Lord Justice Sedley said the Wales and England system, under which 4m people's DNA is held whether guilty or cleared of a crime, was "indefensible".
He added it would be fairer to include "everybody, guilty or innocent", as it was biased against ethnic minorities.
Ministers said DNA helped tackle crime, but there were no plans for a voluntary national or compulsory UK database.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown said to expand it would create "huge logistical and bureaucratic issues" and civil liberty concerns.
Shadow home secretary David Davis called for a Parliamentary debate and described the system for adding people to the database as arbitrary and erratic.
Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, accused the government of a "cloak and dagger strategy" over the database.
"There is no earthly reason why someone who has committed no crime should be on the database in the first place, yet the government is shoving thousands of innocent people's DNA details on to the database every month," he said.
The DNA database - which is 12 years old - grows by 30,000 samples a month taken from suspects or recovered from crime scenes.
There has already been criticism of the database - the largest in the world - because people who are found innocent usually cannot get their details removed.
In one case, Dyfed-Powys Police stored the DNA of pensioner Jeffrey Orchard, from Pembrokeshire, after he was wrongly arrested for criminal damage.
Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said the database had helped police solve as many as 20,000 crimes a year.
Since 2004, the data of everyone arrested for a recordable offence in England and Wales - all but the most minor offences has remained on the system regardless of their age, the seriousness of their alleged offence and whether or not they were prosecuted.
It includes some 24,000 samples from young people between 10 and 17 years old, who were arrested but never convicted.
In Scotland, DNA samples taken when people are arrested must be destroyed if the individual is not charged or convicted.
Stephen Sedley, who is one of England's most experienced appeal court judges, said: "Where we are at the moment is indefensible.
He said he knew of cases where a serious offender, who had escaped conviction, had ultimately been brought to justice by DNA evidence that may have been otherwise destroyed. - DDNEWS
