Westwood apologised at the Bichard Inquiry, which is investigating how Huntley, now in jail for the murder of two Soham schoolgirls, was allowed to get a job as their school caretaker.
Humberside police said it was required by the Data Protection Act to get rid of the details under its policy of automatically weeding information about acquittals or discontinued cases from the national computer after 42 days.
Earlier in the inquiry, retired Humberside detective inspector Peter Billam said the force's child protection database was "unreliable" as an intelligence tool and that he rarely used it.
- www.bichardinquiry.org.
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