What a pleasure it is to be called so unexpectedly early in this debate. Obviously your algorithm is working, Mr Speaker, even though the algorithms for other things—testing, exam results—are not. Let us not get into that.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) on coming so loftily in the private Members’ Bill ballot—a sensation I have never experienced and probably never will. He is also the Chair of the Business and Industrial Strategy Committee. He is one Opposition Member who will actually make his mark on our statute book. We all dream of the day we can do that, but from what the Minister says, it sounds like my hon. Friend will.
I rise to speak in support of my hon. Friend’s Bill. I have taken on board the points against it, but I think they are all refutable. It seeks to right a whole load of wrongs that are going on in our society—we have heard about miscarriages of justice and unreliable evidence—and it also reins in the once seemingly untrammelled forces of the free market. We have seen something of that during the pandemic—yesterday, another financial stimulus was announced. I am glad that the Government are now converts to interventionism, as some of us have always been. It is great to have this Bill at a time when we are all so preoccupied by coronavirus or Brexit. It is something a bit different, but it is badly needed.
Recently, the word “forensic” seems to be used every Wednesday when Prime Minister’s questions happens and our Leader of the Opposition takes apart the Prime Minister, but we are dealing with “forensics”—plural. The mere mention of that term conjures up images of wily experts solving cold cases long after the fact, dissecting the details and piecing together the evidence from the crime scene. We think of skilful professionals, with high-tech, high-end resources at their disposal, no expense spared, crusading for justice in the public interest. The American drama serials—the transatlantic type—have shaped the imagery in the public imagination: programmes such as “NCIS” and “CSI”. I know that our previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), is a big “NCIS” fan. At the height of the cross-party talks in her Brexit negotiations, I found myself face-to-face with her at No. 10, and to break the
ice, I asked, as you do, “Was being Home Secretary like ‘Bodyguard’?” Instead, she enthused about “NCIS”, which was her favourite programme, and said it was more like that.
Forensics started about a century ago with fingerprinting techniques, and it can stray into things such as taking fragments of carpet fibre and even bite marks. By the ’80s, when DNA profiling of samples was pioneered, the field really got a spring in its step. In today’s world, it is accelerating, and its use is going on and on. With cybercrime rapidly rising, it is needed more than ever.