Just how useful is the DNA database in crime detection?

There's a great set of figures from the Home Office in a written answer that blows a whole in the line that the "DNA database is a vital crime fighting tool".Over the past four years, crime detection that used DNA matching, represented between 0.6% and 0.7% of the total recorded crime in the country.

That's hardly a "vital" tool now is it? Of course, we'll be reminded that if it wasn't for assuming guilt and taking DNA samples of anyone you arrest then some murder from 25 years might not have been solved, but still, little more than a half of one percent of crime relies on the DNA database?

Is that a ringing endorsement of its importance?