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National DNA Database

The hon. Lady makes a point about unintended consequences, and I do not intend to stray into the wider debate about youth offending and the prevention of crime. However, society must consider some of the messages that are being sent out and how, practically, we can break into generational issues and try to stop what we have described as the conveyor belt to crime. As to how we have got where we are, the hon. Lady described that quite clearly in recounting her own experience. I was interested to read on her website about the clinic that she set up with Liberty to provide advice to young people whose DNA had been retained by the police. It threw up the issue of inconsistency and the lack of guidance and certainty for those young people—and, as we have heard this afternoon, for the police—about the appropriate course of action. I therefore hope that we shall continue the debate in the weeks ahead, when we reach the detailed consideration of the Crime and Security Bill announced in the Queen's Speech. We will need a lot of detailed debate, and I hope that the hon. Lady will be permitted to sit as a member of the Public Bill Committee, to contribute her experience to the scrutiny. The issues that have been raised today are the very ones that we shall need to drill down into, in considering the detail of the Government's proposals. There has been a shift because of the S and Marper judgment, but I would argue that it has not gone far enough. In attempting to understand the Government's methodology and approach, we will have an interesting debate. In some ways we are starting that this afternoon, but it will continue. I hope that the continuing debate will be well supported and that hon. Members will participate so that we can get the important scrutiny and valid debate that we need in this place; so that we can get a fair, reasonable and proportionate balance between the interests of the state in preventing crime, and of the individual in terms of privacy and human rights; and so that what Parliament does to reflect the European Court judgment is appropriate. It was interesting to hear the continuation of the debate that the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) and I have been having with the Minister. This is possibly the fourth occasion when we have had the pleasure of debating the issues. It is important, because the issues are fundamental to the balance of the society we want to create. The Government and state approach, and the relationship of that to the individual, are starkly brought into focus by the issue of the retention of DNA. Nothing is much more personal than the retention of people's genetic make-up by the state. I start in a position of consensus with the Government because I welcome the fact that they have at least acknowledged that the DNA itself—the base material—will be kept for only a limited period. I think that they have said it will be for six months. Therefore, what will be retained on the DNA database will be a profile comprising, effectively, lots of numbers that relate to the DNA that has been taken. At least the Government have accepted that the human material shall be retained only for a limited period. Then we get into the detail of retention of the profile, what the matching of a profile might mean, and whether the retention of that profile itself for the time suggested is appropriate. The retention of cellular samples is particularly intrusive given the wealth of genetic and health information that they contain. The use of the technology must involve the right balance between the promotion of the wider public interest and public safety and the protection of important private life interests. That is obviously central to this afternoon's debate. As Professor Jonathan Montgomery, the chair of the Human Genetics Commission, notes:""DNA evidence plays a significant role in bringing criminals before the courts and securing convictions. But it is not clear how far holding DNA profiles on a central database improves police investigations. We have to strike a proper balance between identifying offenders and protecting privacy, including that of innocent people—we should not compromise that privacy without good reason."" That is a good description of the focus that is needed in the debate—on those principles that Professor Montgomery identified. The UK, as the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington mentioned, has proportionately the largest DNA database in the world. We have approximately 4.3 million profiles. That equates to 10 per cent. of the population of England and Wales, if one breaks it down by the profiles that have been added by police forces in England and Wales. One might have thought that retaining all that data would result in a significant increase in the detection of crime—that, by virtue of the growth in DNA records and the amount of material held, there would be a growth in the number of cases solved, assuming that that is the driving factor. However, the number of DNA detections for 2008-09 is 17,607. The Minister has argued in the past that the reduction in the number of DNA detections is simply a consequence of a reduction in crime. First, I do not accept that argument. Secondly, even if one did accept it, one would still need to explain why the proportion of crimes detected by DNA has fallen: the figure two years ago was 0.76 per cent., and in the past year it was 0.67 per cent. Similarly, the proportion of crimes detected in which a DNA match was available was 36.5 per cent. two years ago, and 32.4 per cent. last year. Therefore, I do not accept the argument that a reduction in DNA detections is the result of a reduction in crime. So, something is happening here. I would be interested to know whether the Minister has looked at the situation in Scotland, which operates a different and much narrower system, but where DNA detections are higher than in England and Wales. Questions must be asked about the use of a blanket approach to detect and solve crime and provide safety, because the detection rate—I stand to be challenged on this—seems lower in England and Wales than it is in Scotland. That raises some interesting questions. I do not make that point in a directly partisan way, but if we are trying to use a more evidence-based approach, we need to understand why that system is more effective, as our sole purpose is to detect and solve crime. I was interested to read the Human Genetics Commission's recent report, which noted:""There is insufficient evidence at present to be able to say what use holding DNA profiled from different people is—this evidence is urgently needed to support decisions about the scope of the database"." I looked at the approach the Government started with, prior to the S and Marper judgment, which obviously still pervades today. It was interesting to note in the judgment that the Government's policy was described as not depending on innocence or guilt, which is clearly how we understand it. In a further submission in the course of that case, the Government argued that the fingerprints and samples had been lawfully taken and that their retention is not related to the fact that the people involved were originally suspected of committing a crime,""the sole reason for their retention being to increase the size and, therefore, the use of the database in identification of offenders in the future."" If there was a policy of simply growing the database for the sake of it, that is worrying, as we are starting to hear reports—I do not know how grounded they are—of police arresting people, allegedly for the purposes of collecting DNA. I welcome the fact that the Government, following the S and Marper judgment, appear to have recognised that the Big Brother approach is unacceptable. As a result, we now have the proposals that were originally put forward in the consultation documents published in the summer, as has been mentioned. That was reflected in the Home Secretary's statement in November, as well as in the Crime and Security Bill, which will have further consideration by the House. It is odd that we got to that position, because, as the hon. Member for Chesterfield rightly pointed out, we had, during the passage of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 in the previous Session, some heated debates about the fact that the Government originally simply wanted to give a blank cheque and to deal with the matter through statutory instrument and order-making power. That was utterly unacceptable, and I am pleased that they brought forward primary legislation to address the valid and serious concerns of many hon. Members' about the use of such powers on a matter with such substantive and significant implications for private life. In his statement on 11 November, the Home Secretary said that, since the publication of the consultation document over the summer, the Home Office had""sought to further the evidence base through additional research."—[Official Report, 11 November 2009; Vol. 499, c. 26WS.]" We have heard that the research published alongside the consultation document in the summer was not peer-reviewed, was premature and did not take the correct approach, and I think that the Home Office has accepted that that research did not provide the evidence base it sought to procure. It would be interesting to hear what further analysis the Government have now undertaken, because I am aware of the document, "DNA retention policy: Re-arrest hazard rate analysis", which was published alongside the Home Secretary's statement. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what the preparation of that document involved. Is it an internal Home Office document, was there some external work conducted and, if so, who conducted it and was it peer-reviewed? We must know that so that we are not in the situation we were in before in relation to the previous published analysis. What robustness has been attached to the document before us? The approach the Government have sought to take to justify the six-year period, I understand, is based on that analysis document. The approach they have taken is to try to match arrest rate to arrest rate and provide a graph for how that applies to the population in general. Some interesting points come out of the document published by the Home Office to support its proposals, because it has attached various caveats to the analysis that state that in measuring the graph, to try to support the justification, the lines are measured with some degree of uncertainty. The banding, therefore, has a high potential for error, which is reflected and represented in the document itself. The document states:""However, it should be remembered that this is an estimated maximum which is based solely on a consideration of relative risks. Other considerations could result in an actual policy which is longer or shorter than six years—the evidence we present in this paper is not able to say what this final decision should be."" Therefore, in fairness, that document could not be said to be in any way conclusive. Indeed, it suggests that after three years, the sharp dissipation in the hazard curve starts to level off, which supports setting a limit at the three-year point. Interestingly, even when one burrows down into the detail of the evidence document the Home Office published alongside its proposals for a six-year period, one does not find the robustness of approach that might be presented as supporting the Home Office's case. We have several questions on the proposals in the Crime and Security Bill, which will be debated by the House in greater detail at a later date. However, before I finish my speech, I have one question for the Minister on the advice and consideration that the Home Office has taken on the legality of the blanket, indiscriminate, six-year period, which would not take into account any specific crime. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has written a letter to the Council of Europe, stating of even the revised proposals:""This fails to address the Committee's decision that 6 years for non-serious offences lacks the required level of proportionality. The Commission believes that treating adults in this category the same regardless of type of offence is too indiscriminate and lacks the required level of proportionality. It does not comply with Committee of Ministers Recommendations Rec(92)1."" It is important to put on the record what consideration the Government have given, even in introducing these proposals, to whether they are compliant with the terms of the European convention on human rights. Indeed, I believe that the Home Secretary's statement in November implied that there was some question whether they were compliant. He stated:""Although the ECHR"—" the European Court of Human Rights—""suggested that the seriousness of the alleged offence should be a factor in determining what length of retention was proportionate, the best available evidence indicates that the type of offence a person is first arrested for is not a good indicator of the seriousness of offence he might subsequently be arrested for or convicted of in future."—[Official Report, 11 November 2009; Vol. 499, c. 26WS.]" That statement was made by the Home Secretary. We can, I am sure, have a detailed discussion about this in future, but it would be interesting to hear responses from the Minister on those specific points. My party takes a different view from the Government on the retention of DNA. We believe that the DNA profiles of those arrested for a crime of violence or a sexual offence could be retained for three years with a potential extension for a further two years if a court was satisfied that that was appropriate. That proportionate approach is similar to the one used in Scotland and was specifically recognised by the European Court in the S and Marper judgment as being compliant with the convention. We believe that it strikes an appropriate balance between the interests of the state in seeking to solve crime and protect the public, and the privacy interests of the individual citizen. I look forward to continuing this important debate when the Government reintroduce their Crime and Security Bill in the Commons in the new year, and I look forward to hearing the Minister's response to some of the questions that have been raised this afternoon.