Crime and Security Bill

Your Lordships might be interested to hear a story which I am about to tell of a person who had his DNA taken when he had no criminal record. Having gone through the immigration process at Heathrow Airport—he was a British citizen—he was stopped by Special Branch on the land side, taken aside, detained and made to give a sample of his DNA and fingerprints. When I was asked to assist him in getting the samples removed from the database, I wrote to the relevant Minister in the Home Office and was told there was a procedure whereby one could appeal to the relevant chief officer of police for a special review. I wrote to the chief officer of the Metropolitan Police; I gave him the details of what had happened and asked him to conduct a review. After a while, he wrote back and said that he was not the chief officer concerned because he did not deal with Special Branch cases. I therefore had to write another letter to a different chief officer of police. To cut a very long story short, it took 14 months for that review to take place, during which the man concerned had, as noble Lords have said, a stigma hanging over him because his samples were taken on the database. People would say, "Well, surely he must have been guilty of something if they felt so certain that the DNA was required to be kept in this way". I subsequently discovered that only three people had been successful in making a special appeal and getting DNA samples removed from the database. Everything that has been said about the violation of our human rights and the ignoring of the European Court is reinforced by what one knows about these cases. I sincerely hope that the Minister will pay close attention to the amendment and, if not agree to it, at least guarantee that we will take steps to bring ourselves into conformity with our commitment to European human rights legislation.