Clause 10
Counter-Terrorism Bill
4:30 pm
David Heath (Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
Come on, the Minister cannot have it both ways—he objected when I called him “learned”.
I am grateful for the contributions, but a few points need to be made about the debate in which we have just enjoined. I accept from the Minister that it is consistent with the control order regime for this power to exist. I do not accept the control order regime as it is constructed, and he knows that I do not think that it is working well and see it very much as an exceptional circumstance. However, while the present regime is there, the power to take samples from those individuals is consistent with it.
The Minister is right to say that retention is a wider issue than can be addressed by the narrow confines of the amendments and, indeed, the clause before us today. I sympathise with his problems with the “Today” programme and with having to explain the logic of a universal database: I have used exactly the same words before and been shot down in flames by those who have misunderstood me and thought that I was advocating a universal database when all that I had said was that it is more logical than the current situation. It has an internal logic that the present situation does not.
I am not quite so happy with the view that the partial database—including, as we have debated this afternoon, not only those who have been found guilty of a range of offences, but those who have been arrested but freed without charge or those who have been charged and found not guilty—is entirely the innocent investigatory tool that it has been suggested it is. It is a wonderfully powerful investigatory tool and I would not want to deny the police the opportunity of using it to investigate crimes properly.
I cannot remember if certain Members were on the Bill Committee when we introduced the DNA sample regime a few years ago; I am pretty sure that I was, because I seem always to be on such Committees. We Liberal Democrats did not argue against the principle of a DNA database. We said that, to make it effective, either people who are innocent of any crime should not be on it or everybody should be on it. The problem with a partial database is that, even with the increased sophistication of DNA testing and comparing, there are false positives. People are more likely to come circumstantially under suspicion as a result of being on the database than if they are not on it. Whereas it can be argued that that is a price that someone has to pay for having been convicted of a crime, it is hard to sustain the view—other than by the hon. Member for Monmouth, who feels that someone who looks shifty ought to be on the database—that somebody who is innocent of a crime ought to have that risk attached, in addition to the fact that for every set of DNA characteristics there are probably six, seven or eight people in this country who are sufficiently close to provide a false match. Many Members have always been concerned about that.
The Minister says that this is not the time or place to have this argument and I agree. He is right to say that. But the trouble is that this is our only opportunity to stop that accretion—as the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield called it—of further DNA samples on to the database of people who have not been charged with, and have certainly not been found guilty of, any crime. This is our only opportunity to argue the case and suggest that this fundamental issue needs to be addressed.
It could be argued that there is likely to be—we cannot say that there will definitely or even probably will be—a higher level of culpability in respect of someone against whom sufficient intelligence evidence has been put together to ensure that a control order has been secured. In such a case, there is likely, perhaps, to be a higher level of culpability than in respect of someone against whom no charge has been preferred and who has simply been picked up by the police and released without charge. That is a proper inference to draw from the circumstances. If any group is the first to be removed from the database, it should not be the controlees, but should be those who are released without charge because they have not committed any crime and against whom the police have no evidence on which to charge them.
We have to use opportunities such as this in Committee to rehearse these arguments, even if they will return time and again. I welcome what the Minister said about the need for a wider review of this matter. It is essential that we do that. However, I do not share his phlegmatic assertion that the present situation, with the inclusion of these samples, is where we ought to be. I have deep concerns about that. However, we are right to raise the issue.
The hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield and I have raised quite proper concerns in today’s sitting and we have used this opportunity to register them. That is a proper use of the Committee. Having said that, I do not intend to press the amendment to a Division. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.