Skip to main content

Proceeding contribution from Alan Johnson (Labour) in the House of Commons on Monday, 10 October 2011. It occurred during Debate on bill on Protection of Freedoms Bill (Programme) (No. 3).


Protection of Freedoms Bill (Programme) (No. 3)

It puzzles me. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), is an honourable man. He was engaged in these debates in 2010 when the Labour Government were proposing what became the Crime and Security Act. I thought that things would have moved on since then. I read the record of the Committee stage of this Bill and saw the arguments put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), and I find the paucity of the Government's case astounding. They latched on to something called the Scottish model. Incidentally, nobody has challenged me about there being no basis of any research for the three-year provision—Labour was in power, by the way, so I am not knocking other parties. This was a figure plucked out of the air. The Government are reluctant to examine this issue on the basis of the evidence, even to the extent of completely ignoring the police, who do have a bit of expertise in this area. In 1995, a 17-year-old girl was walking home from a night out in Banbury when she was forced into a car by two men, taken to an isolated area and repeatedly raped. In 2003, Lee Ainsby was arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and a DNA sample was taken. Two years later, in 2005, the evidence from the rape case was re-analysed and the DNA profiles were loaded into the national database—one matched, that of Lee Ainsby. He had committed a non-serious offence and he would not have been on that database under the Government's proposals. A sample taken from his brother matched the second sample and so both of those rapists were caught and convicted.


Secondary information

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
533 c100 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Subjects
Civil liberties Data protection Criminal proceedings Databases Counter-terrorism CCTV Biometrics Crime prevention Appeals Arrests Land DNA Immobilisation of vehicles Fixed penalties Motor vehicles Parking Personal records Parking offences Automatic number plate recognition
Legislation
Protection of Freedoms Bill 2010-12
Link
View this Proceeding contribution on www.publications.parliament.uk