Clause 2
Counter-Terrorism Bill
11:00 am
Ben Wallace (Shadow Minister, Scotland; Lancaster and Wyre, Conservative)
I want to follow on from my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield and ask the Minister whether he is satisfied by the severity in the clause. The consequences of obstruction during a search can be quite severe, especially the obstruction of forensic evidence. A vast proportion of terrorist cases obtain convictions on the basis of forensics, rather than other types of evidence. There are also many cases where forensic evidence fails because the evidence has been corrupted by contamination. A suspect could damage the evidence and so opt for the lesser offence of obstructing evidence, rather than that which could be proven by the forensics that they disrupt.