Clause 10
Counter-Terrorism Bill
4:15 pm
Dominic Grieve (Shadow Attorney General, Law Officers; Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I do not disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden. I made it clear to the Minister that the logic of being able to take DNA and fingerprint material from somebody subject to a control order, for the purposes of its enforcement, seemed to be overwhelming. I do not believe that that would be successfully challenged in the European Court of Human Rights anyway. That said, the question, which cannot be divorced from the wider issue, about the accretional way in which we are building up the national database in which that will be an additional element, should be of concern to the Committee, because we do not have a strategy for that. Therefore the answer to the question of how many people that would cover at present is rather important. I worry that the way in which we are building up that database is undermining civil liberties. There can be no doubt about that. If it were not, the arguments that Mr. Lake put forward about how unfair it might be to those of 11 and 12 would be invalid. So we cannot escape the fact that there is an ethical issue.