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Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, quite rightly said that I voiced some sympathy for her amendments when she moved them in July. I suggested that she should come back to them. However, I note that the amendment that she has moved today is significantly different from the earlier version. In July she was asking for photographs to be destroyed after a year if they are not being used, while that has now been reduced rather drastically to two weeks. It is possible that the noble Baroness has diluted the strength of her argument by producing quite such a tight timeframe. Nevertheless, the Minister, back in July, made a suggestion that a better method than amending PACE codes, which was one option, might be to work with ACPO to ensure that all forces are aware of the implications of the judgment in Wood, which found that the taking of photographs at public order events is not unlawful, but that the continuing retention of photographs will generally have to be justified by the existence of clear grounds for suspecting that the individual photographed may have committed an offence at the event in question. We would be interested to hear more details from the Minister about what steps the Government have taken in the months since then to engage with ACPO in this way. For the moment, I think we prefer that approach, and would prefer to hear whether the Government have done anything in that direction, rather than endorsing the noble Baroness’s rather overrestrictive amendment.