Home Affairs and Justice

I hope that we have not yet reached that stage, but if we are to avoid reaching it, now is the time for Members of Parliament to be big, to stand up and be counted and to fight for the freedoms that we treasure. It does not matter whether we are in the Labour party, the Conservative party or the Liberal Democrat party. We love this country, we love our democracy and it is up to us to stand up and fight for it and to challenge those forces that would diminish and traduce it. Today, we have had some welcome news on the DNA database. I cannot believe that the records of perhaps 6 million innocent people are kept on that database. They are people arrested or detained by the police who are not guilty of any crime beyond perhaps being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but their records are retained on the database. We hear this rubbish, this Orwellian nonsense: ““If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”” That is something we would expect to hear from the Stasi in eastern Europe. It is a nonsensical statement. I have a constituent who has committed not a single crime in his life, but on his advanced Criminal Records Bureau check he carries details of a wicked and violent crime committed against a member of his family by a totally unconnected third party. He has nothing to hide, but he has everything to fear. I have taken up his case with the Information Commissioner, the Home Office and the police, and nobody will act to right this wrong. It is an act that would be more at home in Stalinist Russia than in this country.