Offender Management Bill

I shall also speak to Clauses 25 and 26, which raise the same point. My purpose in opposing Clause 24 is to discover why the Government have decided to introduce the polygraph into the machinery of justice in England, so far as I know for the very first time, and to inquire what researches they have carried out into the inferences which can properly be drawn from the readings on the polygraph. The literature on the subject is quite large. The polygraph—or lie detector, to use its more homely name—is not new, nor to my mind is it very English. It has been in use in the United States for a long time, mostly by the CIA in vetting candidates for employment. But even in the USA the polygraph is regarded as controversial, not just because it is highly intrusive on personal privacy, which may matter less in the case of an offender on licence, but because there is no scientific way of establishing the accuracy of the polygraph as an indicator of the truth. In quite a large percentage of cases it will fail to show up those who are lying, resulting in the so-called ““false negative””, while in another large percentage it will show up people as lying who are not in fact doing so, resulting in the so-called ““false positive””. As a result, in America the CIA will not use the polygraph as a ground for refusing employment unless the result of the polygraph is confirmed or corroborated by other evidence. In England, the polygraph was first considered for the purposes of security vetting as long ago as 1961. The Radcliffe committee made a hesitant recommendation, as the result of which two members of the security services went to the United States to find out how the polygraph worked, but nothing came of it. It was considered again by the Security Commission in the case of Prime in 1983. Geoffrey Prime was employed by GCHQ from 1968 to 1976. He was convicted of selling secrets to the Russians. In the course of his evidence, he said that he would have hesitated to apply for employment by GCHQ if he had known that he would have to undergo a polygraph test. So in that case we recommended that a pilot study should be carried out, but again nothing came of it, perhaps because of the difficulties which we pointed out in establishing a polygraph system in this country. Perhaps I may quote from the recommendations made by the Security Commission. At paragraph 9.14 of the May 1983 Security Commission report we said that: "““The lessons to be learnt from the American experience give a fair indication of the principal considerations which require to be taken into account in deciding whether it is appropriate, and if so, whether it is practicable to introduce the polygraph into personnel screening procedures applied at some levels in the British intelligence and security agencies””." There follows this important sentence: "““We recognise the enormous difficulties to be overcome in setting up an organisation to operate a discipline which is hitherto quite unknown in this country””." In the light of that recommendation, as I say, that particular experiment went no further. Why have the Government now changed their mind? I have a series of questions along these lines. Has the Home Office taken on board, to use the words of the Security Commission report, the ““enormous difficulties”” involved in introducing the polygraph system into this country? How do the Government propose to meet those difficulties? How many polygraph operators will be involved? Where will they be trained? Who will be responsible for their training? In America the training takes three to four months for each operator. Has any estimate at all been made of the cost of training polygraph operators? Does the Minister accept that the questioning must be strictly limited to the specific question of whether the offender has complied with the other conditions of his licence? It cannot be used to explore more widely the life of the offender in question. I am sure that the Minister will be able to give satisfactory answers to some, if not all, of those questions, but if not I am tempted to say that this is yet another paper exercise, in which the Home Office seems to specialise. Once the sums have been done and the costs calculated, it will be realised that they are simply not worth the very limited benefit that might follow. On those grounds, I wish to oppose the Question that Clause 24 should stand part of the Bill.