Crime and Policing

Damian Green Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson]

No, not again, if my hon. Friend does not mind; I have already given way once to him.

On DNA, the Home Secretary says with the smug piety that can have come only from working closely with the Liberal Democrats that our proposed way forward on the DNA database was disgraceful, because, she says with eyes blazing, it meant that the DNA of innocent people would be retained. That is what the right hon. Lady says and I see her nodding her head; it is a viewpoint that she uses against us. The fact is, however, that she proposes to do exactly the same. The difference is that we would keep the DNA profiles of those innocent of both serious and non-serious offences while she would keep the former but not the latter. Furthermore, we would both take the DNA from all those arrested and keep it for a sufficient period to check against previous crime scenes. The logic of the lofty argument that she has got from the Lib Dems—[Interruption.] I will come on to the issue of six years in a few moments. The logic of the argument that innocent people’s DNA is being kept is that we should not take DNA from anyone until they are convicted. Let me explain how nutty that proposition is; it is so nutty that it is not even a Lib Dem conference policy—always a good gauge of whether something is extraordinarily daft.

There is no evidence whatever that those arrested but not convicted of a non-serious offence have any lower propensity to be re-arrested than those arrested but not convicted of serious offences. I repeat—no evidence whatever. If there is, we will no doubt hear it put forward from the Government Dispatch Box. Mark Dixie, the man who brutally raped and murdered Sally Anne Bowman in her front garden, was on the DNA database because he had been arrested but not convicted of a pub-fight—a non-serious offence. If that DNA link had not been made, a guilty man would have remained free to rape and murder again and an innocent man, Sally Anne’s boyfriend, who had dropped her off outside her home after a blazing row witnessed by passers-by, would probably be serving a life sentence. Steve Wright, the murderer of five prostitutes in Ipswich, was on the DNA database because he had been arrested for suspected theft. He would not have been on the database under the Scottish model, which this Government want to adopt.

Furthermore, while the Scottish model retains the DNA of those arrested but not charged for three years—I come to the issue raised by a sedentary comment from the Minister for Immigration—rather than for six years as we propose, it also allows the police to extend the period of retention for unlimited further two-year periods. The next time Members hear the Home Secretary accuse Labour of wanting to retain the DNA of innocent people for six years, they should remind themselves that she wants to adopt the Scottish model. She wants to adopt a system that allows the DNA of innocent people to be retained indefinitely; a system that has no evidential support; a system that, according to the Association of Chief Police Officers, would cost an additional £158 million to administer because of all the bureaucracy involved in the two-year reviews; and—most important—a system that would have probably left 26 murderers and rapists unconvicted had it been in force last year.

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

There is not a shred of evidence for that.

[Alan Johnson]

The Minister is in the Home Office now. He can seek the evidence. It comes from ACPO’s research, and it comes from Home Office statistics. That is why I used it when I was Home Secretary. That is why my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) and I used it when we steered through legislation that was agreed to by the Minister’s colleagues. [Interruption.] During the wash-up period, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell said, “No way will we agree to this”, but they agreed to it. They could have stopped it, but they did not. I hope that that is because they have begun to realise their sheer folly—and I assure them that they will discover what folly there is in the actions proposed by the Government.

As for CCTV, we still do not know what the coalition means by its reference to greater regulation, or why it considers that there is a problem. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) that that reference definitely came from the Liberal Democrats, but we do not know what it means. Given the existence of the Data Protection Act, the Human Rights Act and the Freedom of Information Act, all of which apply to the authorities responsible for public-space CCTV surveillance, it is difficult to gauge the problem, but in the light of the portentous speeches of the Deputy Prime Minister, we must conclude that the Government want fewer CCTV cameras because the Liberal Democrats have consistently accused the last Government of introducing a “surveillance state”.

I support CCTV and reject the argument that it offends civil liberties. Indeed, it protects the civil liberties of our citizens—and, as we have seen recently, those of the occasional cat dropped in a wheelie bin. I agree with the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who, in 2007, wrote this—it is excellent—in his local newspaper:

“I had been shown a community centre on a council estate that had been burned down in an arson attack… If only there had been CCTV, the attack might have been prevented or the perpetrator caught…. to those who claim that this all heralds a Big Brother society, I say, why should innocent people worry that someone is watching out for their safety?”

The right hon. Gentleman spoke for Britain then. The vast majority of the population would support what he said, although sadly it is not the view of the pseudo-libertarian Government of whom he is now a member.