Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

I am most grateful for that. Could the report that was submitted to the Council of Ministers—this month, I think the Minister said—also be placed in the Library? We want to know what the Government’s interim thinking is. I take it that the consultation and the report to the Council of Ministers are not being undertaken in a vacuum and that Ministers have certain ideas on what should be done to implement the S and Marper judgment. I am just curious to know, if the Minister can tell us this afternoon, what conceivable way there can be of implementing the judgment other than by the destruction of the samples. Obviously, one realises that in the first instance, when the samples are taken, you do not know whether the individual will be charged with an offence. But since the purpose of the Schedule 7 interrogation at the airport is to ascertain whether a person is a suspect or not, one would think that the information then obtained would enable the police—and, in particular, special branch—to determine that, and thereupon either to destroy the samples or to pass them to the prosecuting authorities, which will issue a summons for the offence in question. If neither of those things happens and, after two years, let us say, the samples have not been used to incriminate the person on any other offence that may have been committed in the mean time, by a comparison of the DNA or fingerprint samples, surely it would be time to destroy them. Could the Minister give some assurance at least that he is not intending to maintain the indefinite retention of the samples? That would be a step in the right direction.