Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 27 June 2011.
Yvette Cooper
Shadow Home Secretary, Shadow Minister (Equalities Office) (Women and Equalities)
2:30,
27 June 2011
For the second time in five days, the Home Secretary has declined to answer questions on DNA, even though she knows that it is a growing concern, and that I and the Leader of the Opposition raised it last week. There are about 5,000 rape cases each year where the police think that they have enough information to pass a case on to the Crown Prosecution Service but the CPS decides that it cannot charge. In those cases, the Government’s plans mean that DNA will not be held even though rape has a notoriously low charge rate and we know that some people go on to offend again.
On Thursday the Minister with responsibility for women, the Minister for Equalities, Lynne Featherstone, suggested that the police would be able to apply to retain DNA in cases where they thought that the public were at risk. That is very different from what the Home Secretary told me on Second Reading of the Protection of Freedoms Bill, when she did not include cases where the public were thought to be at risk.
So, will the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, James Brokenshire now explain how the police and the DNA commissioner are supposed to assess who poses a risk; and in how many of those 5,000 cases does the hon. Gentleman expect the police to apply and for DNA to be held?
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