Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

On Friday 31 October, I had a telephone call from Mr Yousif al-Khoei, the distinguished head of the al-Khoei Foundation, which is a Shia charitable and religious organisation in north London, about the detention of a British imam who had arrived earlier that day at Heathrow Terminal 1 on a flight from Damascus. I spoke to immigration officials at Terminal 1 three times—the third time, to the chief immigration officer—and was told on each occasion that no British citizen was being detained, although on the third occasion I was asked whether I might have been talking about somebody with a slightly different name. Finally, the helpful immigration duty officer to whom I spoke at about 2030 told me that the imam had been arrested on the landed side of immigration control, and was under investigation by the Special Branch. She got the senior Special Branch officer on duty at Terminal 1 to ring me at my request, and he confirmed that the imam, Mr A, had indeed been detained for questioning, that he had been fingerprinted and had a saliva DNA sample taken, and that he had then been released after something like two hours. A minicab sent by his wife to fetch him from the airport was waiting all that time. The numerous questions asked during the interview, I subsequently discovered from Mr A, mainly concerned the reasons for his frequent visits to places such as Syria and Kuwait, and he answered that he attended religious conferences and meetings in those countries. Later, Mr A sent me a copy of the notice that was served on him under the Terrorism Act 2000, a copy of which I have passed to the Minister, explaining that the requirement to be questioned did not necessarily mean that the examining officer suspected him of being concerned with acts of terrorism, but was in order to enable the officer to discover whether he was such a person. The notice required him to give the officer any documents of a kind specified and said that the officer had the power to examine his luggage and to detain anything, including a document which the search revealed. The notice said nothing at all about Mr A’s duty to give biometric samples; so, as my first question, is an examining officer supposed to notify the person separately of the intended taking of samples? If he is not, why is that not referred to in the main notice of examination served on a person at the airport under the 2000 Act? Following that incident, I looked up Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000, which quite properly gives the examining officer power to stop a person at a port in the border area, to question the passenger, to search him and his luggage and to detain any item of his property, while Schedule 8 provides that an "authorised person" may detain the passenger being examined. However, the taking of fingerprints and biometric samples is regulated by a different statute, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. It appears that the power to demand these samples does not even require that the examining officer suspects that the person has committed a criminal offence. In the case of Mr A, he was being examined not as a suspect but, as I explained, to determine whether he was a suspect. Nothing said in the course of the interview would have given the officer reason to suspect that he had committed any terrorist offence. Can the Minister confirm that the power to demand samples from a person being interviewed for this reason under the 2000 Act does not rely on any evidence that the person has committed such an offence? It appears, further, that under Section 64 of the 1984 Act as amended, fingerprints or samples may be retained after they have fulfilled the purposes for which they were taken. In the case of Mr A, the Special Branch told me that the samples were to be retained indefinitely. Although I got no elucidation of the purposes, I imagine that the idea is to build up a vast database of samples, which can be compared at later dates with biometric information obtained from crime scenes, whether terrorist or of any other kind. As of four months ago, I understand that there were 5 million samples on the National DNA Database, of which something like 850,000 related to persons either subsequently acquitted or not charged with any offence at all. On December 4 the European Court of Human Rights, in the case of S and Marper, ruled that the indefinite retention of biometric samples from innocent persons was a violation of Article 8 of the ECHR, on the right to respect for personal and family life. I wrote to the Secretary of State the following day, referring to the case of Mr A, drawing attention to the judgment and asking her to make a statement that she intended to destroy the samples of persons who were acquitted or not charged with any offence. In a reply dated 14 January, Mr Vernon Coaker, the Minister of State, said that the Government were considering the implications of the judgment and would agree with the Council of Ministers on how to implement it. For the time being, the law on the taking and retention of DNA samples and fingerprints would remain in place. I noted from an Answer that the Secretary of State gave to my honourable friend Mr Chris Huhne on January 14 that among the profiles on the database were 137,000 relating to children under 16 and that she had taken steps to have removed those that related to children who were under 10. The Government have now had three months to consider the S and Marper judgment and consult the European Council of Ministers. Can they give us an update on the number of profiles now held and on how many of them are of people either acquitted or not subsequently charged? Or are they continuing to collect and retain samples, and how many have been taken since the date of the judgment, 4 December? Will they now say what consultation they have had with the Council of Ministers and issue a detailed statement on the steps that they are taking to bring us back into compliance with Article 8? Have they suggested any other means of achieving this than the destruction of innocent people’s samples? Everybody accepts and recognises the importance of combating terrorism, but if the Government think that it is necessary to sacrifice human rights for this purpose, we have to disagree. It is our human rights and the rule of law that we are defending against the terrorists. A society in which everyone’s personal data are kept on record just in case they may commit a crime in the future is not our vision of the future of this country. I beg to move.