Politicians are calling for a full statement from Cathy Jamieson

Disclosure Scotland is running checks on all the British offenders convicted overseas but whose names were not added to police databases.

It comes after Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson updated ministers at a Scottish cabinet meeting.

However, opposition politicians urged her to make a full statement.

On Tuesday, police south of the border raised concerns that details of serious crimes - including murders, sex offences and robberies - had been left in Whitehall files and not added to police databases.

Details of 260 have now been put on the police national computer but Home Secretary John Reid claimed that the remaining 280 cannot be added to the system until more details are obtained from the countries where they were convicted.

'Studying implications'

A spokesman for the Scottish Executive said officials were liaising with Scottish organisations and the Home Office to study the implications and assured the public that any Scottish links, such as place of residence or birth, would be flagged up as the names were added to the police computers.

"Disclosure Scotland have confirmed they are planning to run a check against the Home Office cases as they are entered onto the police national computer," he added.

"This will ensure that the identities from the Home Office backlog are checked against Disclosure Scotland's 1.2 million standard and enhanced disclosures issued since 2002."

The backlog of some 27,000 less serious cases is expected to take three months to clear, and an internal inquiry into the Home Office's handling of the notifications should be complete within six weeks.

We need assurance that Scottish people are not at risk. Jeremy Purvis Liberal Democrat MSP

Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Conservative leader, called on Ms Jamieson to outline the full impact of the situation.

"We need to know how this fiasco at Whitehall has impacted upon Scotland," she said.

"It is a very serious state of affairs when potentially over 500 criminals, including murderers, rapists and paedophiles, could have returned to work in the UK without any record of their conviction on the British database, which is used by all of the UK's police forces."

The Scottish Police Service stands ready to work with these agencies and to offer our support to address any issues arising Chief Constable Peter Wilson Acpos Q&A: Foreign crimes vetting Send us your comments

Ms Goldie's call was backed by Liberal Democrat backbencher Jeremy Purvis, who said: "This latest blunder shows that the reality of the Home Office is far from the rhetoric of John Reid, who assured everybody that he was coming in to fix the problems.

"The Scottish justice minister must be open about how the executive is involved in the investigation now under way, but inevitably there must be a UK solution as soon as possible."

Chief Constable Peter Wilson, chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, said police were liaising with the executive and the Scottish Criminal Record Office to find out if and how Scotland was affected.