Crime and Security Bill

My Lords, I am very grateful to those noble Lords who have supported my amendment and my opposition to certain provisions in the Bill. I hope that they will forgive me if, in the interests of time, I do not go through all the points that they made. The Minister said that he still does not understand wash-up; he had thought that only what was agreed went forward. He said that after listening to the noble Baroness, who seemed to be opposing the Government’s proposals. All I would say is: indeed. On having no research of the Scottish model, the Home Office research, by all accounts, seems to have been—what can I say?—a bit dodgy. It is certainly not as substantial or as useful as those looking for a solution to all of this would want to find. I understand, of course, that the police want the most extensive tools possible. The Minister talked of detection rates; my response is that the Home Affairs Select Committee, in one of its conclusions to the report that it published only recently, on 8 March, said: ""It is currently impossible to say with certainty how many crimes are detected, let alone how many result in convictions, due at least in part to the matching of crime scene DNA to a personal profile already on the database, but it appears that it may be as little as 0.3%"." It went on that, ""we note that the reason for retaining personal profiles on a database is so that the person can be linked to crimes he/she commits later"." Yes, the Government are proposing a single retention period—but one which is too long. The noble Lord gave examples of where DNA has been used to solve crimes. We all know about hard cases and bad law. As I have said, the general view is that there is a poor evidence base for what is proposed. He said that if the clauses do not stand part of the Bill, we will be no further forward in responding to the European court. Indeed, that is absolutely my point; it would then be necessary to reconsider the matter. For the Conservatives, the noble Baroness says that we are out of time for proper discussion, that it is too late for that and, in effect, that the amendment—she did not use this word—is inadequate. I thought that I could have done no better than using the Conservatives’ own amendment. If it is inadequate—in my view it would be a compromise, but one which I hoped would take the noble Baroness and her troops with us—better to start from the inadequate than the bad. The Conservatives, if they do not support these Benches on these amendments, must accept responsibility along with the Government for the bad. I wish to test the opinion of the House. Division on Amendment 2 Contents 53; Not-Contents 159. Amendment 2 disagreed. Clauses 14 to 33 agreed. Clause 34 : Grant of injunction: minimum age Clause 34 : Grant of injunction: minimum age Debate on whether Clause 34 should stand part of the Bill.