Terrorism and Crime (EUC Report)

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wright, referred to the fact that a few weeks ago I succeeded him as chairman of Sub-Committee F. I was delighted to be able to do that. I am also delighted to be able to take this opportunity to thank him most warmly on behalf of all previous and present members of the committee for everything that he did to make the committee run smoothly and efficiently during the years when he was the chairman. Concerning Prüm and PNR, I echo his thanks to Michael Collon and his team of Clerks and our advisers for all the hard work that they have done to help us with these two reports. I have considerable doubt and misgivings, as well as the ones, which I support, which have already been drawn to the attention of your Lordships’ House by both the noble Lord, Lord Wright, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. I am especially concerned about how DNA profiles are to be handled. The Prüm treaty made arrangements for reciprocal access to national databases containing DNA profiles. The German presidency was extremely enthusiastic about that arrangement, but the truth is that there is no harmonisation on either the collection or the retention of DNA profiles. Most countries use those profiles and databases for serious crime only. That is not the case in the United Kingdom, where our DNA database is half as big again as the combined databases of all the other countries in the Union. In the UK new entries end up on the DNA database with all offences, whether serious or minor. If people are arrested, but subsequently not charged, then their DNA details go on the database. I see a problem. If other states use the UK evidence, they are in danger of assuming that the people on the database could have been involved in serious crime; they have different national standards. I must ask the Minister some important questions. Is the Minister happy that the UK will be divulging more DNA data than it receives? What does he believe the United Kingdom’s share of the traffic between states of DNA details from national databases will be? What grounds does he have for believing that other member states will accept not being given full details, if we choose not to provide them? Will the implementing decision set that out fully, or will there be guidelines about how the information should be transferred? Has the Minister explained to other member states the basis on which we collect DNA information? The noble Lord, Lord Wright, explained that there was no consultation, no Explanatory Memorandum, no impact assessment, and no cost-benefit analysis on the Prüm treaty. The Germans have claimed a great deal of success with the passage of this information. They have told us that information exchanged under the Prüm treaty has, in only two months, resulted in 1,510 hits by Germany against the Austrian DNA database. That included 41 hits on homicide or murder cases, 885 hits on theft cases and 85 on robbery or extortion cases. The German Government have suggested that figures will increase. Surely, that will not happen. Those rather dramatic figures are the result of clearing up a backlog of crimes committed before the means of transferring information was created. Once those backlogs are cleared, a decline in the figures is likely. Does the Minister not believe that the figures that the Germans have been peddling are highly misleading? Why were Ministers prepared to agree with the decision without any realistic assessment of its benefits for combating serious crime, let alone the cost, which must be enormous? Has he made any estimate of the likely number of serious crimes that may be solved as the result of the Prüm treaty that would not otherwise have been solved? The noble Lord, Lord Wright, told us in his opening remarks that the PNR data quite correctly were allegedly to be used only to combat terrorism and organised crime. However, the notorious letter from the United States Department of Homeland Security that we have been hearing about tells us that the US will use PNR to protect the data subject or others from dangerous communicable diseases. It may be very worth while to use this sort of information to deal with dangerous communicable diseases, but does the Minister not think that, if we are to have an agreement of that sort, it should be done through an agreement negotiated for that purpose and not through an agreement to combat serious crime? On the negotiating mandate, the present Leader of the House told the committee in her evidence that she was not prepared to disclose the Commission’s negotiating mandate while negotiations were going on. However, they are now over, and I wonder whether the Minister can disclose to us now what that mandate was and say to what extent he believes the negotiators achieved their objective. I discussed the Prüm treaty and the PNR arrangements at the European Parliament last week, and I said that I remembered my role many years ago as president of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council, when I quite often became exasperated at the lack of negotiating skills of some people in the Commission. I caused some amusement when I said that I would not send some of them to market to sell a cow on my behalf. I stick by that, because many of them do not have the first idea of how to negotiate. Finally, on the European Union’s PNR initiative, Jonathan Faull, the director-general at the Commission’s Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security, has said that the EU should have its own common approach to the PNR system. The Commission has now published a proposal. Sub-Committee F is still awaiting an Explanatory Memorandum before it can scrutinise that document. In order to help the committee, I ask the Minister to say whether the Government support this initiative and will seek to have a system as wide ranging as the United States system, or whether they will look for a system with guarantees for a purpose limitation, with full data protection provisions. I ask this because, when Sub-Committee F comes to examine this document, we may well consider making it the subject of a further short PNR inquiry. I have asked the Minister a good many questions. I hope that he will be able to answer all of them, but if he cannot answer some of them, I hope that he will write to me.