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Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Hamwee for moving her amendment. It relates to the briefing from the information commissioner that was circulated prior to the Committee stage. He expressed some concern that the reference in Clause 2 to the conclusion of the investigation was too open-ended. I am sure that we would all wish the police to be able to conclude every investigation swiftly with either a conviction or conclusion that no crime has been committed. But, we would all acknowledge that in reality that is not the case, as the noble Lord, Lord Dear, has explained. There will often be cases when it is impossible to identify a suspect immediately and when evidence must be retained for a significant period in the hope of identifying a suspect in the future. My noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to cold cases. The case that comes to my mind is the one that has recently been reopened on the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Evidence, including biometric material, must be retained in these circumstances to enable comparison with the suspect and, for example, to ensure that the suspect’s legal team can examine and probe all the previous police lines of inquiry. If all evidence is not retained in such circumstances, the suspect identified later will be able to argue to the court that the destruction of such material would render it impossible for him to receive a fair trial. In such circumstances, even if Amendment 5 were to be made to the Bill, a chief officer would be unable to certify an investigation as complete, which is I think what the noble Lord, Lord Dear, was referring to. In addition, where it is possible for the police to conclude an investigation the introduction of such a certification requirement for all investigations would impose a new bureaucratic process on the police that would be both unnecessary and, when aggregated across the number of investigations conducted, costly. The illustration given by the noble Lord, Lord Dear, makes that quite clear. For the reasons I have given, we are unable to accept Amendment 5, and I therefore ask my noble friend to consider withdrawing it.