Home Affairs and Justice

We asked for the total expenditure in this case, and the answer that we got was very clear. I am afraid that it does not bear out the suggestion that there has been any increase in Government funding. The budget for English language lessons for immigrants was cut by £9 million last year, from £298 million to £289 million. The figures show, as I said, a 39 per cent. reduction in non-English speakers enrolling on English language courses. Again, a theme, certainly a theme of everything that the Government have been doing in this respect, is one of good intentions carefully flagged up in the use of legislation as a press release—but where is the implementation? Where is the delivery? I am very pleased that the communications data Bill has been dropped. I hope that that truly Orwellian proposal will not come back, as it would have created an expensive database of phone calls and e-mails, and, frankly, would have been an extraordinary intrusion into civil liberties. We have not heard—I hope that we will be told by the Justice Secretary in his winding-up speech—how the Government intend to react to the very firm decision today by the European Court of Human Rights about retaining the DNA samples of those who are innocent. Given the results, that is an extraordinarily firm decision. I cannot remember, in many years of observing the European Court, a 17-nil decision—completely unanimous—that the Government's position is contrary to the European convention on human rights. If the Government want a sensible policy on what samples should be held on a DNA database, they should get rid of all samples from innocent people—as they must now do, I believe, as a result of the European Court ruling—and they should start a programme to collect samples from people who were convicted before 2001. We now know that more than 2 million people who have been convicted of a criminal offence are not on the DNA database, because they were convicted of committing a crime before 2001. So we have a ridiculous topsy-turvy Government policy of accreting samples from innocent people, children and others who are under age. That is absolutely useless in improving the conviction rate, as we now know, yet we have not been collecting data samples from people who were convicted, although that would be much more effective. Again, I am pleased that the Home Secretary has made it clear that there will be no question, other than at our borders, of having police and other official powers to check for identity cards. I have been talking for rather longer than I wanted to, because of the interventions, but let me say something about the coroners and justice Bill. I am still suspicious of what may be the Government's intentions on that Bill. There is no doubt that we need reform, that speed and timeliness in coroners' inquests are a real issue, and that it is crucial that bereaved families can get an inquest rapidly. However, the Government's proposals in the counter-terrorism Bill, now dropped, were horrendous, and they must not be resuscitated. Coroners' inquests are an essential bulwark against the abuse of state power, as they establish what happened if a death occurs, particularly in custody at the hands of an agent of the state. They were initiated precisely because we could not trust the Tudor secret service to perform its duties unless deaths in custody were properly investigated.