, but I would have voted for Margaret Thatcher."

With the passing of time, the nuance of events tends to fade. Like sunshine stealing back the colours from a poster in a window, history often turns our memories into black and white. So it is with Margaret Thatcher.

"Which side are you on?" sang Billy Bragg in 1987, as Mrs T asked if people were "one of us". It was a time of social and political tribalism - bosses v workers, left v right, Labour v Tory. Apparently stripped of the discomfort of compromise, politics is remembered as simpler and better.

Having a cup of tea before the funeral, I bumped into David Cameron's advisor Steve Hilton.

Special report: Baroness Thatcher, 1925-2013

Watch as Thatcher defends Thatcherism

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"She was always a fighter," he told me. Reflecting on the recent "ding-dong" over her memory, he said: "She would see this controversy as evidence that she made great things happen, because you never make great things happen without shaking things up."

I detected a disappointment that coalition politics meant a Borgen-style search for consensus. As we chatted, we were joined by the Conservative Culture Minister Ed Vaizey. "She was radical and had clear views," he said, explaining why Baroness Thatcher was such a political heroine. "She questioned everything. She constantly asked why do things have to be this way."

For those few who lined the funeral route to protest at what Margaret Thatcher stood for, there was the same disappointment that contemporary politics is conducted on the middle ground.

One protester, Hillary Jones, said: "So many people internationally and domestically could have done with the help of a strong lady like that, but instead she turned her back on us and she looked after the rich and the powerful. So we're here to turn our backs on her now."

Among the black-suited crowds mustering in the shadow of the great dome of St Paul's, I met a group of young people, most of who were not even born when she left office. They'd come up from Wales to pay their respects.

"We are all Thatcher's children," said David, who now works as a financial trader. "The consensus politics of the 1970s was not working. We needed Thatcherism."

Sam, a 20-year-old history student and Conservative activist from Carmarthenshire, nodded. "She is my inspiration," he told me. His friend Alice, also 20, described Lady Thatcher as a big deal. "She had fantastic suits and hair," she said.

Eon Matthews is a Falklands veteran who served in the navy and was attending as a representative of the South Atlantic Medal Association. "She was a woman who knew how to run a house," he said. "Margaret Thatcher seemed to get things done."

It was a point echoed by others. Steve from Hertfordshire said that at the end of the 1970s, someone had to emerge to take matters in hand. "England was a pretty grey place pre-1979 and it had to change."

He glanced up at the flat grey sky overhead.

The Department of Work and Pensions, however, argues the changes will benefit poorer regions because they "help people back into work - which will benefit the economy more than simply abandoning them to claim benefits year after year."

Here, laid bare, is a fundamental question for the future well-being of the UK. If Iain Duncan-Smith is able to squeeze billions from the welfare bill by getting people into jobs, then he will have achieved what politicians of all hues have failed to do in decades. Deprived post-industrial towns and cities will bloom again.

But the concern is that the welfare reforms will actually take far more money out of fragile poor economies than rich ones, making old industrial areas even less attractive to investors and entrepreneurs. There won't be the jobs for claimants to get into.

The Sheffield Hallam research assesses the geographical consequence of welfare reforms by comparing claimant caseloads in local authorities and factoring in the DWP's own impact assessments. It calculates that, by 2015, a whopping £19bn will be taken out of working-age benefits each year - but the effects are far from even.

Ranking the overall impact in terms of the effect upon the average working-age adult in each place, the town hardest hit is Blackpool, where the annual loss per adult is calculated at £914. One really has to hope new jobs do come because this is a place with pockets of truly shocking deprivation. Over a quarter of the town receives working-age benefits.

One of the authorities affected least by the welfare reforms is Hart in Hampshire - a community which enjoys precisely zero wards designated as deprived. Here the average working-age adult will lose £241, according to the Sheffield Hallam study, just over a quarter of the impact felt in Blackpool.

Loss for each working-age adult a year

Source: Sheffield Hallam University

Loss for each working-age adult a year

Source: Sheffield Hallam University

In London, the contrast is stark. In the City of London, the loss per head is said to be just £177, while in neighbouring Westminster it is £821 - mostly down to the loss of housing benefit. The cap on housing benefit will cost the average Westminster adult £387 a year, while the under-occupancy charge - or bedroom tax - sees a further loss of £64.

Since the data looks at the effect on ALL working-age adults regardless of whether they receive benefits, the financial impact on individual claimants is even greater.

Changes to incapacity benefit hit hardest in south Wales and the west of Scotland.

Loss for each working-age adult a year

Source: Sheffield Hallam University

It is, of course, no surprise that changes to welfare affect those places where more people are claiming benefits. But according to one of the authors of the Sheffield Hallam research, Steve Fothergill, there are worrying economic and social consequences.

"A key effect of the welfare reforms will be to widen the gaps in prosperity between the best and the worst local economies across Britain. Our figures also show that the coalition government is presiding over national welfare reforms that will impact principally on individuals and communities outside its own political heartlands."

The counter argument is that it is precisely those communities which have become most reliant on benefits that can profit most from reforms designed to ensure people are always better off in work than on welfare.

The Department of Work and Pensions said this: "Around nine out of 10 working households will be better off by on average almost £300 a year as a result of changes to the tax and welfare system this month. Raising the personal allowance to £10,000 will have lifted 2.7m people out of income tax since 2010.

"These changes are essential to keep the benefits bill sustainable, so that we can continue to support people when they need it most across the UK."

The local and regional impact of welfare reform is of more than academic interest. If the government is right, deprived communities will experience a renaissance. If the researchers in Sheffield are right, the cuts to benefits will see the poorest communities in Britain suffer further decline.

The UK had been labelled the worst country in the west for a child to grow up in. Politicians, church leaders and charities complained that a generation was being failed.

The evidence for this gloomy prognosis was a Unicef report on child well-being in rich countries.

The UK emerged an ignominious 21st out of 21 developed nations and Time magazine ran a front cover suggesting British children were "unhappy, unloved and out of control".

Now we have the much anticipated update and similar voices are out in force to make the same point.

Education Minister David Laws says the report "lays bare Labour's failures on education and child well-being".

Save the Children warns about young people being left "without the investment that gives them a fair chance in life" and the Children's Society says the report "shows we still have a very long way to go".

Reading these responses one might imagine that Unicef had identified the same desperate and dismal findings that so shocked Britain when they reported in 2007.

But, actually, I think this document chronicles some really important progress.

Not everything is perfect, there are still huge challenges ahead, but there is much to welcome in the new report.

And to ignore the improvements is to risk maintaining the discussion of youth in the UK as one of problems rather than progress.

Look at the stats: Our young people are drinking less, smoking less, taking fewer drugs.

While half the countries in the report have seen their children getting fatter, in the UK fewer youngsters are overweight than in the previous report.

Teenagers are involved in less fighting and when you ask them about their own sense of life satisfaction, British kids report one of the biggest improvements in the western world.

Much is made of the report's findings on "education well-being".

It is true that the proportion of 15-19-year-olds who remain in education sees the UK at the bottom of the league table.

But this is a statistic likely to be transformed by changes in England which make education compulsory up to 17 this year and up to 18 in 2015. The figures for "Neets" should also be improved by the measure.

Actually, educational achievement by 15-year-olds in the UK compares more favourably with other developed countries than many might imagine.

They out-perform the Danes, the Irish, the French, the Americans - even the Swedes. We come 11th out of 29 rich nations - not good enough, perhaps, but hardly desperate.

The reasons for the gloomy response to the report are largely political.

The coalition government is quick to point out that report only compares data up to 2010 and is therefore a verdict on the previous administration. Small wonder they focus on the bad stuff.

Charities concerned with child welfare are also reluctant to sound too positive - not least because of anxieties over how austerity will impact on young people's lives in the coming years.

And it is quite right to point out that 16th in the overall well-being table is still not good enough. Why are our children apparently faring less well than those in the Czech Republic or Slovenia?

It is a British trait to obsess about the bad without giving proper recognition to the good.

Of course we shouldn't hang out the bunting and cry "job done!" but there is surely value in considering where and how we have achieved success.

Figures obtained by the BBC suggest about 6,000 people have been given vouchers for emergency food parcels by benefits officials in the last year.

The government says Job Centre staff are responding to people's needs.

But Labour says the figures show more people are suffering hardship.

The food banks are operated by the Trussell Trust, which has more than 325 of them in the UK. They provide at least three days' worth of nutritionally-balanced food for local people in crisis.

In all but exceptional cases, Trussell Trust food banks will only issue a food parcel to someone with a voucher from an accredited agency. Claimants are limited to emergency aid on three occasions.

Since October 2011 Job Centres have been able to issue vouchers for clients to access help at registered food charities.

The trust says the number of people being sent to them from unemployment officers has doubled in the last few months.

"We have had a lot through from Job Centres where very heavy sanctions have been imposed upon them and they have not been able to feed themselves," says Roslyn McVeigh, who manages two food banks near Glasgow.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said directing people to food banks was a short-term method of alleviating their financial problems.

"I've said to Job Centres, sort their problem out. If it is a case of food banks, Job Centres are meant to help passport people through to that so they can get them stable, so they can deal with their problems."

Mr Duncan Smith says he is proud of the fact that his government agreed that Job Centre staff could refer people to food banks.

"What would you prefer? Under the last government, Job Centre staff were not allowed to talk about it. My concern is that the individual who is in front of Job Centre staff can get access to everything they need to."

However, the figures are likely to be embarrassing for the government, which is introducing major reforms to the benefits system.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne says the revelation demonstrates that even welfare officials recognise the hardship being caused.

"Instead of sending people to jobs, our job centres are sending people to food banks.

"Yet instead of offering extra help, this Tory-led government is cutting taxes for millionaires. That tells you everything you need to know about this government's values."

In the last 12 months, the number of food parcels issued by Trussell Trust centres overall has reached almost 300,000 - more than double the year before.

Almost half of those being referred to the Trust by various agencies say a problem with benefits is the cause of the emergency.

You may recall the post - it asked whether the teen rebel is now a dying breed. I rattled off a string of statistics suggesting that youth behaviour (despite all the headlines) is far better than in my day. Sex, drugs, booze, fags, crime - teenage problems with these have all fallen hugely in the past few years.

Problems persist, of course, but the current crop of young people may be the most compliant since youth culture was born last century. And I think we need to consider why.

So, I am retracing a journey I took countless times as a teenager. The walk up the hill to Peter Symonds College in Winchester is familiar and strange in equal measure. Neglected synapses fire in warm recognition with each stride, but stepping back into my past is also disconcerting.

The landscape doesn't match my mental picture. New buildings alter and obscure views; there are unsettling alterations to once habitual trails; doorways to classrooms have been bricked up and reconfigured. (An elephant might feel like this when discovering a hotel has been built across his ancient migration route.)

The cavernous school hall, where I had quivered at the sight of dyspeptic masters in mortar boards and gowns, has become a welcoming pastel-carpeted management hub for a college that now teaches 3,600 sixth formers.

I spot the old headmaster's chair, once the seat of school authority, tucked in a corner. In a meaningless act of subversion, I pull it out and sit on it.

It isn't just the scenery that is different. The relationship between the adolescent and adult world has changed too.

I have brought some archive film of teddy boys, mods and rockers, hippies, punks and skinheads to show to the students. They smile at the sight of teenagers putting two pubescent fingers up at the older generation, but the footage is treated like source material in a 20th Century history class. A few appear to be taking notes.

I confide to them how I felt as a teenager when I first heard Anarchy in the UK by the Sex Pistols.

"It was an epiphany," I suggest, improbably. "I remember feeling that at last I had found music which reflected my anger and frustration at the way my parents' generation were running the world. The music and fashion of my day were designed to annoy the grown-ups," I explain.

The young faces are etched with what I take to be incomprehension, but may actually be pity.

When I ask them to suggest why they don't behave like that, a number of theories emerge.

One is that they are all too busy to rebel. A couple of the students say that the uncertainties of a job market, where employers routinely reject all but the best graduates, mean studies cannot be neglected. The persecuted swot of the past is often now celebrated as a model of geek chic.

I conduct an unscientific survey of Peter Symonds' students. Of the 337 teenagers who agree to answer my questions, almost two-thirds (64%) say studying is more important than hanging around with friends. Nine out of 10 think they are under more pressure than their parents to succeed academically.

Another explanation put forward for their generally conformist behaviour is that teenage subversion has itself been subverted by consumerism. "We buy what we are told to buy," one girl claims. "Capitalism has won."

Perhaps it has in the sense that the electronic gadgets and media tools flogged by global corporations now occupy huge chunks of their spare time. There is far less reason for a teenager to be bored, less opportunity for mischief or nuisance if they are in their bedrooms on Facebook or online gaming.

When I was a teenager, we did lots of hanging around. The Facebook of my day was the bus shelter. Research suggests that in the 1990s, about half of British teenagers spent most evenings out with their peers. Our survey of the Peter Symonds students finds, in that school at least, the figure is now closer to one in five.

Social media has also given today's teens a voice. "That is what the 60s and 70s rebels were all about," a boy tells me. "Young people wanted to be heard. Now we have that voice through Facebook and Twitter."

Teenagers have never been so tapped into technology - but is it taking over their lives? As part of BBC School Report's News Day, teenagers described the impact of technology and social media on their sleep, relationships and free time.

"When I go to bed and I'm supposed to be asleep, I sometimes talk to friends online or text them" - Sadia, Hackney in east London.

"If I'd been born 30 years ago, I still wouldn't have done any more sport. I'd have probably just been in the library a lot more" - Heather, Portsmouth

Read full Magazine article

It is an interesting point. New technology gives young people an opportunity to engage with wider society on equal terms. Teenagers are free to participate, protest and petition online.

In the 1970s, when I was a teenager, we defined ourselves in contrast to our parents' generation. We placed ourselves outside - literally and figuratively. Today's young people are not the same.

They still profess to feel different. My survey finds 84% agreeing their values are different to their parents' generation. "[But] these days, a teenager's mum and dad will often share the same tastes in music and in fashion," Sussex University historian Dr Lucy Robinson tells me.

As if to prove the point, when we go to Winchester University students' union midweek "bop", one girl politely introduces me to her parents who have come along with her. The generation gap has been bridged.

It is not just the subtle changes to the city's architecture that discombobulate me. Meeting some of today's teenagers in the place where I spent my adolescence, I find myself admiring their self-discipline and generosity while regretting the apparent muting of youthful challenge and confrontation.

Perhaps I am deluding myself. In the 70s, I may have occasionally put gel upon my hair, smeared mascara upon my eyes and arranged a sneer upon my lip, but I was really a middle-class grammar school boy masquerading as part-time punk.

The demonization of youth, which has so disfigured the relationship between adults and young people in Britain, has always been based on an urban myth. Teenagers became an easy scapegoat for an establishment spooked by rapid social change. True rebels were few and far between.

But I do think it is time we stopped kidding ourselves. Today's young people are, generally, behaving very well. And given how badly some of their parents behaved, that may be what contemporary teenage rebellion looks like.

The Editors is broadcast on BBC One on Monday 25 March at 23:15 GMT. It is also on BBC World News .

This week New Zealand publishes its Psychoactive Substances Bill, legislation which some believe will transform the international debate on drugs policy when it comes into force in August.

The new law is a response to the problem of "legal highs", but is being seized upon by reformers because it crosses a Rubicon - designing a legislative framework built upon regulation rather than prohibition.

As in Britain, the New Zealand government had attempted to control the influx of new psychoactive substances by imposing emergency restrictions under existing misuse of drugs legislation.

Unlike Britain, they have concluded that a "long-term and more effective solution" is to license the importation, manufacture and sale of all new psychoactive products.

In the same way as pharmaceutical companies must apply for a licence to sell a drug after extensive testing, so suppliers of legal highs will be able to market products in New Zealand if they can demonstrate they present a low risk of harm.

Rather than trying to ban every new drug that turns up, the legislation shifts responsibility to the manufacturer and the retailer.

Just as a bottle of aspirin can only be sold in certain outlets with all the warnings of the risks on the label, so recreational drugs will be available over the counter in New Zealand later this year.

There will be restrictions on sales to vulnerable consumers, particularly young people, and breaches of the rules could see manufacturers fined up to $500,000 (£275,000) or jailed for two years.

The legal highs dilemma reminds me of the panic that preceded the introduction of the Misuse of Drugs Act in the UK in 1971.

The home secretary at the time, Jim Callaghan, told Parliament how Britain faced a "pharmaceutical revolution" which presented such dangers that if the country was "supine in the face of them" it would quickly lead to "grave dangers to the whole structure of our society".

"Stimulants, depressants, tranquillisers, hallucinogens have all been developed during the last 10 years, and our society has not yet come to terms with the circumstances in which they should properly be used or in which they are regarded as being socially an evil," he explained.

Callaghan concluded that the answer was state prohibition - the criminal justice system would be the main tool to fight drug abuse. Those who argued that Britain should retain its traditional harm-reduction model were drowned out.

The New Zealand legislation comes at a key moment in the debate about global drugs policy, returning us to that moment in the late 60s when Britain and others took the fork in the road marked "prohibition".

This year has been designated by the United Nations as the start of an "intense preparatory process", before the General Assembly holds a special session in 2016 to "review the current policies and strategies to confront the global drug problem".

There is very little intensity or preparation in the UK, where the prime minister recently reiterated his opposition to even questioning the prohibition model.

When the Home Affairs select committee recommended a royal commission to consider alternatives in December, David Cameron instantly dismissed the idea arguing "we have a policy which is working in Britain".

You may recall, however, that in an interview with me, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg broke coalition ranks to demand a fundamental review of Britain's drug laws as part of Britain's preparations for the UN General Assembly meeting in three years time.

His aides told me Mr Clegg believes the UK needs to have at least considered the issues and how they might shape the EU's negotiating stance ahead of a UN session that has the capacity to rewrite the international drugs conventions.

What principles should guide Britain, Europe and the UN in considering a possible new approach to the problem of dangerous drugs?

The former head of the UK government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), Professor David Nutt has sent me his thoughts.

Prof Nutt, of course, was sacked by the last Labour government after publicly questioning the wisdom of the prohibition-based policy, but has subsequently been involved in helping the New Zealand government design their Psychoactive Substances Bill.

He has a wish list of principles for laws on drugs:

This is an interesting starting point for a debate ahead of the global drugs summit (UNGASS 2016 in the jargon) and I would be interested in readers' reaction to it.

How Britain and the European Union line up at the special session will probably be less important than the stance of the US, who were the architects of the current key international drug conventions.

Just before Christmas, President Obama was asked for his response to the decision of two US states, Washington and Colorado, to legalise the recreational use of marijuana. "It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it's legal," he said. "We've got bigger fish to fry."

While President Obama has re-stated his personal opposition to the legalisation of marijuana and maintains the official US government position, some have noted that he said he does not "at this point" support a change in direction.

With Uruguay announcing its intention to breach UN conventions and legalise marijuana under state control, Obama's stance on Colorado and Washington makes it very hard for the US to justify sanctions against such countries and provides ammunition for those who argue global drugs policy is no longer sustainable.

Could New Zealand's legislation to control legal highs be a blueprint for the future?

Under the so-called "bedroom tax" tenants will see their housing benefit reduced if they have one or more spare bedrooms.

The consequence, as revealed by the latest census, is that white Brits are now in a minority in London, making up just 45% of its residents.

So where have they gone to - and why did they leave?

I've been analysing and mapping the census data, and what emerges is a much more positive story than some headlines would make you think.

The movement of the white British is often characterised as white flight - the indigenous population forced out of their neighbourhoods by foreign migrants. That may be part of the story, but I think the evidence suggests it is also about working class aspiration and economic success.

Trying to track internal migrants is never easy. Just because the population of one place has fallen and another has risen does not mean residents moved between them. But there are some clues as to where London's white British migrated to between the censuses of 2001 and 2011.

While the capital's white British population fell by 620,000, the white British population in the rest of England and Wales increased by 220,000. (The overall fall of 400,000 is explained by a low birth rate and emigration.)

These maps show the change to the white British population in local authorities in England and Wales between 2001 and 2011. (Click between the three headings to see how the white British population is seemingly shifting around the country.)

London's dramatic loss of white British residents is represented by a splash of yellow and orange. Outside the capital, the dominant blues tell a story of an increasing white British population. In some places the rise is quite marked.

South Derbyshire

13.7%

North Kesteven, Lincolnshire

13%

Uttlesford, Essex

11.8%

East Northamptonshire

10.9%

West Lindsey, Lincolnshire

10.7%

East Cambridgeshire

9.7%

Mid Suffolk

9.7%

South Norfolk

9.7%

Mid Devon

9.5%

Forest Heath, Suffolk

8.8%

St Edmundsbury, Suffolk

8.7%

Kettering, Northamptonshire

8.7%

The dozen authorities with the highest percentage increase in the white British population are almost all found in eastern England. Only mid-Devon falls outside a horseshoe of largely rural authorities extending south and east from the Fens.

It would appear that, in the first decade of the 21st Century, the dream of escaping to the country became a reality for tens of thousands of urban white Britons. But did they leave willingly or were they forced to move?

To find out, I have been to Barking and Dagenham, a London borough which has seen a phenomenal change in its cultural make-up over the past decade or so. In 2001, the census records that more than 80% of residents were white British. By 2011, it was statistically in the minority - just 49% of people in the area described themselves as white and British.

The story of Barking and Dagenham is the story of the white working class EastEnders. In the 1920s and 30s, tens of thousands of families were moved out of the inner city slums and into the huge council estates which had been built in the borough.

The 27,000 houses on the Becontree estate were described as homes for heroes, often allocated to the families of World War I servicemen. Another wave of Cockney sparrows built their nests in the area, having been bombed out of the East End during the Blitz in WWII.

This was a real step up for many families. Their new homes had indoor toilets and often a small garden. When Ford opened its giant plant at Dagenham in 1931, tens of thousands of jobs provided income security in the midst of profound economic depression.

Although Barking and Dagenham's population declined slightly in the 1960s and 70s, the last years of the 20th Century saw it rise again. Many families took advantage of the right to buy their council house at 30% of its market value - at least two-thirds of the Becontree estate was sold to the private sector.

In 2000, the borough was among the very few places in Greater London where you could still buy a three-bedroom house for under £100,000. The capital's buoyant property market meant that anyone who got on the housing ladder would see their home become a valuable investment during the first 10 years of the new millennium.

The decade also saw the Ford plant contract and ultimately the company announced it was closing down. The economic engine of the borough was being switched off, leading many of the local people to think about their future. In the first 10 years of the new century, the number of full-time jobs in Barking and Dagenham fell by a quarter.

For many white British households, the 2000s had left them without a job but with a sizeable chunk of capital in their home. Some had also benefited from redundancy pay-outs and pension deals offered by Ford. It was a cue for the families who had left London's East End in the middle of the 20th Century to move on again at the start of the 21st.

A closer look at London reveals how many neighbourhoods in the outer boroughs have seen significant falls in the white British population - Newham, Brent, Haringey, Enfield, Ealing, Hounslow, Merton and Lewisham almost form a ring around the capital. Only the affluent boroughs of Richmond and Kingston along the river to the west prevent the completion of the orange doughnut.

Inner London saw some places losing the white British population, but quite a number - coloured blue - bucked the trend and recorded an increase.

Even central boroughs that experienced a decline in white British may have seen an increase in the number of white residents. Kensington and Chelsea recorded 17,300 fewer white British residents but the category "white other" now makes up 28% of the local population. The immigrants here are rich white Europeans and Russians.

It is a different story in Barking and Dagenham.

The people moving into the borough tend to be of black African heritage. I was introduced to Victor and Victoria, whose parents came to Britain from Ghana in the 50s. He works for London Transport and she is a nurse in the NHS - typical of the professional black families who've arrived from inner London to take advantage of available housing as the borough's white residents leave.

With a time-lapse camera, it would appear that London is pulsing as generations and ethnic groups move up and move out.

On Dagenham's main shopping street, I met a number of white locals who were planning to leave the borough. One male pensioner was hoping to relocate to Clacton - a seaside town on the Essex coast now nicknamed Little Dagenham. A local councillor told me how his parents had sold up and bought a large cottage with a quarter-acre of garden in Lincolnshire. Another woman says she had her eyes set on a little cottage in Leigh-on-Sea near Southend.

Leigh is a particular favourite. Many residents from Barking and Dagenham will have taken the train along the Thames Estuary towards Southend on a work excursion - the old beano to the seaside. Some still do, looking out of the window as the industrial landscape gives way to green fields and open wetlands teeming with birds.

Over the past decade or so, towns along the railway line between Fenchurch St and Shoeburyness have seen significant increases to the white British population. In Westcliff, part of Southend, I met a family who recently cashed in their three-bedroom house in Barking for a six-bedroom home by the sea. They keep bumping into old school friends, realising that they were joining a sizeable population of migrants from the borough.

The years between the last two censuses have witnessed significant cultural change in London, particularly in the outer boroughs. Some white British may have moved because their neighbourhood has been culturally transformed, the tea rooms and restaurants replaced by takeaway chicken shops and halal supermarkets serving the new arrivals.

But there is also a story here of white working class families that escaped from the slums and bombed-out East End in the middle of the last century, found new opportunities in London's outer boroughs and then, in the past decade - often having prospered from the housing boom and the capital's economic growth - cashed in their assets and bought themselves that little cottage in the countryside or by the sea.

It is a story of aspiration. It is a story of success.

Fords Dagenham inform me that a recent reorganisation means 3,500 people remain employed at the plant.

Councillors in a number of northern authorities say the New Homes Bonus effectively moves millions from deprived neighbourhoods to affluent parts of the country.

The government says the scheme fairly rewards councils which allow much needed homes to be built. Here's my report looking into the issues.

Despite a much greater focus on domestic crime by police, it is a number that has barely changed in four years.

The data comes from the Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) which regularly asks people about their personal experience of crime. Breaking the numbers down reveals that 1.2 million victims were women and 800,000 were men, a far higher proportion of male sufferers than people might have thought. Domestic abuse is not just a women's issue.

The survey suggests, though, that it is an issue of the poor, the sick and the separated.

The pain of relationship breakdown is vivid in these figures. Among couples who had separated, 21% of women and 11% of men were victims of domestic abuse. For those in a marriage, the figure is 3% for both sexes.

Women who are unemployed are more than twice as likely to have experienced domestic violence or abuse in the last year than those with a job, 15% compared with 6%. For men it is 7% against 5%.

There is a clear correlation between lower incomes and higher risks of being a victim of domestic abuse. For men and women with incomes of less than £10,000 a year, the proportion affected last year was 9% and 12% respectively. Among those earning £50,000 or more, the risk falls to 4%.

Those with a long-standing illness or disability are also in greater danger - 13% of women in that category and 7% of men suffered domestic abuse last year compared with a general likelihood of 7% and 5% respectively.

These are often repeat crimes. A fifth of victims say they were affected at least three times, almost a third said they had suffered domestic abuse at least twice.

This data echoes the finding from a new Freedom of Information request that shows up to a third of domestic incidents recorded by the police are classified as repeat incidents. The FoI request was published on Thursday by the Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who says the scale of domestic violence is "disturbingly high".

"Some police forces and local councils do a great job working together and some are piloting early intervention schemes to identify and help those most at risk, but everyone could do more," Ms Cooper argues. "We need a new national board to set standards and drive change."

Read her full article

The same FoI request also shows that one in 10 of all 999 calls to the police relate to incidents of domestic violence. In some force areas, it is as high as one in five.

This might actually be a positive development. Victims are less reluctant to contact the police and more likely to trust them to deal with their cases sensitively and seriously.

Evidence for that comes in the official figures on rape. While the crime survey suggests little significant change in the incidence of rape over the last few years, the number of rapes reported to the police has risen from about 6,600 in 1997 to 16,000 in 2011/12.

Nevertheless, with the survey data suggesting violent crime has halved since 1995, the prevalence and intractability of domestic abuse is a cause for concern. The government says it regards the issue as a priority, and from next month the definition of domestic violence will be widened to include those aged 16-17 who are subject to psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional abuse.

The UK government has always been strangely reluctant to spell out what is expected from its people. Citizenship has been an essentially passive legal status involving few demands beyond obeying the law.

It comes a second before six o'clock each evening on Radio 4, between the Westminster chimes and the heavy cracked bong of Big Ben.

The legislation, which became law last May, is resulting in many thousands of DNA profiles being removed from the UK's giant DNA database - people arrested but not convicted of a serious offence after three years. Ministers argue that the previous approach, in which DNA samples were kept indefinitely, undermined the freedom of innocent citizens.