Criminal Justice and Police Bill

Public Bill Committee, 8 March 2001.

Standing Committee F

Criminal Justice and Police Bill

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Before we start this morning, I have one housekeeping announcement relating to the debate this afternoon. Technically, we are scheduled to sit from 2.30 right through until 7 o'clock. For the convenience, literally and metaphorically, of hon. Members, I intend to suspend the Committee for 15 minutes, from 5 o'clock until 5.15. Clause 77 Fingerprints and samples

Clause 77 - Fingerprints and samples

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I beg to move amendment No. 218, in page 63, leave out lines 32 to 41.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to take the following amendments: No. 219, in page 63, line 42, leave out subsection (2).

No. 220, in page 64, line 29, leave out subsection (6).

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

The three amendments relate to clause 77, which is about the circumstances in which fingerprints can be taken and the rank of police officer who can authorise that. There are some far-reaching and controversial proposals relating to fingerprints being taken and kept when someone is arrested, charged and then released because he has been found not guilty or because no further action will be taken, and relating to the wider issue of other samples, such as DNA samples. As we said on the Floor of the House, that has never been the subject of a widespread public debate. It crosses the threshold of a presumption that we have worked under previously, which was either that people could volunteer to give personal information or that, in certain circumstances, personal information could be taken from them without their consent. However, it has never before been the position that personal information could be taken without consent and kept if the person had at all times been innocent. We will deal with some of those wider issues during the debate on the next few clauses and amendments.

The clause will amend the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and will provide that the same regime should apply where people have been given a caution in respect of a recordable offence to which they have admitted—for the authorities, that is an alternative to a conviction—or where they have been warned or reprimanded, which is a form of officially recognised punishment that was introduced by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The purpose of the amendment is to flush out from the Government the exact criteria according to which the police should be allowed to collect and hold fingerprints. I understand that the same rule can be applied to a caution as to a conviction, because both are disposals of the case by way of an acceptance of guilt and a record against the person. That is why this is a probing amendment, rather than one that we intend to press.

I accept that a warning or reprimand under the 1998 Act is also a disposal of a case in that an offence is recorded. The purpose of the amendment is to open up the debate rather than to deal with the central concerns about that section of the Act.

Amendment No. 219 follows the lines of our debate the other day. It relates to the appropriate rank of police officer who can authorise compulsory fingerprinting. At present, it must be a superintendent. The Government said yesterday—it seems a year ago, but it was only yesterday—that they take a more flexible view about levels of authority. I do not think that there is a theological argument about that, but we need to be clear. In that context, I am interested in their view about the rank at which certain police activities can be carried out. Is the proposal the result of an assessment of police powers following discussions with police representatives? Is this part of a pattern of conclusions, of which we have seen two pieces of evidence, one yesterday and one today? It would be encouraging to know that a comprehensive review had been undertaken, rather than the matter having been considered in a narrower context.

Amendment No. 220 is a probing amendment, relating to the extension of PACE to cautions, warnings and reprimands in the same way as subsection (1B). It is designed to test whether the compulsory fingerprinting provisions will be limited only to those specified or be available to the police at any time, which appears now to be the case. Will the Government contemplate going even further, and applying the provisions to anybody who is taken in and questioned who might not subsequently be arrested? A person may agree, voluntarily, to be questioned, and later be detained and arrested.

My final questions, to which I would have known the answers if I had been a member of the Committee on the Crime and Disorder Bill, are about the period for which warnings and reprimands remain on a person's criminal record. Will cautions remain for the same period as that which applies to the rehabilitation of offenders, or will they be erased earlier? Will the same apply to fingerprints once someone has been rehabilitated, so that the criminal record for warnings and reprimands, and possibly for cautions, will not carry on if no further offences are committed until the end of the rehabilitation of offenders period? Will the slate be wiped clean? The proposal is about the collection of material against people who have had a criminal record.

We seem to be in danger of having a two-tier society. Ministers said during debates on the Football (Disorder) Bill that up to a third of young men end up with a criminal conviction. If a warning, reprimand, caution or conviction remains for all time on a young man's criminal record, and his fingerprints and DNA samples are kept, his whole life may be prejudiced, even when he has grown out of the rebellious and disorderly phase of his late teens and early adulthood and become a perfectly normal individual.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Has the hon. Gentleman thought about the effect on a fixed penalty notice offence? A caution is usually thought to be a less serious disposal than a fixed penalty notice, but in this context, to be given a caution is more serious. It gives people criminal records and forces them to give their fingerprints. However, with a fixed penalty notice, people have only to pay a penalty. Does he agree that the tiers of punishment are rather confused in that case?

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I am happy about the trio of disposals that is set out. Conviction is at the top of the league, caution in the middle and warning or reprimand at the bottom.

However, the hon. Gentleman poses a good question. Had he won the election earlier in his life when he tried to become the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey—as so often happens, the Tories only just reached double figures in percentage of the vote—he would have represented the people whom I met last week, from the Southwark pedestrian rights group, who asked the same question. They spoke about fixed penalty notices and parking offences and asked where they come in the league table of punishments.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

As hon. Members will have seen, my right hon. and hon. Friends and I agree with the hon. Members for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) and for Taunton (Jackie Ballard). We also tabled amendment No. 219 together.

I have given the Opposition view before: we do not think that it is appropriate for the Government to downgrade senior management responsibility in the police. I have heard Labour Members over the past nine years, in criminal justice debates in Committee and in the Chamber, talking about the celebrated miscarriages of justice in cases involving matters as serious as terrorism. They expressed concern about fingerprint evidence and forensic scientific analysis of such evidence. It therefore surprises me that a Labour Government are introducing provisions that would lower the level at which police senior management supervision is required in such important cases.

We recognise that there are cost constraints. The Minister will say that many senior police officers support what the Government are doing, but as I said yesterday, senior officers are often aware that they are being kept short of funds. The Government try to have it both ways. They starve the police of resources, especially in shire counties such as Surrey, but then tell them that they hope they will support their policies, which will save money. They are trying to preordain the responses of particular senior police organisations. The Government play both ends against the middle, turning their approach to the police service and criminal law into a vicious, as opposed to a virtuous, circle.

We are worried about the measures and I want to place on record the fact that the Opposition agree with many of the other points made by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey. He mentioned yesterday that his constituency contains the headquarters of Liberty. The Conservatives do not always agree with Liberty, but on this occasion we do. It is significant, just as it was when we discussed amendments to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 yesterday, that Liberty and the police say that the provisions are backing away from PACE and the protection of the liberty of the subject. It is often forgotten that police organisations are just as keen as groups such as Liberty to protect that liberty, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would acknowledge that.

On this occasion, several concerns are relevant. We have not specifically tabled an amendment on the subject, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman about people who are likely to receive only a caution, reprimand or warning under the new system introduced by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. If what they have done is not regarded as criminal, why should their fingerprints be retained?

I recently visited one of the large police stations that covers parts of my constituency, although it is not based in it. I observed how police custody officers carried out their work. While I was there, police officers told me that they were likely to deal with a particular case under the new system of reprimand, warning or caution. At the same time, however, before it was finally decided what charges would be brought, all the young men involved were fingerprinted. The youths may well have received nothing more than reprimands, so why should their fingerprints remain on file for ever? Would they have been treated differently if, when their fingerprints were taken a few months ago, the Bill had been an Act?

The Bill may not be retrospective, but let us assume that a similar case occurred a couple of days after it becomes law. The young men might be of good character and come from respectable families, but they could be fingerprinted, even though they were given only a reprimand or warning. I wonder whether my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) took the same view as me when we were debating the Crime and Disorder Bill. I have not had time to confirm my recollection, but the Government were trumpeting the fact that, by limiting the response to reprimands and warnings, they were not going to criminalise behaviour that was below the criminal threshold.

I recall Ministers saying that that was the whole point of the Bill. Why do the Government now believe that behaviour below the criminal level, which will result only in a reprimand or warning, should result in fingerprints being kept on file for a substantial period? My hon. Friend's intervention on the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey was to the point: how will the measure fit in with fixed penalties? That is what we want to hear from the Minister.

Our concerns are genuine. We may not vote on amendment No. 219, but it reflects genuine anxieties. We are dealing with serious questions, which the Minister must answer. He has a difficult job to explain the apparent and overt inconsistencies between the Government's objectives in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the debates that preceded it, and what the Government are now trying to do.

No one seriously suggests that the Government intend the country to become a police state, but there are bound to be legitimate concerns, and the watchword has to be constant vigilance to ensure that any draconian powers are not misused. Police officers will want to ensure that all the procedures are properly observed, but we share the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

It is worth setting out the rationale of the clause. I hope that the Committee will excuse me if I stray into a clause stand part debate, but it is important to understand the context of the amendments.

The clause contains several measures on taking fingerprints. Under subsection (1) the police will be allowed to retake fingerprints where an individual has been convicted of a recordable offence if the initial set of prints was incomplete or of poor quality, or if there were errors in the data-capture process. Under subsection (2) the level of authorisation for the taking of fingerprints is changed from an officer of superintendent rank or above to inspector or above.

On amendment No. 219, I shall not add much to what was said yesterday. The structure of the police force is changing in the ways that I described. In answer to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey, we are not setting out a coherent world picture. Nevertheless, through the Lancaster House process on police reform, we are actively debating with the police how best to move towards a more holistic approach. An important aspect of the development of a modern and flexible police force is re-examination of past problems by the police themselves—rather than by politicians and civil servants—to establish the most appropriate methods for the modern arena. Amendment No. 219 in itself, however, is not part of any holistic view, but is related to the developments that I have described.

It may be worth saying that changing the ranks for fingerprinting was included in the consultation document published in July 1999—``Proposals for revising legislative measures on fingerprints, footprints and DNA samples''. Our recommendations are based on that document, so I hope that the amendment will be withdrawn.

Clause 77(3) mirrors the provisions in clause 77(1), allowing the police to retake fingerprints when an individual is charged with a recordable offence if the initial set of prints was incomplete or of poor quality, or if there were errors in the data-capture process. These measures are important to enable the police to benefit from new technology. Digital capture, storage and searching of fingerprints will significantly increase the speed with which matches can be made. For the process to work efficiently it is important to have good quality images.

Under the current provisions of PACE, if a partial set of prints is taken during the course of the investigation, the police cannot take the remaining prints to get a full set. Developments in technology enable a single fingerprint to be taken for ''live-ID''—an on-line check of an individual's identity where a record of that individual's fingerprints already exist.

Subsection (4) deals with what happens where doubt has arisen about the identity of the person who answers to bail at a court or a police station. In those circumstances, the fingerprints of a suspect may be taken without consent where it is authorised by the court or an officer of at least inspector rank.

Subsection (6) extends the power to take fingerprints to cautions for recordable offences because of a current loophole. If offenders' fingerprints have not been taken during the course of an investigation or when they are charged or informed that they will be reported for the offence, it is not possible to obtain fingerprints later if the police decide to proceed by way of a caution. A caution is an administrative disposal, not a conviction, which means that details of cautions held in national police records may not always be supported by fingerprints. Similar provisions are introduced for warnings and reprimands under section 65 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.

To answer the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey, final warnings and reprimands currently stay on the record for seven years and cautions for five years, except for offences against children, the mentally or physically disabled, or elderly people, or offences under the Prevention of Terrorism Acts, in which case they stay on the record for longer. If fingerprints have been taken under the current Bill, it is intended that they be retained permanently.

Clause 77(7) enables fingerprints to be taken electronically and stored in a digital format. It is important that any form of evidence has a proper evidential trail, so when fingerprints are taken electronically, they must be taken in an appropriate manner in line with the recommendations of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology. The practice has already been adopted in Scotland through the Crime and Punishment (Scotland) Act 1997.

The definition of a fingerprint is clarified in subsection (8) to remove any ambiguity or argument about the means by which a fingerprint is recorded. Finally, section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948, which has fallen into disuse and is no longer able to provide proof of previous convictions, is repealed under subsection (9).

Those are the main purposes of the clause. I was asked whether we want to move towards compulsory fingerprinting. The Bill does not change the basic position under PACE. Fingerprints can be taken on suspicion of involvement in a recordable offence and also on conviction. The Bill allows them to be retaken if they are technically deficient and following a caution, warning or reprimand.

I understand the argument about the league table of fixed penalty notices, but the purpose of the fixed penalty notice provision in clause 1 is to have a rapid and effective means of dealing with the offence. To require fingerprints to be taken and an approach to be established by that means would work against that.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

As the Minister knows, one of my concerns about the Bill is that criminal damage is one of the offences covered by fixed penalty notices. Fixed penalty offences are unlikely to be detected using fingerprints, but that is not true of criminal damage. Those who damage vehicles and cause criminal damage often leave fingerprints, so they provide a means of detecting some of the more serious cases of criminal damage. I am worried that we might give someone a fixed penalty notice, which is a more serious disposal than a caution, and not have fingerprints. Is there any protection against that?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I understand the point and I hesitate to add to the hon. Gentleman's catalogue of approval that he will cite in various circles, but we had a good debate on criminal damage and the amendments that he and his hon. Friends tabled on clause 1. I made it clear then that we intended fixed penalty notices to cover the lower level of criminal damage and not serious criminal damage. We had a long discussion about the ability of people whose property suffers criminal damage to take action. His concerns about more serious criminal damage and the need for evidence such as he described were dealt with during that debate. When fixed penalty notices are issued, identity and suspicion of involvement will not be an issue. Fixed penalty notices are not a conviction, so we are not including the power to take fingerprints. The point is reasonable, but my explanation is entirely sustainable.

Amendments Nos. 218 and 220 would perpetuate an inconsistency because some records would be supported by fingerprints and others would not. If the police were unable to take a full set of prints during the investigation or the prints were of poor quality, they should be able to retake them. If they were unable to do so, subsequent investigations might be hindered if the offender reoffended.

I have dealt with amendment No. 219 and I hope that hon. Members will not press it to a vote.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I am afraid that the Minister will be disappointed, because I am not satisfied with his response on amendment No. 219. There should not be a downgrading in the level of management responsibility, and the Government may live to regret that. If there is a miscarriage of justice, a future commission may criticise them and say that if a superintendent had been in charge, it probably would not have happened. I am not criticising police inspectors, many of whom are personal friends and for whom I have enormous respect, but there is significance in the involvement of a very senior officer. We feel strongly about that, and I shall urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote with me against the proposal and in favour of amendment No. 219.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I want to return to a matter to clarify what the Minister said, but I am minded to press amendment No. 220 to a vote. If someone is dealt with by the courts with a caution, warning or reprimand and has his fingerprints compulsorily taken, my understanding is that they will remain permanently on police records, but under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, the caution, warning or reprimand will be removed from the record after a specific period. If that is so, the provision is exceptionally draconian.

The ethos of the warning, reprimand and caution process was conceived to be an administrative disposal short of a conviction, so that the offender did not acquire a criminal record and the disposal could be referred to only for a specific period. It seems wrong that, as a result of a less-than-conviction disposal, fingerprints, which will remain on file for ever, can be taken compulsorily. If the Minister confirms that that is the case, it is the beginning of big brother and an oppressive state.

Those who are told that this process is being undertaken to record an offence but to avoid a conviction will not usually understand that the record will remain on police files afterwards. Such people will be likely suspects in subsequent investigations of offences.

If the Minister confirms that I have understood the matter correctly—I do not want to vote on the basis of a misunderstanding—I will certainly press amendment No. 220 to a Division. Amendment No. 218, which refers to fingerprints being re-taken if the first set is defective, has less impact on civil liberties, so it would be logical for the Committee to focus on amendment No. 220. However, I would be grateful for confirmation that I have not misrepresented the situation.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I confirm that the hon. Gentleman is broadly correct in his summary of the state of affairs surrounding amendment No. 220. He has not been misleading and he has described the situation accurately. The Bill will provide the power for the retention of all fingerprints and samples, including those that come from suspects who are acquitted. It is illogical to destroy the prints of cautioned suspects, who have admitted that they are guilty of the offence with which they have been charged.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reconsider his position. It is important to have a consistent approach to records of fingerprints and DNA, and such records are an important tool in the fight against crime. I understand that some people have civil liberties concerns, and he is entitled to raise those. However, the proposals will give the police an effective crime-fighting tool, which is as important for the liberties of citizens throughout the country as the concerns that he expressed.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I am grateful for the Minister's confirmation. If he had said that the fingerprints would be kept, but that they would disappear from the record as soon as a person's criminal record disappeared, that would be a different matter. However, he has confirmed that that is not the case. That is inconsistent with the original intention.

The measure is about the police building up more information. Of course, they will always be helped by having more fingerprints and DNA samples on record, and by increased powers to arrest and detain suspects, but that is not a valid argument. We should not have a society that helps the police just so that more people can be arrested and convicted more easily. There must be a balance.

Jackie Ballard (Liberal Democrat, Taunton)

Does my hon. Friend agree that the logical conclusion of the Minister's approach would be for everyone to have DNA samples and fingerprints taken at birth? That would provide a smart card record throughout life.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

That is exactly the case. My hon. Friend and I will challenge the assumption that lies behind the Government's approach when we reach the later clauses on DNA.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

That is not a logical conclusion, because contact with the criminal justice system and the police is established in the way that the hon. Gentleman suggests. The comments of the hon. Member for Taunton raise issues about the desirability, or otherwise, of a national database, but I do not think that there is a logical connection in the way that she suggested.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton rather than with the Minister. We will have a situation in which people may lawfully have samples taken from them, and even if they are later acquitted, those samples will be kept on record without consent. They will have had contact with the police, but the system will not have found them guilty. My hon. Friend and I, other Opposition Members and, I hope, Labour Back Benchers think that it would be unacceptable to keep samples, fingerprints or other body prints from someone who had unjustifiably attracted the attention of the police, was repeatedly subject to unfair arrest—many young people complain of that—and was eventually charged but acquitted.

All that such people have done is to have contact with the criminal justice system. I have had such contact, as I expect has the Minister. I have been stopped by the police; I do not know whether he has. It would be an unacceptable consequence for that contact to put one on ``the list''. If people who have never had a criminal conviction will be in the same league as others about whom information is held, the logic is that we might as well all be there. We must have that debate, and my hon. Friends and I will strongly resist the idea, as would, I hope, many people on both sides of the House. I am not sure that the public are ready for it.

I should be grateful if we could vote on amendments Nos. 219 and 220. However, I do not want to press amendment No. 218, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed: No. 219, in page 63, line 42, leave out subsection (2).—[Mr. Gray.]

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 9.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

May I ask a question about the Human Rights Act 1998? It relates to the provisions for the compulsory fingerprinting of individuals. If people have been found guilty of a criminal offence, I can see no difficulty in their being compulsorily fingerprinted as part of their penalty, subject to the authorisation of a senior police officer. Similarly, a caution, warning or reprimand would probably count as a disposal in a criminal case. However, a fixed penalty notice is slightly different because it is a civil procedure.

Have fixed penalty notices not been included because of Human Rights Act considerations? Given that people admit guilt at the cautioning level, the warning level or the conviction level—they are either admitting guilt or being found guilty—I am worried that paying a fixed penalty notice will have the same effect, and that people will think that they are admitting that they have committed an offence and are paying a penalty in lieu of prosecution and conviction. I may be wrong, and I would be interested to hear the Minister's response.

In some cases, but not all, it is extremely helpful to have fingerprints. It is not necessary for someone who is drunk on the highway, but it is for criminal damage. I agree with the Minister that fixed penalties will not be issued for the more serious cases of criminal damage. However, in our small market towns and in the cities of Britain, groups of youngsters often commit acts of yobbery and vandalism. All too often it can escalate from kicking lamp-posts to seriously damaging motor cars or committing serious offences of criminal damage.

I wonder whether there is not a logical inconsistency. There are three tiers of seriousness: if I am right, warning is at the bottom, caution is next, and the fixed penalty notice follows that. It is rather surprising that those on the third tier should not have their fingerprints taken, particularly as no criminal record will be kept. They will not be recorded as having committed an offence, but I do not see why we should not keep their fingerprints.

There may be some overlap between arrangements for keeping criminal records and for keeping fingerprints, but I thought that section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 is being repealed because that administrative link no longer exists. If we have a separate database for fingerprints, and if there is no obvious interaction with criminal records other than the one that I mentioned—the fact that, under the Human Rights Act, the one follows the other—why should we not consider bringing fixed penalty notices into the system? I want to tease out of the Minister whether that would be a problem.

The other aspect is whether PACE gives the police the discretion to take fingerprints from those receiving fixed penalty notices at the police station if there is a worry that the offenders may be part of a group that has committed many offences in the area.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

On the hon. Gentleman's last point, I believe that there is no discretion; but I am asking for further advice in order to give a more authoritative answer. On his third point, the short answer is no: Human Rights Act considerations did not lead to fixed penalty notices not being included. As I said earlier, identity and suspicion of involvement will not be an issue when fixed penalty notices are issued. Fixed penalty notices are not a conviction, so the police have no power to take fingerprints.

I shall say a little more on the hierarchy point that the hon. Gentleman has been making. The fixed penalty notice is a less serious disposal of cases than a caution, reprimand or warning—the latter three can be given only if guilt is admitted. As we heard during our debates on part I, people who accept a fixed penalty notice are not necessarily admitting guilt, so it is lower in the hierarchy than the other three options. However, I acknowledge that it might not seem like that to the person in receipt of a fixed penalty notice. I think that I have correctly described the position in our legal hierarchy.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

I do not want to return to the question of fixed penalty notices in detail, but how does what the Minister has said sit with the maximum penalties that he has proposed for those? Surely a possible fine, in effect, of £2,500 for one of the offences in question is more serious than a caution, which involves no penalty at all but is simply a matter of being told not to do it again.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I cannot recall whether I have yet written to the hon. Gentleman and to the Committee on this matter, but as I suggested previously, when we discussed what order of penalty might be involved, we intend on Report to table an amendment with a view to reducing the relevant proportion from a half to a quarter. That is another example of the way in which the Committee's rounded and lengthy consideration of the Bill has led to changes. That is the classic way in which Parliament should operate and the result is to the hon. Gentleman's credit. We have considered the issue, as we said we would. However, the order of penalty that we are considering in this context is not dramatically different from what I was alluding to previously.

I urge the Committee to agree that the clause stand part of the Bill.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

What are the current arrangements for keeping fingerprints and for allowing the person whose fingerprints are kept to know about that? What proof is available to a citizen who falls within new subsection (1A)—because the police want to take another set of prints, the original set being defective—that the first set of prints to have been taken has been destroyed?

I have several questions about this, from the point of view of the citizen. If, today, I wanted to discover whether my fingerprints were being held, where would I go? Could I have access to them, and on what notice? If the authorities had taken my fingerprints lawfully, the first set having been defective, could I be assured that the first set would be destroyed? Could I be present when they were destroyed, or have the right to know about it?

If fingerprints are held, to whom are they accessible beyond the police force that collected them? If they were collected in London by the Metropolitan police, should I assume them to be accessible to every territorial police force in England and Wales? Would they be accessible to other police forces, such as the Royal Parks constabulary and the military police, or to other agencies such as the National Criminal Intelligence Service? Above all, would they be accessible to bodies such as Customs and Excise or the Inland Revenue? If so, exact details of the extent of their availability should be provided.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I am loth to give an off-the-cuff answer to that comprehensive group of questions. We have established and invested in the national automated fingerprint identification system—NAFIS—which operates throughout the country. That system is currently being developed. Technological change presents many possibilities. However, I should prefer to write to the hon. Gentleman in answer to the detailed points that he raised, rather than to give an off-the-cuff response that might be misleading.

Sir Nicholas Lyell (Conservative, North East Bedfordshire)

The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey raises important points, and I should be grateful for a copy of the Minister's letter of reply to him. I share the concern about taking fingerprints in the case of fixed penalties and I should like clarification of the matter. My support for fixed penalties is based on their being a straightforward, simple way of disposing of minor offences. For offences such as drunkenness one does not need fingerprints on the record; they are unlikely to tie in with significant crime. A balance must be struck with the liberty of the individual. I am worried if simply accepting a fixed penalty will leave someone's fingerprints on the record; I am even more worried if someone's fingerprints may be kept if he is acquitted or if no charge is proceeded with. I cannot understand how fingerprints could then properly be kept. I hope that the Minister will clarify that I am wrong in thinking that they could.

My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire mentioned the Human Rights Act, which is extremely important. I am sometimes worried that Ministers are inclined to answer that if something is not thought to offend against that Act, it is per se acceptable. The Human Rights Act is a long stop; it is not the code that sets out how we should be dealt with in every respect. I hope to continue to live in a society in which standards are in most instances higher than are absolutely required under the Human Rights Act. The mere fact that something may not be thought to contravene the Human Rights Act is not necessarily a satisfactory answer. Ministers are asked to put their name to the fact that Bills that they put before the House comply with the Human Rights Act; I know that they do so in good faith, after thought and advice from their lawyers. None the less, on many occasions during this Parliament, Bills have rightly been amended because, on reflection, it was realised that significant aspects of them did not comply with that Act. Consequently, it is important that we do not assume that the measures comply with the Act merely because the Bill contains a statement to that effect.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman's assessment of fixed penalty notices and the offences, but I think that the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire was reasonable to specify that the offence in the list that gives rise to ambiguity about the value of fingerprints is criminal damage. That is why we have just replicated our debate on that provision. With that qualification, the right hon. and learned Gentleman is entirely right.

We shall discuss the point about acquittal when we come to clause 81 in a few moments. At present, fingerprints are destroyed after acquittal; clause 81 provides that that will no longer be the case. I understand from what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he does not support that change, but that is not the main issue at stake with the clause.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

I thank the Minister for explaining that he will change the level of the fixed penalty notice; that is most welcome. I had also forgotten to thank him for his letter last night which states that he intends to remove clauses 7 and 8 from the Bill. Those are the clauses that caused much concern about bureaucracy and confusion for those receiving fixed penalty notices at the same time as receiving a warning notice and possibly a statement. That is also most welcome.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and I cannot support the clause, because the Minister confirmed that subsection (6) means that someone who has received a caution, reprimand or warning will have fingerprints taken and kept indefinitely; if that provision were removed, we could do so. I also look forward to the information about the general arrangements that I understand that the Minister may be better able to give outside the Committee. However, at present the clause goes too far in relation to those who have not been convicted.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes 2.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

On a point of order, Mr. Gale. I was initially puzzled because amendment No. 221 does not appear on your selection list, but I understand that that is because it would delete the whole clause. However, when so much else about our procedure is being considered--I am committed to reversing much of what the Government have done on procedure under the inappropriate description of modernisation--you might refer that matter to the Chairmen's Panel, Mr. Gale, and, if it agrees, to the Modernisation Committee. The Chairman's selection is seen by those who are not Members of Parliament but who take an interest in our proceedings, and it might be helpful and less confusing for them if such an amendment could appear on the selection list in brackets. For example, amendment No. 221 could have appeared in brackets under clause 78 to make it clear that it had not been selected because it seeks to delete the entire clause.

I shall not go further, Mr Gale, and you may not want to respond to that point of order now.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

I have listened with interest to the hon. Gentleman, I am prepared to refer the matter to the Chairman of Ways and Means, who, no doubt, will want to make his representations to the Modernisation Committee.

Amendment No. 221 was not selected because it is otiose. The Committee has the opportunity to debate and vote against the clause, so the amendment is redundant. However, I accept that the amendment paper may sometimes seem arcane to those who are not entirely conversant with it.

Clause 78 - Authority for intimate searches

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

In this stand part debate we return to our earlier argument that the Government are wrong to downgrade the rank at which decisions are made from superintendent to inspector. I repeat that I am not decrying the important work of inspectors, many of whom are longstanding friends, including those with whom I worked when I was prosecuting at the Bar and those I have met in my constituency.

A further point that I did not raise in the earlier debate is that the Minister must not only justify the Government's motivation--perhaps it is cost saving, which has been forced on the Home Secretary by the Treasury--but explain why such a huge leap down from superintendent is being made. If the Minister was suggesting a change from superintendent to chief inspector--[Interruption.]

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Order. As I have indicated in the past, there are splendid green Benches outside the Room for those who wish to conduct private conversations.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The Government's proposed reduction in the required rank, from superintendent all the way down to inspector, is plainly wrong. We might have taken a different view if they had proposed a change from superintendent to chief inspector. In my experience, chief inspectors are senior managers. That is certainly true of those who have responsibility for my constituency. Mentioning that gives me the opportunity to pay tribute personally to Chief Inspector Mick Day, who is one of the most helpful senior officers with whom it has ever been my pleasure to deal. I have the good fortune to know him. He was born and brought up in my constituency, so he knows the area very well—not just because of his police career, but from life.

If the Government had announced a change from superintendent to chief inspector, we might have taken a different view, because people of the calibre of Chief Inspector Mick Day would have been involved. Such police officers are regarded, by me and by many Conservative Members, as senior managers. It is not right to downgrade the required rank. I will be urging my right hon. and hon. Friends to support me in voting to remove clause 78. We think that it is wrong, for the reasons that I have set out, and I will therefore be urging members of the Committee to vote against it.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I will be brief. The clause contains an important transition of authority, and clearly does not yet have the confidence of the police. In such delicate areas, when discussing authority for intimate searches, we should not proceed without the assurance that the police are happy about the measure. The public may also be concerned about the matter. They would expect authority to be given by somebody of a rank that they regard as senior. I understand the Minister's arguments, but there has not been sufficient time for agreement to be reached on the clause.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I do not want to speak at length, so I will simply make three points about what has been said. First, I do accept the use of the word ``downgrade'' by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins). I do not think that he meant it in any derogatory way, but it is not right to describe what we are proposing as downgrading. We are proposing that in the flexible restructuring of the police force that is currently taking place, such responsibilities are appropriate for inspectors. It is not a matter of downgrading.

Secondly, the hon. Gentleman did not suggest in his remarks that the measure is motivated by considerations of cost, but he has done so previously. He is wrong about that—the measure is concerned with the restructuring of the force, in the way that I have described.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The Minister was busy chatting to his ministerial colleague. I did make that point again, but he did not hear it.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I should apologise. Unfortunately, there is a part of me that tends to switch off when the hon. Gentleman is going through the same speech again and again for each clause. I apologise to him and to the Committee if I missed that particular point.

As I said during yesterday's sitting, inspectors are in the unique position of both having the experience and knowledge required to conduct such operations and being available on the ground, with direct knowledge of the situation. That makes them very capable.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Hall Green)

Since this is a specific task that the Bill seeks to delegate to police officers of the rank of inspector, would it be reasonable to assume that, in any future assessment of competence, the individual performance of those officers could be assessed against that specific task?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

My hon. Friend is entirely correct. One of the important sets of proposals in the Bill, which we will consider later today, is that concerned with strengthening the approach to police training, which we hope to do through legislation and with the resources that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has been able to allocate to the task in the comprehensive spending review. Our aim is to improve the quality of training precisely to deal with the kind of points that my hon. Friend is raising.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The intervention from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. McCabe) and the Minister's response give me an opportunity to ask a question. On the police, Conservative Members have long been concerned that the Government have concentrated too much on process, at the expense of performance. Does the Minister accept that no sensible organisation could possibly cope with the number of performance targets that this Government have imposed? I know that they recently reduced it from 58 performance targets, which we had savagely criticised in the House, to, I believe, 42. No sensible business organisation has more than three or four performance targets.

The issue that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green raised with the Minister is another instance of concentrating on process. Let the police do the job of policing.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

Ironically, the position that the hon. Gentleman takes would have exactly the opposite effect. We want the police, at inspector level, to be able to do these jobs. He is saying that we should not allow that. I do not wish to enter into a general debate on the target-setting process throughout the range of police performance, unless you would especially like me to do so, Mr. Gale.

I can tell the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey that the Police Federation has doubts about all the changes concerning flexibility, the effectiveness of the developing use of new technologies and so on. That theme recurs, in different places, throughout the Bill. That is not the same as saying that the police service as a whole is against them; it is not. In general, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Police Authorities and the Police Superintendents Association are in favour of the proposed changes. Neither is it the same as saying that we do not take account of the view of the Police Federation. We are ready to discuss such questions with the federation, and do so. In fact, we should like to enhance the level of discussion. However, I am not prepared to say that simply because a position is put forward by the Police Federation, we should not proceed with any reform. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman acknowledges that that is the case. We want to consider the entire situation and to take the overall view of the police service. I hope that the Committee will agree that the clause stand part of the Bill.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 9, Noes 6.

Clause 79 - Samples

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I beg to move amendment No. 222, in page 65, line 9, leave out subsection (1).

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to take the following amendments: No. 223, in page 65, line 14, leave out subsection (2).

No. 268, in page 65, line 16, after ``or'', insert

``(where it is not reasonably practicable for a registered medical practitioner to do so)''.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I shall be brief. Amendment No. 222 raises almost the same issues as those that we debated in relation to clause 78 on the matter of whether officers of the rank of inspector or above can authorise the taking of intimate samples and the compulsory taking of non-intimate samples. Amendment No. 223 raises the question of whether intimate samples which, at the moment, can be taken only by a registered medical practitioner should also be able to be taken by a registered nurse. We are talking about samples such as blood, semen, tissue fluid, pubic hair and similar delightful things that those poor people must deal with as part of their job. Amendment No. 268 says that it should be possible for a registered nurse to perform the function only when it is not practicable for a registered medical practitioner to do so.

So generous is my spirit that I can see that amendment No. 268, tabled by Conservative Members, is superior to amendment No. 223. I therefore support it in preference to ours. As amendment No. 222 raises issues that we have been round the course on before, I do not wish to elaborate on it.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I referred yesterday to the skill of our able researcher, Matthew Gullick, and said that it was 3-0 to him against the Government and the officials. On this occasion, I think that it is 1-0 to Gullick against the Liberal Democrats.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Order. The House is served by a large number of able people—police, researchers and others. If we catalogued them all in Committee, we would do little else. We might refrain from doing so.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I observe one point, which may amuse the Committee. The issue of whether it is a man or a woman who carries out the intimate body search appears rather confused in the mind of some of those who brief us. A briefing document that asks us to consider various issues uses a wonderful phrase. It states that

``no consideration has been given to the rights of the prisoner''

—that is a perfectly reasonable argument, but goes on—

``nor the safety of what may invariably be a nurse of the female gender in such circumstances.''

There are still more female than male nurses. I understand that there are now more female than male graduate doctors so the likelihood is that in time such procedures will be carried out by a woman. An issue of safety arises for people carrying out intimate body searches without the prisoner's agreement. It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us, now—which would probably be better—or on the Floor of the House, whether there is guidance or a code of practice in regard to such circumstances. There are issues both of civil liberty for the individual being searched and of protection for the person doing the searching.

Is it still the case—I think that it is or has been, in both the prison service and the police service—that one can insist on a body search being carried out by someone of the same gender? Women have raised that issue in the past; one should be able to assert that right if one wishes.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The hon. Gentleman graciously said that he thinks our amendment goes to the point. Little can be gained from repeating all the reasons why we think that the relevant rank should be the senior management rank of superintendent. The Minister rightly said in response to the previous debate that no Opposition Member intended to use the phrase ``downgrading'' pejoratively—certainly I do not. It is simply a statement of fact about officers who are much less senior. Although the number of superintendents is relatively small, they are senior managers in the police service; there are many inspectors. The Minister and I will never agree on whether the measure is cost-driven. We take a strongly different view from the Government and believe that it is important to involve senior officers, as we have said repeatedly. The Minister was very critical about the fact that I kept making the same speech, but if the Government keep getting it wrong in the Bill, we will keep opposing them. In our view, the Government have plainly got this wrong. It is important to ensure that nurses are used only when registered medical practitioners are not available. We are grateful to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey for making that point.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

My hon. Friend will have seen the letter from Fred Broughton, the chairman of the Police Federation, in which he expresses a concern about that, saying that his organisation

``would question the thinking behind such amendments in the provision of safeguards both to custody officers and the prisoner. The only conclusion that can be immediately drawn is one of cost savings. That cannot be a good reason for demeaning tried and tested procedures put in place under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.''

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

My hon. Friend is right. I was going to come to the views of police officers at the sharp end, which we have stressed repeatedly. The Minister should listen carefully to Fred Broughton, because he speaks for the mass of police officers at the sharp end. Again, on recent visits, I have seen for myself the difficulties that officers have when samples are being taken. In a debate this morning, I mentioned a recent visit that I made to Guildford police station, where the custody officers were dealing with a very difficult drunk. They were extremely skilful in managing to allocate some officers from those on duty to deal specifically with the drunk, so that dealing with him did not impinge too much on others who were being processed at the station by having their fingerprints taken and so on. Ordinary police constables and custody sergeants must deal with hugely difficult tasks, so it is an important safeguard to ensure that all officers are protected.

Clearly, doctors and nurses also perform very difficult tasks. Television sometimes over-dramatises matters, but it was helpful in some regards that the recent BBC series ``Dangerfield'' managed to highlight the difficult and important tasks that face doctors who are serving GPs and who also visit police stations. Although some plots were of course highly coloured, I was especially interested in the series because a great deal of its filming took place in and around the courts where I practised. The Parliamentary Secretary is not with us at the moment, but he was also on that circuit. Much of the filming was done in and around towns such as Warwick, and the exteriors of real police stations were quite often used. It was a successful series with a wide and large audience, and doubtless there is now greater appreciation of the serious risks that sometimes face not only ordinary officers, but police doctors, GPs who assist the police, and nurses who assist those doctors. Any of us who have spent time visiting police stations in our constituencies know that that is the case.

I do not know whether Government Back Benchers will have had the same opportunity. If not, I seriously urge them to visit police officers, at a time that is convenient to the police, to see the difficult dilemmas that they face. Then Government Members might better understand some of the points being made by Opposition Members. These are important amendments, and I support those in the name of my right hon. and hon. Friends. Helpfully, the Liberal Democrats have said that our amendment No. 268 is better than theirs, and we shall certainly press that amendment.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I shall not say anything more on amendment No. 222, because we have discussed it at great length. In the light of the complaints about the time spent on various parts of the Bill, it might be as well to spend more time on the aspects that we have not discussed, rather than simply run through the same points again.

Amendments Nos. 268 and 223 are more interesting. Frankly, I am rather surprised at the Liberal Democrats' position. The health team is an important concept to develop and build, which is happening more and more. Registered nurses are highly trained medical professionals. Allowing them to take the whole range of intimate samples that, at present, only medical practitioners can take simply reflects their expanding role across many different medical environments. The proposed change would be in keeping with current practice in hospitals and doctors' surgeries, where registered nurses already take such samples. It will also help to avoid delays and remove the need to call on a police surgeon's services where a trained nurse can easily deal with the practical requirements. The Government's approach across the whole system is to strengthen the position of nurses, to be more flexible about the skills that can be used in different ways and to develop the concept of the health team, rather than the highly hierarchical approach that currently exists throughout the health service.

There are difficulties, and many important and substantial issues arise, but no one can seriously doubt that a trained registered nurse has the capacity to take the intimate samples that we have described. It is not that my orientation towards the point is different, but that I profoundly disagree with it. Giving registered nurses the capacity to deal with such situations is a step forward in the development of our medical services. I must make one small clarification: a dental impression may be taken only by a registered dentist, and we do not propose to alter that.

To answer the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey about the sex of the person taking the test, I understand that a doctor taking an intimate sample does not have to be of the same sex as the person from whom the sample is taken, although that would be good practice, which we are trying to encourage. I hope that Opposition Members will reconsider their position.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I should have said clearly that this is a probing amendment, not our fixed position. We are not against the proposal but want to explore the issues.

On the second point that the Minister dealt with, is there no right in any part of the system for someone to insist on having an intimate search done by someone of the same gender or—as a colleague suggested—the converse, to insist on someone of the opposite gender? Some people might prefer that.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

This is most entertaining. During the debate, we have learned about the youth of the hon. Members for Southwark, North and Bermondsey and for Taunton—and now we have this extraordinary departure. I knew that the hon. Gentleman had a fixation with people in uniform, but I was not aware that that extended to people of the opposite sex in those circumstances. His constituents will be fascinated to know about that.

The right that the hon. Gentleman suggests does not exist, but it is good practice for samples to be taken by people of the same sex. The position is that a doctor of either sex can take intimate samples or perform a search, but a constable must be of the same sex. That difference is interesting.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

And a nurse?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

A nurse can be of either sex.

Jackie Ballard (Liberal Democrat, Taunton)

I shall not follow up my hon. Friend's comments, because I am not in a mood for disclosure.

For many women, it might be important that an intimate search is done by someone of the same gender, but I am seriously concerned about, for example, a Muslim woman in a police station. Will the Government consider tabling an amendment in future?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I am certainly prepared to consider that. As I say, good practice would give an individual the right to choose someone of the same sex. That applies not only in the religious circumstances that the hon. Lady mentioned but more generally. It is clear that the law differs in its application in various respects, but that is something that is worth considering.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Clearly, the Government are retaining the ability for a registered medical practitioner to take the sample but, from what the Minister said, it seems that he would rather have nurses do that. If the Government think that it would be sensible to move from doctors to nurses, it would be helpful if the Minister told us so. Obviously, it was a protection to have a registered medical practitioner take samples. If he is simply saying that a nurse can do it if a doctor is not available, I cannot see why he does not accept our amendment.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

All I am saying is that we want to remove the existing restriction. In practice, the hon. Gentleman's amendment would not allow us to do that. I am not saying that it is Government policy that nurses rather than medical practitioners should take the samples. However, it is our policy to ensure that they are free to do that.

We are reviewing the division of responsibility between doctors and nurses in the custody suite. A key pilot project is taking place in Kent, to look at those matters. Most of the relevant rules are in PACE code C. We are reviewing that, and aim to have a revised code in force early next year. Some of those issues, including the one raised by the hon. Member for Taunton, will be addressed in that review. I will not go so far as to say that as a matter of policy we are specifying nurses rather than doctors. However, our policy is that the current restriction should be removed and not qualified as proposed in amendment No. 268.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

It helps the Committee to hear further responses, one of which, from Jeff Moseley, the secretary of the Police Federation, has just been sent to me. He states that the amendment to section 62(9) of the 1984 Act

``is a retrograde step...This can only be amended again on the basis of cost. No consideration has been given to the rights of the prisoner nor the safety of what may well invariably be a nurse of the female gender in such circumstances. `Why spoil the barrel for a hap'eth of tar?'''

I hope that the Minister will respond to those strong words.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

No, I will not, as I have nothing further to add. The Police Federation is a respected organisation; Fred Broughton and Jeff Moseley put their case powerfully and well and circulated it for discussion, as is their right. However, they do not bring anything new to consideration of the proposal.

I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.

Sir Nicholas Lyell (Conservative, North East Bedfordshire)

I have some sympathy for the Minister's view that one should carefully explore to what extent a registered medical practitioner should carry out certain procedures and to what extent it is reasonable that they should be carried out by registered nurses. We should not be naive about the process of government; when such a change is wholly allowed by the clause, we must assume, as the Police Federation rightly assumes, that cost will drive the provision.

It is entirely sensible to have a pilot project and I was interested to hear about the one in Kent. However, I am more convinced of the good sense of our amendment, which states that a nurse should be used only when it is not practicable, at that stage, for a doctor to be involved.

I have much sympathy with the suggestion that a person of the same gender as the suspect should carry out an intimate examination. Criminal justice Bills are not rare, and we are discussing a developing situation. If we reject the Government's proposal, we will not stand in the way of sensible policing. Our suggestion that the move should be allowed only when it is not practicable to do otherwise gives a useful halfway house when, as the Minister rightly said, pilot studies are being carried out and other matters are being considered. We should move step by step, and I therefore ask the Minister seriously to consider accepting the amendment on Report if he cannot do so now.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

Amendment No. 222 relates to the same issue as amendment No. 268. We have been round the course, and voted on clause stand part. We will not press amendment No. 223 to a Division, although Conservative Members may want to divide the Committee on their amendment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed: No. 268, in clause 79, page 65, line 16, after `or', insert

`(where it is not reasonably practicable for a registered medical practitioner to do so)'.—[Mr. Hawkins.]

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 4, Noes 11.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

On a point of order, Mr. Gale. I might have misunderstood the procedure and, if I have been overtaken by events, that is my fault. Am I too late to ask for a vote on amendment No. 222? If not, I would like to have one before we move on to the next clause.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

The answer is straightforward. It is too late, because the Committee agreed to the withdrawal of the amendment. I asked whether it was the pleasure of the Committee that it be withdrawn and the hon. Gentleman did not object.

Clause 79 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

It being twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned till this day at half-past Two o'clock.

Standing Committee F

Criminal Justice and Police Bill

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

On a point of order, Mr. Gale. The Official Report of our 13th sitting, at column 561, contains an inaccurate transcription of the name of one of our senior researchers. I do not make this point of order by way of criticism, but he was given the name Steve Radford; for the sake of history, his name is Bradford. Some may regard that as an improvement, not least the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe). I should be grateful if the record could be corrected.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

The hon. Gentleman has made his point. It is now a matter of record. Clause 80 Speculative searches

Clause 80 - Speculative searches

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I beg to move amendment No. 224, in page 66, line 32, leave out from beginning to end of line 3 on page 67.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 269, in page 66, line 33, leave out `British Islands' and insert

`United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man'.

No. 270, in page 66, line 33, leave out `British Islands' and insert

`United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man'.

No. 271, in page 66, line 36, after `person', insert

`specified in an order made by the Secretary of State'.

No. 272, in page 66, line 42, after `person', insert

`specified' in an order made by the Secretary of State'.

No. 273, in page 66, line 45, leave out `places' and insert `countries'.

No. 274, in page 67, line 3, at end insert—

`(1AA) Any order made by the Secretary of State under subsection (1A)(e) or (f) above shall be made by statutory instrument; and no such order shall be made unless a draft of the order has been laid before, and approved by, each House of Parliament.'.

No. 275, in page 67, line 35, at end insert—

`(1E) Prior to the giving of consent in writing under subsection (1C) above, the person giving the consent shall have the provisions of subsection (1D) above drawn to his attention in writing.'.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

The clause lists the agencies between which information can be transferred. The presumption seems to be that they can transfer information without further ado. The clause lists ``a police force'' and the ``National Criminal Intelligence Service''. There follows a list of other authorities and agencies, some of which are police. At the moment, police forces in the United Kingdom can transfer information between themselves, including fingerprint, database and DNA information. That relates to the questions that I asked this morning about fingerprinting and sample-holding arrangements, who can have access to them and how.

First, I understand that the clause will extend the power to check fingerprints not only to other organisations within the UK but to foreign police forces and organisations such as the Ministry of Defence police. Secondly, if someone volunteers to give information, fingerprints or samples and they are put into the general database, the clause would allow that permission to be extended to all the organisations listed.

With amendment No. 224, I want to test whether it is justified at this stage and in this one-off way to extend the list as the Government propose. The amendment would stop the list at the National Criminal Intelligence Service and remove the other organisations in the list. Amendments Nos. 269 to 275 were tabled by Conservative Members, and they will speak to them in a moment.

The general proposition that follows from amendment No. 224 is that it is important that the public as well as the police know who are the ``authorities''. I do not argue that we can necessarily and easily rationalise into a smaller number of police forces—although I believe that we should. However, we must justify including all those other forces and authorities in the provision.

I am also worried by lines 32 to 35 of the clause, which would also be removed by the amendment. They state:

``a public authority (not falling within paragraphs (a) to (c))''—

so not a police force, not the National Criminal Intelligence Service and not the National Crime Squad—

``with functions in any part of the British Islands which consist of or include the investigation of crimes or the charging of offenders''.

That could be interpreted—although it is not intended to be—as including local authorities. I say that because under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 there are new partnerships, and some decisions about the processes of local action involve local authorities by definition of that Act. A wide interpretation of the definition could allow local authorities to be included for reasons that we have debated—for example, that it is the local authority that has designated an area for curfew purposes, or the like.

If the Minister is being less defensive than normal, he may accept that there could be ambiguity about the definition. If so, would he consider a definition that makes it clear that only public authorities who are, as it were, part of the law and order community are included? Will he clarify which public authorities are included? We should not legislate to include public authorities that are not included in the shopping list that we have in paragraphs (a) to (f) or the even bigger shopping list that we have from subsection (1B)(a) to (o). We do not know which other organisations may be included. We need to know whether other public authorities are involved, and if so, which.

During Home Office debates during the past year—I seem to remember the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean) making this point about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000—it has been said that we must be careful, when we list organisations to be covered, either to list them all accurately, or to define them by generic type so that we need not list them in the Bill. I wonder whether the clause is in danger of breaching that general, sensible proposition and not learning the lessons of last year, and whether, in any event, consideration should be given to whether the list should appear in a schedule, with a general proposition concerning the type of organisation in the Bill.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I can be relatively brief about our amendments—Nos. 269 to 275. We want to probe the Minister on several issues. I start with what is perhaps the simplest amendment. You cautioned us, Mr. Gale, against mentioning those who assist all of us, so I will not do so, but I urge the Minister to consider with his officials whether amendment No. 273 is much closer to the normal drafting. One does not normally read in legislation a phrase such as

``the law of one or more places''.

Surely, that should read ``countries'', as amendment No. 273 would provide. Even if the Minister cannot agree to that amendment today, I hope that on Report he will feel that our drafting is more felicitous. That is the simplest amendment, but there are one or two matters of slightly greater substance.

Amendment No. 272 deals with proposed new subsection (1A)(f) of section 63A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which concerns

``any person with functions under any international agreement which consist of or include the investigation of conduct which is—unlawful...prohibited... or contrary to international law''.

We think that there should be a requirement for such people to be specified by order made by the Secretary of State, and that is what the amendment seeks to do.

Amendment No. 274 is similar. It seeks to include a new subsection (1AA) at the end of the existing subsection (1A) saying that no order shall be made

``unless a draft of the order has been laid before, and approved by, each House of Parliament.''

We think that there should be an affirmative procedure, so that there would be some democratic scrutiny before such orders took place. On the Conservative Benches, we always believe that to be important, and we do so in this regard.

The same is true of the wording of our amendment No. 271, in that we are asking that the person be specified in an order made by the Secretary of State.

Amendments Nos. 269 and 270 are close to my heart, as an officer of the all-party Isle of Man group, or Manx group as it is sometimes called. Too often, this Government treat the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands with something that can only be described—and has been described within the House of Keys—as contempt.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

In a moment.

The Home Office got into terrible trouble early in the life of this Government when it was trying to get itself out of a temporary bind relating to the former Paymaster General. Suddenly, without any consultation with the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, it introduced new provisions in relation to banking regulation—my own field as a lawyer—and there were emergency debates seeking secession in the Isle of Man Parliament and in Jersey and Guernsey. For the Government to ignore the significance of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man is, we believe, a grave mistake that will only lead to further offence. The peculiar phrase ``British Islands'' is a novel one to me and perhaps to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald). We strongly urge the Minister, on Report if not today, to revert to the traditional wording of ``United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man''.

Mr. Gale, you will stop me if I trespass too far down the line of wondering whether some deference is being attempted towards those who wish to refer to the island of Ireland, as it may not be germane to these amendments. However, we are suspicious of any redefinition of this country as ``the British Islands'', for which there might be any number of reasons. Perhaps it is part of the Government's sinister regionalising agenda, or it could simply be due to the misunderstanding of our history that is prevalent in this Labour Government.

James Gray (Conservative, North Wiltshire)

Surely the words ``British Islands'' will include, for example, the Falkland Islands and those islands in the Caribbean that are British protectorates. They are not covered by this Bill.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

My hon. Friend is right, and reinforces my point. We are anxious to retain the traditional formula of the

``United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man''.

That phrase has been used repeatedly in Bill after Bill, Act after Act. The Minister may have some justification for his novel phraseology. If he does, I will certainly give way, but before that it is important to place on the record the substantive point of our belief in the traditional description of this country and, indeed, that description itself. The Minister is not going to intervene. Perhaps he has been persuaded by my argument although that, too, would be novel.

Finally, we come to amendment No. 275. It touches on another important point, but a rather different one. We seek to insert a new subsection (1E) which suggests that before giving written consent, the person concerned should have the provisions of subsection (1D) drawn to his or her attention in writing. That is important, because we are concerned with the protection of the citizen.

Subsection (1D), which would make it impossible for consent given under subsection (1C) to be withdrawn, is not unique, but such provisions are not all that common. Any person who is asked to make an irreversible commitment, to which consent cannot subsequently be withdrawn, should always be informed of that fact in writing beforehand. That is why I have left amendment No. 275 until last. The issue that it deals with is particularly important and separate from the others. Whatever the Minister may think of the other amendments in the group, I urge him seriously to consider that one above all. It is an important safeguard for the liberty of the subject.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Does my hon. Friend also want the Minister to explain the implications of the change for arrangements for police co-operation in Europe?

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

That is a good point. It would help if we might hear about that. My hon. Friend, having been a distinguished Minister in the previous Government, has more experience of cross-border ministerial meetings than I have. My experience was limited to being a Parliamentary Private Secretary in two Departments, although in one of those, the Ministry of Defence, the work had significant international implications. I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. No doubt the Minister will have something to say on the matter.

We are of course aware of the important briefing provided to all members of the Committee by Liberty. I shall not repeat all the concerns rightly raised by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) about clause 80. However, they are important issues, and the points that Liberty raised and the hon. Gentleman so ably summarised deserve a detailed response from the Minister.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I share my hon. Friend's concern about the phrase ``the British Islands''. The Minister rolls his eyes and looks heavenwards as if I am deranged.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I had intended to leave this point until I replied to the debate, but to try to cut short continued discussion of it, I remind the Committee that the meaning of the term ``the British Islands'' is set out in the Interpretation Act 1978 and was, of course, current throughout the term of the previous Government. It has exactly the meaning set out in amendment No. 269, of the

``United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man''.

That phrase has been in standard use in legislation for 22 years. I thought of intervening on the point earlier, and then thought that I would leave it, but as questions such as whether the definition includes the Falkland islands have been raised, I thought that I should place the explanation on the record to help the Committee.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I am sure that the Minister is right in the assurance that he gives the Committee. However, I find the term an extremely odd use of language, when it would be possible to be specific. If the jurisdictions set out in amendment No. 269 are what is meant, it would be infinitely preferable for them to appear in the Bill.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

Of course I heard the Minister's intervention, but I found it surprising. If the Minister is telling the Committee that the phrase ``the British Islands'' was used in every Bill of the previous Parliament, I am amazed. That is not my recollection, although of course I have not had the chance to check. My recollection is that on several occasions we debated Bills that contained the phraseology used in the amendment.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I note that my hon. Friend has tabled two alternative amendments, Nos. 269 and 270, the second of which includes a reference to the Republic of Ireland. I understand from what the Minister said that the phrase used in the Bill does not include the Republic of Ireland. However, I remain concerned. On a normal reading of ``British Islands'', anyone would clearly think that the term included the Republic of Ireland.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

It is like the phrase ``the British Isles'', which has always included Ireland. The Irish are obviously not keen for that to be used.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

The fact that a definition is floating about from 23 years ago does not reassure me much when we could put known and clearly understood terms in the Bill. Something as vague as ``British Islands'' is no substitute for an accurate term.

I am especially concerned about proposed new subsection (1A)(d) of section 63A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. It states:

``a public authority...with functions in any part of the British Islands which consist of or include the investigation of crimes or the charging of offenders''.

If, on reasonable reflection, I believe that ``British Islands'' includes the Republic of Ireland, my understanding would be that the provision would cover public authorities nominated by another country.

If we do not mean the Republic of Ireland, the Minister should accept amendment No. 269, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins), as it at least is clear. I would not want him to accept the alternative of amendment No. 270, which includes the Republic of Ireland, simply because of the authority that would then be given to that country to nominate public authorities without the permission of the House and the wishes of the Government. Such authorities would be given power and responsibility under the clause.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I am slightly surprised that we should devote so much time and energy to discussing the meaning of ``the British Islands'', given the shortage of time of which the Opposition complain.

It might help the Committee if I responded to a point made by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey this morning about the process of access to fingerprint and DNA records. I said that I would write to him, but I can now give him an answer, and doing so will help our debate.

Under the Data Protection Act 1998, an individual has a right to a copy of details of any personal data relating to them that is held on a computer. Fingerprints or DNA profiles are considered personal information. Individuals who want to exercise their right under the 1998 Act, or their representatives, need to apply to the main police station in their area for a subject access application form. Once the form is completed, it needs to be returned to the police with an appropriate form of identification, so that the police can establish that the individual is the relevant person, and that he or his representative has the right to the information. Apparently, there is a fixed charge of £10.

The form will then be sent to the subject access office in New Scotland Yard, which will check the details of the individual against the records held on the PNC—the police national computer. If no information is held, a standard letter will be sent by the subject access office directly to the individual. If any information on the individual falls within the provisions of the 1998 Act, the information will be checked and sent directly to the individual who requested the information. The police are under a legal requirement to respond to such requests within 40 days.

Similar arrangements exist for the DNA database, but because it is currently not linked to the police national computer—we are developing that relationship—the requests are dealt with by the forensic science service on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers.

As far as multiple sets of fingerprints are concerned, each set is recorded and given a unique arrest summons record number on the police national computer. The ASR also includes minimum basic details, such as the name of the person, details of the officer taking the prints, the officer investigating the case, the offence and the charging station. The fingerprint bureau then enters the record on to the national automated fingerprint identification system, known as NAFIS. It is not possible to create a record on NAFIS without the full information that I have summarised.

NAFIS will retrieve the ASR from the Phoenix criminal name database on the PNC. Checks are then made to ensure that the data captured on the new form match those on the ASR. If the subject has a criminal record, the Criminal Record Office—CRO—number is added to the relevant field in the ASR together with a unique NAFIS fingerprint identification number. When a fingerprint record is added to an existing or a new record, the information goes automatically to the PNC to update records. ASRs are attached to existing records.

The unique fingerprint identification number allows tracking through the NAFIS system. For any individual there may be several sets of fingerprints taken for different offences. NAFIS also uses the best prints to compile the ``ten print'' complete fingerprint record, so that might be a composite of individual prints taken from different sets and records. That allows for an audit trail to be created, enabling all prints to be kept and accounted for even though the set shown when the record is interrogated may be a composite.

Access to fingerprint records by police forces was an issue raised in this context by the hon. Gentleman. When the roll-out of NAFIS is completed in April 2001—as hon. Members will know, it has been a recent major project—police forces in England and Wales will have direct access to the national fingerprint collection through their force fingerprint bureau. Access to the collection by other police forces will continue to be through the national fingerprint bureau in New Scotland Yard. All access to the DNA database is through the forensic science service. I thought that it would help the Committee to place on the record the nature of that process, because of the points that have been raised in debate.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

The Minister's comments are extremely helpful, informative and positively interesting. We are grateful for that explanation.

I have a question for the Minister. A person may have a speeding conviction and an endorsement on their licence. That is dealt with by magistrates—it is not a fixed penalty matter. In such a case, does that person acquire a criminal record at the CRO as a result of their conviction, and does that record remain on the computer permanently, irrespective of the fact that after a certain period, when the offender is considered to be rehabilitated, it will be erased for other purposes? I ask that because if, years afterwards, the person with the conviction is still on the database as having a criminal record, that might have an influence on their life.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I shall respond to that in due course, as I do not want to be misleading in the information that I give. I was particularly concerned about the question of fingerprint and DNA databases, because that is the issue with which the clause deals. I will respond to the hon. Gentleman on that later.

We wish to clarify the position of other law enforcement agencies in relation to their ability to cross-search records, and the reciprocal arrangements that will allow police forces in this country access to records held by other police forces.

The United Kingdom is a world leader in the field of DNA and we were the first country to establish a national DNA database. As other countries develop DNA databases, we wish to ensure that the appropriate mechanisms exist to allow sharing of vital information.

Crime is not limited by national borders. The police may have reason to believe that a fingerprint or a DNA sample that has been recovered from a crime scene relates to a foreign national. They may wish to try to confirm the suspect's identity by checking with the relevant country's fingerprint or DNA database. A similar logic applies to overseas forces seeking assistance from our police service. It is an obvious point that Dover is closer to Calais than it is to Manchester, and we live in a world where travel is more and more common. Sadly, an increasing number of crimes are committed by UK nationals abroad or by people from abroad in the UK.

This clause will not give the persons and bodies listed access to our databases. It will enable the police to check our records against the records of the law enforcement agencies that have their own records of fingerprints and samples, but only for the purposes of the prevention and detection of crime or the investigation or prosecution of offences. The police will also need to comply with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998.

I shall now respond to the point raised by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire. The exchange of fingerprints and DNA currently takes place under the authority of the European convention on mutual legal assistance of 1959 and the Criminal Justice (International Co-operation) Act 1990. One of the effects of clauses 80 and 81 will be to place these exchanges on a clearer statutory footing, which will give a better basis for that form of co-operation. I think that all members of the Committee would wish to encourage that.

The primary gateway for requests for intelligence information from overseas police forces is through Interpol, and ACPO does not intend to change that arrangement. The requests for exchange of information relating to DNA or fingerprints would be dealt with using existing procedures. In considering requests for such information, Interpol would look at a full range of factors, including the validity of the request, the purpose to which the information is to be put, compliance with data protection guidelines and security of the information. The request would be granted only if the criteria were satisfied.

Amendment No. 224 would limit the power to check samples to records held by other United Kingdom police forces, NCIS and the National Crime Squad, removing the power to check samples held by other public authorities with crime investigation functions, including police forces in other jurisdictions and international tribunals.

Most public authorities that have prosecution functions will not have their own records of fingerprints or samples, but the police should be able to check their records against those that do, such as the immigration service or Customs and Excise. I do not accept that the wording is ambiguous; it is important for the clause to be relatively flexible to meet the development of new agencies. As to whether a local authority fits within that category, in theory, it could fall within paragraph (1A)(d) in so far as it has a prosecution function, which is an important limitation in that respect. However, it is unlikely that it will have any fingerprints or sample records that the police would want to check against the database.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

As the Minister knows, I am interested in the detection of benefit fraud. I understand that the Government have plans to increase the powers available to the benefit fraud service, which is welcome. Is it intended that it will be able to hold fingerprints and will it fall within the public authority category?

Will the Minister please explain what

``unlawful under the law of one or more places''

means? Does ``the law'' in that context mean criminal law?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I shall answer the hon. Gentleman's question about places when we discuss the relevant amendment.

At present, the Department of Social Security relies on the police; it does not have its own database and prints. The clause would, at some stage in the future, if policy were to change, allow a public authority such as the Benefits Agency to come within the provision. However, we have no such intention at present. That is not what the proposal is about, but it gives flexibility for the future.

We have already discussed amendment No. 269, and I explained that the meaning of ``British Islands'' is set out in the Interpretation Act 1978. It has exactly the meaning that the amendment would give it: it means the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. I have not myself read every Act passed since 1978 to check the exact meaning of the words in every circumstance, but I believe that it is the standard wording. The Government are advised on the wording by parliamentary counsel—there is no secret meaning. It is not something for the CAFE society—Conservatives Against a Federal Europe. I do not know if the hon. Member for Surrey Heath is a member of that organisation, which wants to pull out of the European Union. The term has no special meaning, it is merely the wording that is customary in our legislation.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

If the amendment states exactly what the clause intends, is clear about the jurisdiction and does not cause confusion, the wording in the amendment should be in the clause. People should be able to read and understand legislation, so far as that is possible.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I think it better to use the tried and tested language.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

Less tried and less tested.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I am second to no one in acknowledging the advantages of codifying legislation and drafting it in ways that people understand. I agree with the hon. Members for Southwark, North and Bermondsey and for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) that that would be a good thing. I am a conservative individual, as my hon. Friends know, and I am not in favour of a radical new departure of the type proposed.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

Whatever may have been the position under the previous Labour Government of the Interpretation Act 1978, this is not something that would fall within any definition approved by the Plain English Campaign, as my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate said. The wording in our amendment is much clearer and has been used for many generations, not just in one Parliament. As my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire helpfully points out, the words ``United Kingdom'' are used in the Police Act 1997, which is sufficiently recent to be provided by the excellent servants of the House for the use of all members of the Committee, so we have proof positive from an Act of this Government that they have not always used ``British Islands'', which rather proves my point.

Finally, I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray): the Minister attempted to misdescribe the Conservatives Against a Federal Europe as in favour of withdrawal from the European Union, but that is certainly not the case.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I certainly would not dream of going any further down that line.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The Minister started it.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Order.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I am interested in the focus that the Opposition are giving to the phrase ``British Islands'', and I agree that it would be as well for Parliament to consider how we use such geographical definitions so that people understand the situation most clearly. However, I intend to urge my colleagues to vote against the amendment if it is pressed to a vote.

Amendment No. 270 would add the Republic of Ireland to the list, which we discussed earlier, but police forces in the Republic will already be covered by new subsection (1A)(e) and we see no reason to include it and it alone in addition to British island authorities. I therefore urge hon. Members not to insist on that amendment.

Amendments Nos. 271, 272 and 274 would limit the exchange of information only to those persons specified by the Secretary of State by affirmative resolution. It is an unnecessary safeguard because of the other measures that are already in place and because none of the bodies will have direct access to our records. All requests from abroad will be mediated through the Interpol desk at NCIS. Any disclosure will be limited to the purposes of prevention and detection of crime, the investigation of an offence or the conduct of a prosecution, as contained in clause 81. I do not know whether the key point will be a vote about the question of affirmative resolution on the matter, but we do not need the process that is described and affirmative resolution would not in any case be the right way to go about it.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

If I wanted to know tomorrow which French organisations—to take a random example—came within the definition in proposed new subsection (1A)(e), which starts:

``any person with functions in any country or territory outside the United Kingdom which—''

and so on, would I be entitled to know which organisations Interpol regarded as fulfilling that requirement? Is that a matter of public knowledge? If not, there is a problem with giving authority to nomination by a country and agreement by an organisation to which there is no public access.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I think that I can be both helpful and unhelpful. I have been accused of being a Jekyll and Hyde figure. Now I will try to be such a figure in a single answer.

The unhelpful part of my answer is that, as I have made clear, we are not giving other organisations access to the database. The police here will have access to the data in the way that we have described, so the precise issues that the hon. Gentleman has raised will not arise. I will also try to be slightly helpful. I cannot say absolutely that we can list the organisations as described. However, if it helps, I will write to him with a perception of how we might address the question. Interpol is, of course, an organisation that has members in different forces in different places, and there are different legal structures in different countries. I return to my unhelpful answer: we will not give a French police force, for example, access to our data. It is all controlled by our police in the way in which we operate. I think that that answers the point.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I am grateful, and I understand the direction of the inquiry. Let me put another, perhaps more realistic, option. I may have been on holiday in Spain and ended up having a row with the relevant regional statutory body in control of tourism about the inadequacy of my bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Let us say that a penalty was imposed because it was regarded that I had not paid for my booking, and I was recorded on that Spanish public authority's register. If I had a concern when I returned here that I might be on that register in Spain as an offender or undesirable, could I check that, and the fact that Interpol or the UK police force could have access to that database, so that I could explain the situation if I needed to, and satisfy myself that I was not being misrepresented?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I do not think that the Bill will give UK citizens the power to find out what data exists about them in other countries, simply because we cannot legislate for other countries. If the hon. Gentleman were on a Spanish tourist authority's database, the clause would not allow him to see his record. The clause is only about cross-checking fingerprints in such circumstances.

No organisation will have direct access to our records; all requests from abroad will be mediated through the Interpol desk at NCIS. That provides a strong safeguard for individuals in circumstances such as the hon. Gentleman described. I agree that the Bill does not deal with the way in which other countries legislate, but, as we are gradually increasing co-operation on data across the European Union, I would be surprised if he did not begin to enjoy such rights. However, the Bill does not cover that.

Amendment No. 273 would change ``places'' to ``countries''. ``Places'' in this context is deliberately vague—perhaps an alliance of the plain English campaign and the Criminal Bar Association would help us—because the subsection is designed to cover international tribunals that might be set up to deal with war crimes and other crimes against international law. It might be a moot point in such situations whether the areas involved are ``countries'', ``states'', ``provinces'', ``territories'' or just ``places'', whose status in international law is unclear.

Clause 81 deals with voluntary retention of samples given for the purposes of elimination. If volunteers consent to their fingerprints or samples being retained in such circumstances, that consent must be in writing. Before individuals give consent, it is right that they should be made fully aware of the circumstances under which it is given and that, once it is given, it cannot be withdrawn.

Therefore, we fully accept the spirit of amendment No. 275, on which there is no disagreement in principle between the parties. However, if it were accepted, parallel amendments would be needed to new section 64(3AC), which is inserted by clause 81, and to the parallel provisions for Northern Ireland in clause 82. The clauses already require written consent for the retention of volunteers' samples, and I can assure the Committee that guidance will be issued to the police to ensure that consent is fully informed and includes an acknowledgement that consent cannot be withdrawn once given.

The existing Home Office circular 16/95 will need to be updated to address the changes made by the Bill. I can also give the assurance that, following the points made by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath, I will re-examine the Bill to see whether there is a better way of drafting the provisions. There is no argument in principle about them; the question is about the most effective way of proceeding. In the light of those assurances, I hope that the amendment can be withdrawn.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I just want to be sure that I have heard accurately and understood. Is the Minister saying that there will be no retrospective change to the law and that, prospectively, the law will reflect the terms of amendment No. 275? Will that mean that, before people are asked to give their consent to fingerprints or samples, or to the checking of them through the search provision, they will be told that, once they give that consent, they will not be able to withdraw it? If so, will there be a guarantee to confirm objectively that those people have been told and have understood?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

Guaranteeing objectively that people have been told is perhaps easier than guaranteeing that people understand. Proposed new subsections (1C)(a) and (b) are explicit, which is why I said that the clauses already require written consent for retention of volunteers' samples.

I repeat my earlier assurance that guidance will be issued to the police to ensure that consent is fully informed and includes an acknowledgement that consent, once given, cannot be withdrawn. In that sense, the law will be prospective and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that it cannot be retrospective. I can say nothing further on the matter. We have the law and the guidance, and I have given a clear commitment to accept the principle in the amendment. The guidance will have to deal with the burden of ensuring that there is some kind of objective test of the process or of consent having been given. As I emphasised, in principle there is no difference between us on the issue.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I understand that, but something should be included in the Bill. Guidance is fine but people should know beyond doubt that that is something to which they are entitled. Guidance does not have the same status.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

As I tried to say, it is a question of how the legislation is drafted. Proposed new subsections (1C) (a) and (b) provide clarity on the point. I can see that the hon. Gentleman does not accept that, but I think that it is the case. I have nothing further to say on the matter. I urge the Opposition to withdraw their amendment in the light of my assurances.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

I am sorry to detain the Committee and the Minister on the question of nationality but it is extremely important. The matter is of particular importance to Conservatives because issues of nation and identity are central to our policies.

James Gray (Conservative, North Wiltshire)

My hon. Friend may not have heard the sedentary intervention from the Minister who, in response to the earlier point about the Conservatives being interested in patriotism, said that the Government have a Minister for patriotism.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

Of course—the Government need one.

We discussed the inclusion of ``British Islands'' in the clause. The debate has been positively Kafkaesque. When the Minister was asked to explain what it meant, he had to refer to another piece of legislation, passed 23 years ago, to give the definition. Our amendment proposes a form of words that express what the Minister purports to mean.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Hall Green)

I wonder if the hon. Gentleman can cite any example, in the past 18 years, of when he or a member of his party proposed a similar amendment to a piece of legislation?

James Gray (Conservative, North Wiltshire)

No—in a word. During the previous Government's term of office, I was serving my country in the armed forces—for which issues such as the one that we are discussing are of immense importance. A number of former colleagues in my Army regiment laid down their lives for such concepts as national identity. We have in the Bill a phrase that is defined in an Act that was passed 23 years ago—but are told that it is better than an amendment that says what it means.

It is extraordinary that the Minister will not accept the amendment. What is going on? I am no more paranoid than is usual for a Member of Parliament but I do not understand why the Minister is sticking on that point. If ``British Islands'' means what my hon. Friends propose in amendment No. 269, then let us, for goodness sake, put that in the Bill. Everyone will be able to read that and know what is being talked about. Anyone coming to the legislation for the first time and reading ``British Islands''—unaware, as I was, of a definition that was laid down 23 years ago, meaning something other than what one would think—would assume that the phrase means the British Isles, including the Republic of Ireland. It is bizarre that the Minister will not accept the amendment.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

The Police Act 1997 was cited. That Act applies to the United Kingdom; that is not the same as the British Isles—which is why the phrase was used. Why do we have the Interpretation Act 1978? It is a comprehensive statute that sets out how legislation is to be interpreted by giving a long list of terms and their definition in schedule 1. The purpose of the Act, with which I would have thought all hon. Members would agree, is to achieve consistency and clarity, and to obviate the need for repetitive definitions in each new Act of Parliament.

Of course there is room for the argument that the Interpretation Act 1978 should be amended and that we should accept the hon. Gentleman's definition of the phrase in question. However, I believe that we should stick with the consistent system that we have. If the hon. Gentleman wants to amend the Interpretation Act, he could use the House's time—through private Member's Bills or other means—to bring it into line with whatever political or national spasm preoccupies the Conservative party at any given time.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

On the question of national identity, referred to by the Minister as a spasm, I profoundly disagree with him. I see no reason why the legislation should not be clear to someone reading it for the first time. Why is there no reference or footnote in the Bill to make it clear what ``British Islands'' means? The Government's refusal to accept the amendment is simply beyond me. I do not accept the Minister's arguments. When reference to the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man was intended, legislation over the past 18 years referred to those terms? Can the Minister provide examples where the term ``British Islands'' has been used? If not, Conservative Back Benchers, for whom clarity in these matters is important, would regard it as unacceptable.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I can be brief. We do not accept some of the Minister's arguments and I shall urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote on amendments Nos. 269, 271, 272 and 274. We recognise that the Minister has moved some way in our direction and agreed to reflect further on amendment No. 275, but we remain concerned about it. I agree with the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey that some issues remain outstanding. We would prefer them to be built into the Bill, but the Minister has undertaken to examine the matter further and he may table amendments on Report. In those circumstances, we shall not press amendment No. 275, but we may—in common with the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey—want to return to the matter on Report. If the Government fail to respond to our concerns, we shall raise the matter again.

Similarly, on amendment No. 273, the Minister explained the reason for adopting ``places'' instead of the more usual ``countries''. I understand his explanation, but it reinforces the argument about consistency of meaning, which partly supports my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate. Let us not go back over that argument. I shall not press amendments Nos. 273 and 275 only.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I understand the hon. Gentleman's argument about amendment No. 275, although I still believe that it would be better if the matter were built into the Bill. I also accept the Minister's explanation of amendment No. 273, and understand that ``places'' that are less than countries, territories and protectorates can still be governed.

I approach amendment No. 269 from a different perspective than the hon. Member for Reigate, but I share his view. The issue is not about the Interpretation Act 1978, which clarifies the meaning of ``British Islands'' in statute. That is fine, but ``British Islands'' is not a correct term and people do not usually use it. The phrase is not used to explain the complicated alternatives between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and all the islands on the north-west of mainland Europe. It is not a phrase that immediately suggests the meaning in the Interpretation Act.

For the avoidance of doubt and clarity of interpretation, is it not better for everyone to say what they mean rather than something that will be interpreted differently? I join the hon. Gentleman in asking the Minister to reflect further and I encourage Government Members not to vote on the amendment. Ministers may be obliged to vote in support of the Bill, but Labour Back Benchers could decide not to vote on the amendment. It is ridiculous that we have spent so much time on something that should not be an issue between us. Amendment No. 269 is perfectly proper and, of the two amendments—Nos. 269 and 270—it is the one that should be accepted.

Amendment No. 274 is an appendage to amendments Nos. 271 and 272. I am still unhappy that the system does not provide the ability to know which person—``person'' does not mean person but relevant law enforcement authority—might, in another country, be an agency whose records our authorities can search against. We should have that information, especially in our modern age of information flow and transparency and, allegedly, freedom of information.

The information about those organisations abroad should be open to any member of the public. It should not be difficult to provide it: each country would submit its list of organisations, and that list would be published. The information should automatically be available to our Government, as well as to Interpol and NCIS. For example, I could wake up one morning and learn that the Iranian Special Defence Force is such an agency. I might have been arrested on my holiday in Iran—had I been on holiday in Iran—and had no choice about having my fingerprints taken. I make my point seriously. The provision is extraordinary: it allows our police, who seek to do their jobs properly, to search information from organisations that have been designated by an undemocratic, unelected or authoritarian Government. That could mean all sorts of strange and undesirable law enforcement authorities, such as those in Pakistan until democratic government is restored, in Zimbabwe under President Mugabe or in China. That is not acceptable, if we have no means of knowing what those organisations are and we give carte blanche under the proposal. Therefore, although it might not be a perfect way of identifying such persons, should the Conservatives press the amendments that require that they are specified by the Secretary of State and approved by us, we would be happy to support them.

That leaves our amendment No. 244. Again, the Minister's answer confirmed that we will greatly widen the area of uncertainty if the clause is not amended. Collaboration is perfectly reasonable in a modern age when crime is committed by more and more people in countries other than their own and on an international basis. We completely support such collaboration. We also support the democratic accountability of collaboration across the European Union. None the less, the difficulty is that the proposal includes not just all those persons who might be working for undemocratic Governments around the world, but public authorities, such as local councils, that do not follow the same security regulations for held information. They do not act in the same way as the police, although they are all prosecuting authorities. District councils, borough councils, London boroughs and the City of London are certainly prosecuting authorities, as I think are county councils, but I do not know about local government in Scotland. They are all prosecuting authorities, except for the lowest tier of local government.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I wish to clarify exactly what the hon. Gentleman is saying. If I have it right, he wants to leave out paragraphs (d), (e) and (f) under the new subsection (1A) in clause 80. Does he think that there should not be an international exchange of data in relation to international crimes? Does he think that organisations other than the police force, NCIS and the National Crime Squad should not keep fingerprints and DNA samples?

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

No, I do not think that there should not be such collaboration, but I would rather that we removed the over-widely drawn paragraphs (d), (e) and (f) and replaced them with more narrowly drawn and accurate provisions. If we remove them today, I have no doubt that an attempt will be made to put back something more acceptable. That would improve the clause and the Bill. I shall therefore press the amendment to a Division, and I hope that others will join me. I anticipate that other Divisions will follow, which I shall be happy to support.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 2, Noes 8.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

If I understand the hon. Member for Surrey Heath, he now wishes to move amendment No. 269. Before he does so, it might help if I explain the process once again. Only the lead amendment is moved initially. The amendments that are grouped with it are debated but not moved. Hon. Members may say that they have moved them, but they have not; and the Minister may ask them to withdraw their amendments, but they cannot be withdrawn because they have not been moved. Amendments are moved in the order in which they would affect the Bill. Others may be grouped with them for ease of discussion, but they are moved in the order in which they would occur within the legislation.

Amendment proposed, No. 269, in page 66, line 33, leave out `British Islands' and insert

`United Kingdom, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man'.—[Mr. Hawkins.]

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 8.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

If I understand the hon. Member for Surrey Heath correctly, we now come to amendment No. 271—[Interruption.] I know that time is short, but the Committee will have to wait a moment before voting. Amendments Nos. 274 and 272 are linked to amendment No. 271. If either of amendments Nos. 271 and 272 falls, amendment No. 274 must fall because it is dependent upon one or other of those previous amendments. Amendment No. 271 would establish the principle that would be reflected were we to agree to amendment No. 272. I therefore propose to treat the Question as being on all three amendments together.

Amendment proposed, No. 271, in page 66, line 36, after `person', insert

`specified in an order made by the Secretary of State'.—[Mr. Hawkins.]

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 8.

Clause 81 - Restriction on use and destruction of fingerprints and samples

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to take the following amendments: No. 277, in page 68, line 16, leave out `(whether'.

No. 278, in page 68, line 17, leave out—

`or of a country of territory outside the United Kingdom)'.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

These are very important matters, and I make no apology for taking time to deal with them. I hope that the Minister will not suggest that our points are legalistic, nit-picking or delaying.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I will give way in a moment. Before doing so, I want to deal with a matter raised by the Law Society in its briefing to my hon. Friends and me, which it regarded as the most important of its points. It was the first item in that briefing, and that shows how significant the professional body that represents all solicitors in England and Wales considers the matter to be. The briefing states:

``The Bill makes provision for the taking of intimate samples and fingerprints before a person has been charged with a crime. In addition, under the terms of the proposed legislation, the police will no longer automatically have to destroy samples or fingerprints once the individual is cleared of the offence or will not be prosecuted. Their samples and fingerprints may be kept indefinitely.''

The Law Society wants to know whether the public will be aware that, when assisting police, or after being cleared of an offence, such information will be held by the police for future speculative searches in the investigation of other crimes. It also asks whether that will mean that those who might come forward voluntarily would be less likely to do so. We are concerned about law-abiding people being encouraged to come forward voluntarily. The Government are unwise to propose the measure in the way that they have and in such terms.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

There are several points that we wish to raise, but before I go on I will give way to the Minister.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I just wanted to reassure the hon. Gentleman that we entirely accept his point. The matter is important, and certainly far more so than the definition of ``the British Islands''.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The Minister may find that the British electorate regard matters such as the way in which the United Kingdom is described more important than he thinks. That may come home to him and his hon. Friends more quickly than he realises. However, we will not go down that road again.

One of the reasons for the matter being so important is that the Government spent some time in the explanatory notes setting out some of the details in relation to DNA and the way in which samples will be retained. They refer in detail to the decisions of the Court of Appeal criminal division in R v. Weir and a case called R v. B (Attorney-General's Reference No 3/199) May 2000. We now also have the decision of the House of Lords.

I shall describe a serious case, concerning a 66-year old woman home owner, who was burgled. The burglar went to the lady's bedroom, threatened her, punched her several times and then tied her hands behind her back with flex and raped her anally. He pushed her into a hall cupboard and blocked its door with heavy items. After taking money and other items, the burglar left. At 7 pm that evening, the police found the victim in the cupboard. The judicial division of the House of Lords said that

``The ordeal of the woman was horrendous and the offence of rape was of the utmost gravity.''

The offence was in January 1997.

In January 1998, nearly a year later, the police arrested and charged the defendant concerned in the appeal with an unrelated offence of burglary. When he was arrested, he gave a false name to the police. A saliva sample was lawfully taken from the defendant without his consent in connection with the burglary alone under section 63(3)(a) of PACE. If the defendant had given his real name to the police, they would have immediately discovered that his previous convictions included one for affray. That conviction would have permitted the police to obtain a DNA sample and which would have justified in law the retention of the sample, whatever the fate of the burglary charge. In any event, on 12 May 1998, the sample taken from the defendant was submitted for DNA profiling.

On 23 August 1998, the defendant was acquitted of the burglary, the offence for which he had been arrested in January 1998. The Attorney-General had to concede that, under section 64(1) of PACE, the sample should then have been destroyed as soon as was practicable. In fact, it was not destroyed. Information derived from it, namely the DNA profile, remained on the DNA database.

On 6 October 1998, a match was made between the DNA profile obtained from the swabs taken from the rape and assault victim and the DNA profile obtained from the defendant's saliva. Relying on that match, the police re-arrested the defendant in October 1998 regarding the offences committed against the elderly victim in January 1997. In an interview, the defendant denied that he was involved in the offences and refused to give consent to the taking of an intimate sample. A police superintendent authorised the taking of a non-intimate sample of plucked head hair. On 18 October 1998, a forensic science laboratory confirmed that a DNA profile obtained from the defendant's plucked hair matched the DNA profile on the swabs taken from the rape and burglary victim.

In the opinion of the forensic scientist, if the DNA on the swabs had come from someone unrelated to the defendant, the likelihood of obtaining such a match would have been one in 17 million. Not surprisingly, the defendant was charged with the burglary, assault and rape. The issue in the case went all the way to the judicial division of the House of Lords. What was at question was whether the failure to destroy the sample meant that the case against the defendant was fatally flawed.

I have gone into some detail because it is important for all members of the Committee to understand the seriousness of the offences with which we could be dealing. I shall refer to one other point from the description of the case, because it relates to what we do in Parliament and the significance of our debates in Committee. The House of Lords obviously looked back at what was said by the Lord Justices of Appeal in the criminal division of the Court of Appeal.

In the Court of Appeal's judgment, Lord Justice Swinton Thomas said that, in his view:

``The words of the section are clear. In our judgment, the provisions contained in section 64(3B)(a) and (b) stand together. We do not accept Mr. Perry's submission that if Parliament had intended to exclude the exercise of a judge's discretion, it would have said so. In our judgment, on the contrary, if Parliament had intended that a judge should have a discretion in the circumstances envisaged in section 64(3B)(a) or in (3B)(b), Parliament would have said so. It would have been perfectly possible for Parliament to conclude that the fight against crime was so important that there should be no restriction on the use of DNA samples, so that where such samples were lawfully obtained by the police the information derived from them could be retained on a database for all purposes. It would have been equally possible for Parliament to enact that whilst information derived from samples taken from persons cleared of involvement in offences should not normally be used for the investigation of other offences the investigating authorities should have a discretion to use that information for the purposes of a further investigation in exceptional circumstances only.''

Time after time in that passage, Lord Justice Swinton Thomas refers, as a judge in the Court of Appeal, to the importance of interpreting our intentions in Parliament. I am sorry about the relative emptiness of the Labour Benches, because what I have outlined goes to the heart of our reasons for line-by-line, clause-by-clause, sometimes even word-by-word scrutiny of Bills. Far from being the lawyers' nitpicking points that the Minister has complained about—usually when the Parliamentary Secretary has been out of the Room—our concerns are central. We are talking about the way in which the courts deal with exceptionally serious offences.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I have no objection to the kind of argument that the hon. Gentleman is now making. In fact, I think that it is the kind of thing that we should discuss all the time. My complaint is about the other kinds of debate that we have had, which take time away from debates like this one, about possibly one of the most important clauses in the Bill.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The Minister is clearly on the record as having attacked my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell), a former Attorney-General. One of his criticisms was that my right hon. and learned Friend was using lawyerly, nitpicking arguments. Extraordinarily, it now emerges that the Government will withdraw clauses 7 and 8—precisely the ones about which my right hon. and learned Friend made his detailed comments, for which the Minister attacked him in his absence.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Does my hon. Friend recall that the Parliamentary Secretary, who is taking a break at the moment, said, in relation to clauses 7 and 8:

``I know that hon. Members are desperate to string out our proceedings, but there are important provisions in the Bill that need to be debated.''?—[Official Report, Standing Committee F, 15 February 2001; c. 178.]

Subsequently, having complained like mad, the Government deleted those clauses from the Bill, because the points that we made were right. If they had done that in the first place, we should have saved an hour.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

My hon. Friend is right. There is no doubt that, by his attacks on my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire, the Minister stands condemned. Most of his attacks were directed towards my right hon. and learned Friend's quite proper scrutiny of clauses that have now been withdrawn.

I am glad that, at least on the present occasion, the Minister, despite his often expressed anti-lawyer prejudice, concedes the importance of the issue that I now want to return to. I agree. It is one of the most important passages of the Bill. Improvements and changes are needed. One of our suggested safeguards is amendment No. 276, which bears directly on the matter to which the House of Lords has been giving such detailed scrutiny in the appeal decision to which I referred.

The matter is entirely to do with the liberty of the subject, and I imagine that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey will have something to say about it. Perhaps, like me, he has had professional experience of cases that depend on forensic scientific evidence. In my years in practice at the Bar, I had enormous respect for the work of forensic scientists. I am saddened by the frequency with which Members of Parliament without the relevant practical experience refer to forensic matters, thinking that the word ``forensic'' refers to the scientific side of things. Of course we should always use the term ``forensic science''. The use of the word ``forensic'' denotes the relationship of the science to the court—the forens—to be pedantic for a moment.

Amendments Nos. 277 and 278 may at first sight appear to be merely drafting matters, but they are matters of substance and they operate together. My argument comes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey in his last contribution to the previous debate. As he said, we need to ensure that safeguards are in place to prevent the appalling abuses being committed by the present dictatorship in Zimbabwe. What would be the position if a country where human rights were not being observed were to make a request? We believe that safeguards are needed.

I do not wish to detain the Committee unduly but, because the matter is so serious, the Government must consider the matter carefully. If they cannot accept our amendments, I hope that that they will at least concede that the question should be reconsidered between now and Report. The fact that the Minister intervened on me to agree that those matters are important, and that paragraph 186 and two other paragraphs of the explanatory notes dealing with part IV include a lot of detail about various cases, including the one that I referred to that had then been decided only by the Court of Appeal, a decision later reversed by the House of Lords, reinforces the seriousness of the matter.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

We shall support the amendments if they are pressed to a Division, but we shall oppose clause 81 for reasons that can be anticipated.

There is all the difference in the world between information held by the police that is obtained lawfully in the pursuit of people suspected of having committed offences who are then convicted, or information, evidence or material that is voluntary given to the police by members of the public; and using material, evidence or information that was given to the police involuntarily by someone who was being investigated and was thus subject to the authority of the police but who was subsequently released without a conviction.

Someone who goes through the hands of the police and comes out at the other end of the criminal justice process as not guilty of the offence about which they were being investigated or with which they had been charged is, in law, entirely guiltless, as are those who have never been through that process. Society believes in several things that we in Parliament should hold dear. The first premise is that people's liberty should be respected and invasions of liberty should be carried out as infrequently as possible. Maximising the liberty of the citizen against the state, whether or not the state is acting in the good interests of society, is a principle that should be compromised only with good reason and if the general consensus is that it should be done.

The second premise, which is held by all the nations of the United Kingdom, is that people are innocent until proved guilty. Those who go through the hands of the authorities and are found not guilty must be presumed innocent. We in England do not have the middle-way alternative verdict available in Scots law of not proven, but even in Scots law that verdict should not imply guilt. I believe that the same principle should apply to those found not guilty in Scots law as applies elsewhere in the UK. They should be entitled to the same rights as those who have never been through the hands of the police.

The Government concede that people who have always been innocent and who never been in the hands of the police should not lose their right to resist having their body samples, fingerprints or DNA samples taken and held without their authority. That puts in a different category from the rest of us people who happen by the accident of life to pass through police hands on the basis of suspicion, but are found not to be guilty, and who should be presumed to be as innocent as someone who has not been investigated. That is an entirely improper and prejudicial differentiation that for the rest of their lives will give those people a status with the authorities that disadvantages them in terms of their freedom and liberty.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

When the hon. Gentleman uses the phrase ``disadvantages them'', does he mean in the event that they have committed a crime for which their DNA or fingerprint has identified them? In what sense does he mean that phrase?

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

It disadvantages them in the sense that material evidence samples are in the hands of the authorities, which they do not have on other innocent people. I mean it in that straightforward sense. The authorities have information about them that they do not have about other innocent people for no good reason other than that they happen to have been subject to police arrest.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I understand the point about information being different between such people and other innocent people, but why should the authorities having that information be a disadvantage to such an innocent person?

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

Because the authorities' holding of information on them is not the norm in a society in which we concede information only in exceptional circumstances. I take the view that all information about me, the Minister and other Committee members should be private unless there is agreement and justification for its being made public. Information should be held on us by others only if we consent, or if there is a good case.

We have the same argument about private selling agencies, banks, cash cards and so on. We are at present fighting a battle in which private sector companies seek all the time, before they give us any service, to know our name, our address, our postcode, our mother's maiden name, our wife's date of birth—a whole list of things that appear to me to be gross intrusions into our liberty. We do not have to submit to that, because we do not have to have cashpoint cards from bank X or a loyalty card from multiple retailer Y, but in this case there ain't no choice.

Surprisingly for a Labour Government, the Government propose that someone who goes through the hands of the police should have information taken from them and retained without their consent. It will be entirely an accident whether their information remains in the hands of the police; it will depend on the police investigation, which may or may not have been well organised, accurate or justified by intelligence-led policing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton put it to the Minister that there is no fundamental difference between arguing for the clause and arguing that everyone should have their DNA sample made available to the state when birth is registered, or when the baby is born and the umbilical cord is cut—that when the nurse comes in someone should come in on behalf of big brother and take all the samples that the authorities may need for the rest of the baby's life. I am sorry, but I am not signed up to that society. I do not know all the details, but I saw some programmes about whether that would be appropriate to deal with crime in Iceland. I gather that there was a great debate, and it was extremely controversial. We should not go down that road.

It is entirely justifiable to argue that where someone has a record of criminality, there is a greater propensity to further criminality, but not that where someone has no record of criminality, information should be held that gives the police an advantage that they do not have over anyone else. One might argue—though I would not—that that case was difficult to make if DNA sample matching were perfect. I am not a scientist, but I understand that it is very good but does not always give the right results. If there may be a scientific and technical failing, that is another reason for resisting the proposal that authorities should hold such important information on innocent people against their will.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, but it is important not to overstate it. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson)—a bio-technologists who chairs the all-party group on science and technology—recently asked some parliamentary questions on the issue, which I answered as fully as I could. Information is available on international standards for the accuracy of the DNA technique. The weight of the hon. Gentleman's point, which I accept, depends on the scale and nature of the probability of mistakes being made. The chances of such mistakes are remote—the hon. Member for Surrey Heath referred to a one in 70 million chance—and it is important to put the philosophical point, which has weight, within the scientific context of the very small risk.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I understand exactly what the Minister is saying; it is a philosophical, state versus individual, argument. The risk of an inaccurate result when DNA samples are matched is very much a supplementary, or secondary argument. I did not know the exact figures and I have not seen the answers to which he referred, but I shall make it my business to look at them. My understanding was along the lines of his answer, that the scientific assessment is that there is an extremely high probability of accuracy and a low probability of inaccuracy.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, although both he and I have great respect for forensic scientists and forensic science laboratories, part of the problem with the society that he said he has not signed up to—he and I both fear that the Labour Government, with their recently discovered authoritarian tendency, will move towards it—is that however careful forensic scientists are, mistakes are made. It is not just a matter of statistical probability; some major miscarriages of justice arose from the negligent or malicious misuse of forensic scientific evidence.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I was about to come to that point, which was well made.

In my relatively short time as a member of the Bar, between working on the other side of the channel and being elected to Parliament, I had much experience of cases where there were mistakes in the identification of materials, scientific inaccuracies, the path lab getting it wrong or the sample being lost or mislaid, just as medical records go adrift. Even if I was minded to agree with the philosophical point, I would need to be satisfied that I, as a citizen, had the opportunity to assess whether the system was accurate, throughout its processes. Many people do not have such opportunities, and I doubt that the independent scrutiny of the accountability and transparency of record keeping is such that everybody can have confidence in it.

We are not yet at the stage where we can say that there will not be any case in which someone will argue that there was inaccurate marking, tagging or transfer or a mismatch between information that left one place and arrived at another. Until we can be sure that there is a perfect system—if we can ever be sure—I have another reason for resistance and reluctance. It is a little like the arguments about computer databases. They are generally wonderful, but sometimes go wrong. I am not satisfied, and I have never had any reason to be persuaded, that the system whereby all the information is held will not at some stage get something wrong. Of course, we can build in checks, balances and opportunities to inspect it, but that still does not guarantee a perfect system, nor will it. As the old cliche says, what comes out depends on what one puts in. Occasionally, people may make mistakes when inputting the information, which may mean mistakes in the information that comes out.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, which has substance and is more powerful than his earlier one about scientific error. In fact, when I visited people at the Forensic Science Service recently—which is probably in his constituency—I discussed with them in great detail precisely his point. However, is his not a philosophy of despair? Does it not follow from the logic of his argument that it is not worth compiling a DNA database?

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

No. I am absolutely aware of the benefits of science, and especially forensic science, in the investigation of crime, and of how much the police increasingly rely on it. To be honest, it is only the development of the old CID work of the great novels, films and television serials of the past. Forensic science is used to make matches, which is particularly important for serious crimes of violence. For example, forensic evidence has already played a significant part in the Damilola Taylor inquiry. We hope that that will lead to a satisfactory conclusion and people will be charged soon and correctly and convicted appropriately. I am entirely aware of the importance of forensic science: it has a huge role to play, and the police will increasingly rely on it.

This whole debate is about the relative liberty of the individual against the state. The proposition is being put in the context of the Bill without all the preparation that we should properly have. We have had important debates in the House on genetic testing, gene-related science and whether it is appropriate to permit research on embryos for the purpose of medical cures for permanent and debilitating conditions such as Parkinson's disease. As I recollect it, the two votes that we had in the Commons and the Lords were preceded by two full days of debate about whether it was appropriate to go down that road. We considered the scientific evidence and the evidence produced by Committees of both Houses, listened to the views expressed and proceeded carefully.

However, I do not think that we in this country have had a debate at all on this issue. We have not faced the question whether it is appropriate to move to a society in which the police can, without the individual's consent, hold such information. It is a large debate and goes to the heart of what information on the individual should be held by the authorities. Although I understand where the proposal comes from and the reason why the police and the National Criminal Intelligence Service would argue persuasively for its inclusion, that does not justify taking a decision of this magnitude in this way, at this time, without a wider debate.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I am sorry to intervene again, but this is an important issue and I want to be absolutely clear on the hon. Gentleman's position. Is he saying that there are circumstances in which, had there been such a debate, he could imagine supporting the measures in the clause?

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I do not think that I would be persuaded, but it is a little like the situation with the referendum on the euro. We should not have such a referendum without a great national debate about whether we should join. The Government should not introduce a proposal unless we have had a significant debate that shows that the public understand the implications and have signed up to it.

There are a couple of less important procedural points. We are about to have Lord Justice Auld's report, which deals in part with this issue. I gather that he has said that he will not now sign it off until after an election if an election is held this spring, so that it does not become an election issue, but we are likely to have it before the end of the spring.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Will the hon. Gentleman confirm the spelling of ``Auld'', because the Hansard report of an earlier sitting referred to ``the old report''?

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I can confirm that it should be ``the Auld report''.

I understand the police's argument in favour of increasing the number of people on the database and having a larger information bank against which suspects can be checked when arrested. It is, however, a poor argument, because the police could be given all sorts of extra powers to increase convictions. If there were enough money in the Budget, if the Chancellor had been so minded and if further recruitment were possible, we could increase the police force 10 times over. That would greatly increase the likely number of convictions, but we would require a national debate before proceeding with that. We could take away the rights of defendants and interpret the right to silence in a particular way to count heavily against them. There are all sorts of ways of increasing the number of convictions.

I am unhappy with the current rate of convictions. Together with cautions, convictions apply to only 3 per cent. of offences in the British crime survey and 24 per cent. of recorded crimes. That is not good enough. We need to improve the detection rate through better policing, and the police need to bring their activities up to speed. More intelligence-led and professional policing is necessary and the police must have all the kit, radios, vehicles and other tools that they need. We must ensure that we have enough police and that the criminal justice system works well, but we must not keep edging away at people's liberties.

Here is another surprising element of policy from a Government who failed to mention it in their manifesto. Civil servants' and the Government's desire to be perceived as strong on law and order is undermining the understanding of some elements of the Labour party—it has always had an authoritarian streak—that civil liberties need to be defended against people in authority such as the police, civil servants and others.

We must resist this measure, as we must resist removing the right to choose a trial by jury—another plank in the Government's current programme, to which they were expressly opposed at the general election. The Government have no public authority for changing their position. On a wide range of matters, they are eroding the balance between the state and the individual, which saddens me and does no credit to the Minister, the Government or the country. We are supposed to be a country in which liberty burns brightly and is taken away only by agreement of the overwhelming majority of the public, and in which the rights of minorities are defended.

Policing must be by agreement, but this proposal certainly does not have the agreement of the Liberal Democrats. I expect that it will not have the agreement of Conservative members of the Committee or, I hope, of those elements in the Labour party who are traditionally committed to civil liberties. The Minister should either accept the amendments or withdraw the clause. If not, we shall certainly return to the issue on Report, when I expect to gain considerable support. Let me tell the Minister now that we will not agree to include these proposals in any negotiated Bill in the event of an early election. It would be better if the proposals were removed from the Bill now, so we would have one less controversial matter to worry about in the weeks ahead.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath and the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey on the manner in which they highlighted the important issues in the debate—and I shall not go over the same ground again. I agree with Liberty's conclusion that

``There is no logical difference between this and the compilation of a mass DNA base of all individuals.''

If a DNA database is created of people who have not been convicted of an offence but who cannot have an earlier consent, given as part of a mass screening, to inclusion withdrawn, as the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey said, there will be two classes of unconvicted people—those for whom the police have DNA bases and those for whom they do not.

I therefore wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey that that must be the subject of a much wider and more serious debate about the rights of the individual as against the rights of the state. I have not come to a conclusion on the wider issue of whether it is right for there to be a DNA database of the nation—as it effectively would be if, as part of the contract between the citizen and the state, all citizens had their DNA entered on to a national register after their birth, in the way suggested by the hon. Member for Taunton. That is the logic of what the Government are doing. There is a perfectly respectable case for that, because of how important DNA will be in establishing identity in criminal cases. It will also have some part to play in civil cases, in terms of people's entitlement to treatment on the national health service or payment of social security contributions, for example. It will become a way in which the state can establish someone's identity. I do not know how exactly many national insurance numbers exist but it is perhaps around 80 million—while there are only 59 million of us. The system is clearly being used fraudulently on quite a wide scale. That form of identity check is a method by which one can establish that people are entitled to citizenship of this country and the rights that that confers.

In terms of the enforcement of the law—which is in all our interests—we must ask whether there is a case for surrendering part of our liberty to give the police a database of us all, in order to bring people more effectively to justice. That is an immensely difficult philosophical question. I instinctively come at such issues from a libertarian perspective. I understand why the Government are doing what they are doing, and am convinced by the logic of it, but I am concerned that an attempt is being made to widen the DNA database by subterfuge, so that people who willingly come forward to take part in a screening process—for example where the police are checking all males in a particular village in which a rape has been committed in order to eliminate people from their inquiries—become part of a subtle and surreptitious attempt to widen the DNA database. Samples would not be destroyed and the police would gradually move towards having as many DNA records as possible.

If that happens, it must be done in an upfront way. We must be honest with the electorate and have the debate; we must be prepared for the Government—whoever they are—to say, ``This is necessary to protect the wider interests of society to enable police to detect crime, to bring people who have committed rape to justice.'' The Government should also make it clear that such people will think twice about committing offences of that kind if they know that they are registered on the DNA database.

The Police Federation wanted those provisions included in the Bill. In a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire, Fred Broughton said:

``We believe there to be a dilemma in relation to the retention of un-convicted persons samples, a dilemma that the Government must argue out themselves in respect of both the Human Rights and Data Protection Acts.''

We also need to argue out the relationship between the citizen and the state. There is dishonesty about the Government's attempts to use the Bill to widen the DNA database. We must have an upfront and open debate. There should not be two classes of unconvicted citizen at risk of having their DNA retained by the police.

Here we are on a wet Thursday afternoon in Committee Room 9 at the end of our consideration of the Bill. It is hardly the national forum in which to conduct a fundamental debate on this principle. The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey stressed that we would return to it on Report, but we do not have much time to conduct that debate either. The issue is so fundamental that I am certain that the House of Lords will have much more to say about it when the provisions are sent to the other place. It should have been taken to its logical conclusion, perhaps without the Government adopting a particular position in the first place. They could have pointed to the advantages and disadvantages and stimulated a national debate.

I am concerned about the conduct of science in criminal trials. It is always an issue when scientific evidence is presented to non-scientists. Juries are largely composed of non-scientists, yet they are often told that the scientific evidence is unarguable. That is my worry about DNA profiling. We do not yet know how testable DNA is, or how reliable databases are. It raises all the issues mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath about the reliability of forensic laboratories, and paper processing—ensuring that the right sample is attached to the right name—is another potential difficulty.

The danger is—we see it with Ministers—that, when a case is presented, numbers are clung on to because they appear to represent points of certainty in the arguments. It sometimes seems that all the subjective arguments fall when certainty or objectivity is injected into debates through numbers or science. It might appear only later that the evidence, although scientific, was subject to error. As I say, people might try to cling on to certainty when they are making judgments about the guilt or innocence of individuals.

It is not that we do not support the Government's intentions or fail to understand their reasons for widening the DNA database. The problem is that we have not yet reached the stage at which these provisions should be smuggled on to the statute book.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I, too, appreciate the measured way in which the hon. Member for Surrey Heath put the case. Does the hon. Member for Reigate agree that, if we introduce the system, people might be much less willing to volunteer information on the grounds that they could lose their rights thereafter—for the rest of their lives? There could be adverse as well as favourable consequences.

Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate)

The hon. Gentleman is right, and he raises a legitimate cause for concern about people's willingness to help the police to eliminate suspects from their inquiries in order to narrow the focus of their investigations. Individuals may wonder whether to help the police. Usually, as citizens, they would want to do so. However, citizens might find themselves faced with a decision that may affect the rest of their lives. Volunteering DNA is effectively giving a blank cheque to the police. If other citizens' DNA has not been given and is not owned by the police, individuals who have volunteered it are at a disadvantage.

The Minister may argue that people will be protecting themselves from a future conviction when a criminal offence has been committed, but who knows what the future holds for any individual, so why should people expose themselves to that possibility? It is on that issue that the Government's approach to the balance between the individual and the state has gone wrong. Their approach will not benefit the wider public interest if it puts people off coming forward to help the police conduct inquiries in which many people have to eliminated from their suspicions.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

The discussion of the issues has been excellent, with all three speeches having been to the point. I want to deal with two subsidiary issues at the beginning. The point made by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey about civil servants was unwarranted. The civil service monolith did not drive the Bill forward, with supine Ministers agreeing to a long-standing ambition to transform the law. As always, the civil servants provided excellent advice on the issues. The decision to proceed was taken by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and me in the usual processes of Government. The decision was political, not something on which Ministers caved in to pressure from civil servants who told us to act because not to do so would let down law enforcement for the future of civilisation.

The language about removal of liberties is unwarranted in relation to the issue. Imprisoning people and refusing to allow them to speak in public is qualitatively different from the police being able to retain people's fingerprints and samples. I know that liberty is on a spectrum, but to talk of removal of liberties is a rhetorical step too far.

It is important to stress the reasons why the Government have proposed the clause. As hon. Members have said, it will allow the retention of all fingerprints and samples taken on suspicion of involvement in a criminal offence and will enable them to be used for the prevention and detection of crime, the investigation of an offence and the conduct of a prosecution.

The hon. Member for Surrey Heath said in his introduction that the changes have been made as a result of the decisions of the criminal division of the Court of Appeal in R v. Weir and R v. B (Attorney-General's reference No. 3/199) May 2000. The cases raise the issue of whether the law relating to retention and use of DNA samples on acquittal should be changed. In the two cases, compelling DNA evidence that linked one suspect to a rape and the other to a murder could not be used, and neither suspect could be convicted. That was because, at the time that the matches were made, both defendants had been acquitted or a decision had been made not to proceed with the offences for which the DNA profiles were taken. Section 64 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 specifies that, when a person is not prosecuted or is acquitted of the offence, the sample must be destroyed and the information derived from it cannot be used.

The subsequent decision of the House of Lords overturned the ruling of the Court of Appeal. The House of Lords ruled that, when a DNA sample fell to be destroyed but had not been, although section 64 of PACE prohibited its use in the investigation of any other offence, it did not make evidence obtained as a failure to comply with that prohibition inadmissible, but left it to the discretion of the trial judge.

Although that ruling allows the courts discretion to use the information, it affects only cases in which samples, through chance and inefficiency, have not been destroyed. The Government's view is that such evidence should not be thrown away and that the police should be able to make proper use of valuable and objective evidence provided by fingerprints and DNA profiling.

Those court decisions led the Government to make the proposals that we are debating. I accept that that meant that there was less wide-scale public debate on the issues than there otherwise might have been. However, the court decisions left the status quo as unacceptable. People could be acquitted of serious offences as a result of almost a legal loophole, a series of legal judgments that put the police's procedures in doubt. It would have raised serious questions for the Government to have ignored it, and that would have left the Crown Prosecution Service unable to prosecute in offences of the type that the hon. Member for Surrey Heath and I have cited. We could have been open to serious criticism had we not acted on the situation at the first opportunity. The point about debate has some merit, although we should remember that every piece of legislation ends up being debated in a cold, wet Committee Room on a Thursday so the rhetorical flourish was, perhaps, slightly overdone. We would have been rightly criticised for being delinquent had we not acted in those circumstances.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I am listening carefully to the Minister, and I am glad that he is taking seriously the matters raised by the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey and my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate. He has now come on to the point that the original Court of Appeal decision, which caused the Government to set out on this course, has been reversed in the House of Lords. Perhaps the Government welcomes that. However, if the Government were to rush to corrective legislation every time a criminal were acquitted because some piece of evidence could not be used, we would spend even more time legislating than we now do.

The Court of Appeal came to the conclusion that it did at that stage in that case because the judges believed that the unlawful retention of the samples was fatal. There have been other decisions where it was clear to all that the police had arrested the right person but that person could not be convicted because our law allows a person who may have committed an offence to go free when there have been mistakes by the police or irregularities in the prosecution process. That is an unfortunate consequence of having legal procedures.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

That brings me to the second general consequence of the process that I was going to mention, namely the tremendous power of the scientific techniques associated with DNA, which are transforming our ability to solve a wide variety of cases. It was impressively demonstrated to me shortly after I took office. I went to see the chief constable of Hampshire, who took me through some terrible crimes that had been committed, going back over 15 years. His force was steadily working through them, using the evidence of the time with the modern DNA data, and there have been other recent powerful and convincing examples. Because DNA is such an important part of modern policing technique, it is Government policy to encourage it; we have put a lot of money into it. We therefore felt that for there to be a legal question over the use and abuse of that process was very serious.

The hon. Member for Reigate mentioned another important case in illustrating the ability of the criminal justice system to judge scientific cases. I do not think that this was his point, but the conclusion that I draw from it is that we must strengthen the ability of the criminal justice system—both of juries and of the court itself—to use, understand, interpret and evaluate scientific evidence of this kind, rather than turn our backs on the scientific evidence process as a whole.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I understand the issues around the court case. Does the Minister accept that, logically, it would have been equally possible for the Government—as a result of the court case that said that it was still permissible to use evidence that should not have been held—to conclude that evidence that should not have been held could not have been used? The Government had a choice of ways to resolve that difficult court case decision. They chose one, but could equally well have chosen the other. I have never understood the logic of saying that the DNA of a person who has had DNA taken and been acquitted should continue to be held, when that of people who have not gone through the process is not. What logical justification is there for that power and authority to apply to those people and not to anybody else?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I shall come to the second point. On the first point, the Government's view is that—and the hon. Gentleman is right that we were faced with a choice—the evidence should not be thrown away and the police should be able to make proper use of the valuable and objective evidence provided by fingerprints and DNA profiling.

I acknowledge that a logical case, even a principled case, can be made for opposing clause 81, but I do not think the same of the amendments. I understand that, faced with the choice, the hon. Gentleman would prefer to go the way of the amendments. He would take the explicit risk that people might be found not guilty of the terrible offences that they had committed because we took note of his evaluation of the civil liberties issues. He wants to go one way; we want to go the other. A legitimate argument—and a vote—is to be had, here, on the Floor of the House or in the nation on that matter. The Government are going down that course because we believe that the power of technology is important and that we should not eschew the use of that evidence.

I come now to the point made by the hon. Member for Reigate. There are occasions when individuals give fingerprints or samples voluntarily—for example, for the purposes of elimination when they participate in a DNA intelligence or mass screen. The clause will permit the retention of fingerprints or samples if an individual gives consent in writing; but consent is entirely voluntary. I emphasise that it is for the individual to give consent. For the reasons stated by the hon. Gentleman, we do not want to discourage anyone from participating in a DNA intelligence screen or from giving fingerprints or samples for other elimination purposes. Consent is at the core; one can consent or not. Those who want to may do so. However, once consent has been given, it cannot be withdrawn. I give an absolute assurance that is it no part of the Government's proposal in any respect whatsoever to put pressure on people or to create uniformity in such a way that suggests that the people participating in those screens should consent. Consent is entirely voluntary and all our practices will reinforce that.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

Does the Minister accept that the Police Federation and others are worried that far fewer people will be prepared to volunteer? If so, the Minister will have to face the embarrassment of knowing that the next Conservative Government may have to reverse that decision.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I do not accept that. The screens will be conducted under clear guidance that will make it quite clear that consent is at the core.

The Police Federation stance on this issue worries me, unlike some of the other matters that we have discussed, on which the federation and I have good, cordial relations. I shall be blunt about it; the federation is not co-operating with the Government's efforts to include police DNA in the DNA data check. The police themselves may leave DNA samples when they visit scenes of crimes, and it is obviously important to eliminate those from any inquiry.

The Police Federation is saying that the inclusion of police DNA poses a threat to civil liberties, and it has been suggested that the police will not participate. That is the subject of an argument between the Government and the federation. It is not an acceptable position for the federation to adopt, unlike some of the other subjects on which the federation has written to Committee members. It is entirely unacceptable for the police trade union to take such a position on DNA sampling. I do not accept the validity of the federation's position, as its leadership knows. That point should be taken into account by the Committee when considering evidence from the federation.

In the circumstances that I have described, if an individual does not consent to the retention of the fingerprints or samples, they must be destroyed—I can describe to the processes that will properly destroy the samples—and the information derived from those samples cannot be used in the investigation of other offences. I believe that that provides sufficient protection. The scenario summoned up by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath of a mass failure to participate in those processes is unlikely to arise.

On acquittals, it is important to emphasise strongly that fingerprints and samples retained from those acquitted can be used only for the purposes of prevention of crime, and so on—not for any other purposes. Therefore, a person who has never been involved in crime has nothing to fear. I do not believe—this takes me back to where I started—that there will be a removal of liberty. People's freedom and liberty will not in any sense be disadvantaged unless they subsequently commit a crime. There will be objective, factual data that can disprove as well as prove involvement.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I am still waiting for the Minister to explain what logically justifies the proposition that somebody who is acquitted should have information held on them while the rest of society—those who have not been arrested and charged—do not. What is the logical basis to justify that they should be ``caught'' when the rest of us should not?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

The basis is the one that we have discussed. The hon. Gentleman has made it clear that he does not agree with our approach. His position is that to have a fingerprint or DNA sample held is in some sense a penalty to an individual in society—somehow a disadvantage in life, a restriction of liberty or whatever. I do not accept that. Building up such databases is an important tool in fighting crime, which helps the other side of the civil liberties argument. I entirely acknowledge the legitimacy of the debate. The hon. Gentleman's position is not ridiculous, but I do not accept where he is coming from.

Jackie Ballard (Liberal Democrat, Taunton)

As I understand it, either the Minister is saying that someone who has been charged with and acquitted of an offence has a greater propensity to offend than someone who has never been charged or the logic of his argument about the usefulness of building up a database from information that happens to be acquired is that there should be a database from birth, as I suggested earlier. Is the Minister opposed to the idea of DNA testing from birth and a national database? If not, is that part of the Government's not-so-secret agenda?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

Well, no, it is not. The Government do not have a secret or not-so-secret agenda on that matter. For what it is worth—it may be worth the hon. Lady's while to read Lord Sharman's Foresight report on the future of crime—identity, how we measure it and, by the way, how we guard against its theft will be a major issue during the next 20 or 30 years. The identity card debate, like the DNA and fingerprint debates, will move higher up the agenda for politicians and society as a whole. I do not have a preconception about where we will end up, although I have no objection to my children's DNA or mine being on a database. However, the Government do not have a secret agenda. We will have more of a national debate as issues arise, when the debate that we are having now will take place sharply. I give the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey an absolute assurance, if that is what he is looking for, that there is no logical step that we are somehow trying to take towards DNA testing at birth.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I understand the Minister saying that he does not regard the holding of DNA as a restriction of liberty, and so on. None the less, it is a holding by the state of personal information that otherwise would not be held. Unusually, the Minister has not answered the question—he is always good at trying to answer questions. What is the logic that says that information should be held on people who have gone through the criminal justice system and come out innocent but not on anybody else? I do not see any logical differentiation.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

What I am trying to say—I may be failing—is that I am in favour of building up the DNA database. I am not in favour of considering that as a penalty for some act or omission in relation to the criminal justice system. I have tried to describe the voluntary joining of the database by consent and the acquittal process, about which the hon. Gentleman asked. It is not a penalty or a loss of liberty, as the hon. Gentleman describes it. The relationship between the individual and the state is not a zero sum game. The hon. Gentleman implies that if I give information to the state, I lose, and vice-versa. The passage of information between the two is not a zero-sum relationship. The hon. Gentleman and I may disagree. I want to build up the database, because it is an important device in dealing with crime.

I am sorry that it is taking so long for me to get to the amendments, but I do not think that I will want to say anything on clause stand part.

There is tremendous logic in opposing the clause altogether. One could argue the toss either way, judgments must be made and the debate is perfectly fair. However, with respect, I do not consider that the same logic applies to the amendment. If amendment No. 276 were to become part of the Bill, fingerprints or samples taken from suspects in the course of an investigation could be retained on acquittal or when a decision is made not to prosecute only if the individual gives their consent in writing.

That would negate a large part of the Bill. If a suspect had been acquitted of one crime but knew that he or she had committed another, it is not credible that he or she would consent to their fingerprints or DNA profile being retained. However, it is precisely in such circumstances that we most need to make use of the valuable objective evidence afforded by fingerprints and DNA.

I shall return to the point raised by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath at the beginning of the discussion. In the case of R v. B, the suspect was arrested on a charge for which he had had a DNA profile taken. He gave the wrong name. Had he given his correct name, it would have been apparent to the police that he already had a conviction, for which a DNA sample was not taken at the time of the conviction but which the police could have taken when he was subsequently arrested.

If the police had taken a sample for that offence, it could have been retained on the database regardless of his subsequent acquittal for the later offence. The R v. B case would never have come before the Court of Appeal and the compelling DNA evidence linking B to the appalling rape of the elderly lady referred to by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath could have been used. I do not think that B would have given his consent to his DNA being kept on the database in writing or otherwise. The amendment would allow the Bs of this world—I am not sure that I should put it like that as it might appear to relate to our earlier talk of Bs, Cs and As—to continue in their criminal pursuits and deny the police the opportunity to make full use of valuable evidence.

I acknowledge that, as the hon. Member for Surrey Heath explained, that is no part of the intention behind the amendment. The hon. Gentleman is not trying to weaken the powers in the provisions, but I would ask him to consider whether his amendment would have exactly the effect that I have described, and whether he should withdraw it. Alternatively, if the hon. Gentleman takes the view that our whole approach is wrong, he should vote against the clause rather than express his disagreement through the amendment.

Amendments Nos. 277 and 278 would restrict the definition of crime to any conduct that would constitute a criminal offence in the United Kingdom. The clause is drafted more broadly, to include crimes that constitute a criminal offence under the law of a part of the UK or of a country of territory outside the UK.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Hall Green)

I know that the Minister has given way several times, but I seek clarification on whether a sample could be used to support the investigation of an alleged crime in another country when that alleged offence is not a crime in this country. If that is the case, what safeguards will be built into the measure to ensure that such arrangements cannot be used to support activities in countries of which we would thoroughly disapprove?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that because it is an important point that relates to the amendments. I shall return to it.

Part of the purpose of the Government amendments to PACE made in this part of the Bill is to recognise the increasingly international nature of much criminal activity. That is common ground on both sides of the Committee. We are seeking to do that in every sphere. We want to give the police clear statutory powers to co-operate fully with police forces in other countries or—to take a current and relevant case—with international war crimes prosecutors. In such cases, crimes that have been committed outside the UK might not constitute an offence in English criminal law. That is why we want to make the change, which the amendment would prevent.

If a request for information comes from a foreign police force and is supported by Interpol and NCIS, we do not think that the conduct being investigated should have to correspond exactly to an offence under English law. Achieving exact correspondence, and the arguments that would take place in the process, would inhibit the authorities' ability to build the international relations about which we have spoken. I acknowledge that Interpol and NCIS—the gateway to the process—will need to make the judgments on crimes that do not exactly correspond to UK law but would be considered crimes nevertheless. That is the reason for assessing the information that is received from foreign police forces. That assurance might help my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. McCabe).

That is an important issue, but to go the other way and support the amendment would remove a significant power that the police need to deal with some international crimes—I cite the international war crimes issues that are in the news. The precise types of offences for which people are being tried and for which many modern techniques are being used might not exactly correspond to offences in UK law, and we do not want the police's ability to use those techniques to be impaired by debilitating legal arguments.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

At the moment, the gateway of Interpol and NCIS is not specified in the Bill. If the Minister were prepared to re-examine whether the safeguards should be included in the Bill, that would be a different matter. The hon. Member for Hall Green might not have been in Committee to hear this earlier, but I share the concern that he raised in his helpful intervention. If a regime behaves as appallingly as President Mugabe's, what in the Bill would stop such a leader using samples and fingerprints taken here against his citizens for offences that would clearly not be regarded as crimes in the UK?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I accept the spirit of the comments of the hon. Gentleman and of my hon. Friend the Member for Hall Green. I believe that safeguards exist, but I am happy to give the commitment that I will examine carefully between now and Report whether any clarification of those safeguards would be helpful.

I acknowledge the force of the points made by hon. Members of all parties and understand that everyone needs to be assured that the powers in the Bill could not be used by despotic or tyrannical regimes. I assure the hon. Gentleman—I have already tried to do so—that that is the Bill's intention. The intention is to ensure that nothing stands in the way of building the international co-operation that we increasingly need.

I apologise if I have spoken for too long, but I have attempted to cover the substance of the issue, because the clause is one of the most important in the Bill. I hope that I have not trespassed on your patience, Mr. Gale, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment and that hon. Members will vote for the clause to stand part of the Bill.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

This has been a good debate and I do not intend to repeat at length the position that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and I have made clear. We see the amendments as a way of ameliorating the clause and we shall support them. We are unhappy with the principle of the proposal for the pragmatic reasons that have been raised. We are worried about the risk to people who give their consent but might not want to do so in the future, and about the fact that we are not yet, and probably never will be, able to ensure that the DNA system works accurately. We can never ensure that the management of scientific data and materials is perfect, so that things are always as they are described. Therefore, there are pragmatic reasons why we support the amendments. There is also a democratic reason, which the hon. Member for Reigate explained very well.

There is a real issue, but we have not had the real debate that we have had on other big issues in other forums. It was not in a manifesto, it was not debated at the previous election, it was not in the Queen's Speech, it has not been debated in the round in either House of Parliament and it had not been debated before it came to Committee. The Minister conceded that the measure had come off the back of a court case. I do not criticise him for that, because we are all aware that that case left the law in an uncertain state, and it is perfectly proper for the Government to say that they need to act. However, on this big issue, just to pluck one option and place it in a part of the Bill that has many other measures is entirely inappropriate.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and many other others, I understand where the police and the Government are coming from and the importance of trying to ensure that we secure convictions properly. However, we are still not persuaded on the issue on which we have had the most exchanges. What logic justifies the holding of information about people just because they have come into contact with the law on one occasion, but does not justify holding it in other cases? My hon. Friend said that it was an opportunistic additional method of collection. That is right. It is no more logical than taking the first name on each page in the telephone book or the electoral register.

There is a slightly more coherent process. I understand that those people happen to have gone through the police system and are linked with law and order and the collection of information, but that is chance and accident. I do not have the figure in my head— the Minister may not either—but a significant number of people are arrested, charged and acquitted. I am happy to say that the criminal justice system acquits people quite often. Many are innocent; some are not. We will never know the answers to those questions.

A debate is taking place on double jeopardy, which enters the realm of what the balance should be between citizen and state. I accept the Minister's perfectly valid alternative description, but the debate is about the powers of the state, what information it should hold and what consent the citizen gives to that being held, whether or not the state believes that it is in the interests of humanity. My hon. Friends and I therefore support the amendments, but whether or not they are defeated, we will oppose the clause. I give notice that, because the next clause is similar—although it relates to Northern Ireland—we shall also seek its deletion.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire and I have had a brief time to consider what the Minister said on our amendment No. 276. I give notice that this is a very important issue to which we shall want to return on Report, but we want to give further thought to the Minister's response, so I will not press the amendment at this stage.

We want to press amendments Nos. 277 and 278 to a vote because there is nothing in the Bill that provides a sufficient safeguard. We agree with the important point made by the hon. Member for Hall Green. I do not want to say anything more at this stage. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed: No. 277, in page 68, line 16, leave out `(whether'.—[Mr. Hawkins.]

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 8.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

As I indicated earlier, I intend to suspend the Committee. It might be convenient for hon. Members if I remind them that, later in the proceedings, we will come to a significant number of potential Divisions. At that point, I shall ask for the doors to be locked, and I shall not have the doors unlocked until the voting has been completed. I am telling hon. Members now that, at the start of the sequence of Divisions at 7 o'clock, they will have one chance to get into the Committee Room. If you're out, you're out.

The Committee is suspended until 5.20 pm.

Sitting suspended.

On resuming—

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I beg to move amendment No. 177, in page 69, line 14, at end insert—

`( ) In subsection (7)(a) (saving for power conferred by Immigration Act 1971), after ``1971'' there shall be inserted ``or section 20 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (disclosure of police information to the Secretary of State for use for immigration purposes);''.'.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to take Government amendment No. 179.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

These are technical amendments.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

Only because I was told that they were not, could the Minister explain what they do?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

Yes. Amendment No. 177 makes it clear that the amendments to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 in clause 81 do not affect the operation of section 20 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which allows police to disclose fingerprint data to the Home Secretary for immigration purposes. Equally, amendment No. 179 makes it clear that the amendments to the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 in clause 82 do not affect section 20 of the 1999 Act. The amendments preserve the existing gateway in the 1999 Act for disclosure of police information to the Home Secretary for use for immigration purposes. These are technical amendments, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman disagrees.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I hear what the Minister says. We had a debate about this sort of issue during the passage of what became the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. I am not in a position now to say that I object to the amendments, but I will consider them in light of the Minister's explanation. If we need to return to the issue later, we can.

Amendment agreed to.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I beg to move amendment No. 178, in page 69, line 15, leave out subsection (5) and insert—

`( ) The fingerprints, samples and information the retention and use of which, in accordance with the amended provisions of section 64 of the 1984 Act, is authorised by this section include—

(a) fingerprints and samples the destruction of which should have taken place before the commencement of this section, but did not; and

(b) information deriving from any such samples or from samples the destruction of which did take place, in accordance with that section, before the commencement of this section.'.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to take Government amendment No. 180.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

These amendments will allow fingerprints and samples that have already been taken on suspicion of involvement in a crime, and that would have been destroyed under the existing provisions in section 64 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and article 64 of the Police and Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989, to be retained and the information from them used for the purposes defined in the Bill. These small amendments will tighten up the situation and give effect to the proposal that we have already debated.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I am clear in my mind about the issue that arises from the amendments. If they allow the use of samples that had been illegally held before this Bill came into force to be held legally afterwards, could the Minister respond to the proposition that that would be in breach of various and fairly obvious provisions of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the convention behind it, because the process would have been rendered fair where it would have been unfair at a previous time? We therefore get into arguments about a potential breach of articles 6 and 13 of the European convention. Under the 1998 Act, both are part of domestic law. My understanding is that the original subsection (5) of clauses 81 and 82 is regarded by those who have considered it as within the Act and compatible with the convention, but the amendments are much less so. They would argue that the amendments are not consistent with the convention.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

On article 6, I have already said that the type of evidence that we are discussing is among the most compelling and objective evidence in the fight against crime. That is the central part of our discussion. On one hand, the evidence may conclusively establish involvement in a serious crime; on the other, which is at least as important, it may conclusively exonerate someone who might otherwise have been convicted on the basis of circumstantial or confessional evidence. It is in the interests of justice and the defendant for that evidence to be available to the court. If we take the examples that we discussed earlier, no sensible person would say that an injustice had been done if conclusive evidence of involvement in rape and murder led to his conviction.

Neither the convention nor English law require that evidence that was obtained or held unlawfully is necessarily inadmissible in a trial. The courts will of course retain their discretion under section 78 of PACE to exclude DNA evidence that should have been destroyed under existing law if they believe that it would have a detrimental effect on fairness.

The hon. Gentleman raised article 13. I have already said that the Government do not believe that the substantive provisions in the clause or the amendments in terms of the transitional arrangements give rise to violation of the convention rights. We do not believe, returning to our earlier discussion about rights and liberties, that the current rights given under PACE to destruction of samples are protected by the convention. It follows from that that I do not believe that a separate issue arises under article 13. If an issue of fairness arises as to the admissibility of evidence during a criminal trial, section 78 of PACE provides the court with the means to exclude that evidence. I hope that that addresses the Human Rights Act issues raised by the hon. Gentleman and that the Committee will agree to the amendment.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

I understand what the Minister says. We will take advice on the matter, but I do not seek to divide the Committee.

Amendment agreed to.

The Chairman, being of the opinion that the principle of the clause and any matters arising thereon had been adequately discussed in the course of debate on the amendments proposed thereto, forthwith put the Question, pursuant to Standing Orders Nos. 68 and 89, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 8, Noes 2.

Clause 82 - Provision for Northern Irelandcorresponding to s. 81

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

I do not want to repeat the lengthy and thorough debate on clause 81. However, similar issues arise in regard to clause 82, with the additional concern, in the context of prosecutions in Northern Ireland, of the many sensitive terrorist cases. We all know of the many apparent miscarriages of justice revealed by subsequent re-analysis of forensic scientific evidence—fingerprints and the like. I am sure that the Minister recognises that it would therefore be wrong simply to allow the clause to go through on the nod without Opposition Members raising the kind of concerns that we had on clause 8. If I may say so, that goes double for clause 82 because of the sensitive issues relating to the Province.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Hall Green)

I appreciate the point, but would not the hon. Gentleman accept that special circumstances obtain in Northern Ireland? Because of difficulties with witnesses, the demand for forensic evidence may be even greater there than on the mainland. That, surely, is a persuasive argument for taking that route.

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

Not for the first time, the hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and I agree with him. My experience in the courts of England and Wales included one or two cases that involved special branch officers and members of the security services sitting at the back of the court. Indeed, the person with whom I did my pupillage as a barrister was involved in one of the biggest terrorist cases of those years. I do not say that the Opposition are opposed in principle to what the Government suggest. As the Committee knows, we believe that the Government have mishandled some of the issues relating to Ulster in recent years, but it would be out of order, Mr. Gale, if I went down that road now. We could say much about Northern Ireland, but it might not be in order.

We want to reinforce the concerns that were expressed about clause 81. The Minister said in response to that debate that it was a perfectly principled position to take to vote against the whole of clause 81; indeed, the Liberal Democrats took it. We did not do so, and we will not vote against clause 82; but the same issues will arise on Report. Given that there are no members of the minority parties on the Committee—

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

There are the Liberal Democrats.

Mr. Hawkins: I should have said in relation to Ulster. Ulster Unionist Members and Social Democratic and Labour Party Members may want to speak on this clause on Report. It is therefore right to place on the record the concerns that we expressed about clause 81 and to say that the points that we made on our amendments to that clause apply also to clause 82.

Simon Hughes (Liberal Democrat, North Southwark and Bermondsey)

The hon. Member for Hall Green unwittingly mentioned Ulster Members; the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) is a member of the Committee, but he has not attended. However, that does not preclude him or other Members from making contributions on Report. Again, I doubt whether the hon. Member for Hall Green meant to say it, but he implied that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and I eventually came to our principled position on clause 81. We took that position at the start and did not waver. The Minister's arguments did not move us.

I shall not repeat the substantive arguments. It would be illogical for us not to take the same view in relation to the provision for Northern Ireland as we did for England and Wales. We voted against the England and Wales clause and we believe that the same should apply in Northern Ireland. The powers in relation to DNA and the like should be the same. We shall therefore oppose the clause.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I agree that the logic behind clause 82 is similar to that behind clause 81. The situation in Northern Ireland is different, but we believe that the fundamental logic is similar. I shall urge my hon. Friends to vote for the clause. I find it utterly extraordinary that Conservative Members can give a no-vote to some of these clauses, but I entirely understand the Liberal Democrat position.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Will the Minister give way?

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

No, I will not. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath may sum up if he wishes. I move that the clause stand part of the Bill.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

If one seeks to amend a clause and the amendment is voted down, it seems logical to abstain on clause stand part. It does not mean that we do not support the principle.

Question put, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 8, Noes 2.

Clause 83 - Amendment of Terrorism Act 2000equivalent to s. 81

Nick Hawkins (Conservative, Surrey Heath)

The clause goes with the previous clause, as it is about amendments to the Terrorism Act 2000. Like all responsible Members of the House, from whichever party, we are passionately in favour of the control of and an end to terrorism. We certainly do not want to suggest that we are against the Government's trying to toughen up the 2000 Act. However, our concerns—the Minister has confirmed that he accepts that they are legitimate—must be taken into account on the clause.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

The hon. Gentleman is right, in that the clause makes consequential amendments. I hope that the Committee will agree to let it stand part of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 83 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 84 and 85 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 86 - Establishment of the Authority

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

I beg to move amendment No. 279, in page 72, line 45, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to take the following amendments: No. 280, in page 73, line 1, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 281, in clause 87, page 73, line 8, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 282, in clause 87, page 73, line 10, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 283, in clause 87, page 73, line 15, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 284, in clause 87, page 73, line 26, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 285, in clause 87, page 73, line 34, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 286, in clause 87, page 73, line 40, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 287, in clause 87, page 74, line 5, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 288, in clause 87, page 74, line 8, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 289, in clause 87, page 74, line 17, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 290, in clause 87, page 74, line 21, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 291, in clause 87, page 74, line 23, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 292, in clause 88, page 75, line 11, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 293, in clause 88, page 75, line 12, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

No. 294, in clause 88, page 75, line 15, leave out `Authority' and insert `Agency'.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Clause 86 creates the new non-departmental public body called the central police training and development authority. Its functions are to provide and promote police training, to give advice and assistance about training and to provide advice and consultancy services to the police on best practice and other matters.

The amendment would change the name of the new body so that it was an agency rather than an authority. As the clause is the first on police training, I shall give some background. Following a thematic inspection of training by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary, a House of Commons report by the Select Committee on Home Affairs, a report by Sir William Stubbs and two Police Federation reports, the Government issued a consultation paper in November 1999. It set out some detailed proposals to reform police training. However, as far as I can ascertain, it did not contain a proposal to set up the authority. It proposed various changes to the existing situation, which I shall explain. Police training was divided between national police training and that provided locally by the forces. All forces have their own training centres, some providing specific types of training.

Jackie Ballard (Liberal Democrat, Taunton)

Would it help the hon. Gentleman if members of the Committee were to tell him that they had read the explanatory notes that accompany the Bill, so he does not need to waste his time in reading them to us?

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

The hon. Lady should know that I am not doing that. I am briefly summarising the overview of current arrangements for police training that appeared in the consultation document in November 1999. I do not intend to go on at great length, but it is worth summarising two or three of its points, as that will put the debate in context.

It is estimated that 87 per cent. of police training is delivered locally and only 13 per cent. nationally. National police training is spread over 10 sites and is responsible for the delivery of probationer constable training for all forces in England and Wales. It is funded directly as part of the Home Office, with an annual budget of £45 million.

Five main proposals formed the centrepiece of the consultation document, although there were 12 points in all. The Police Training Council was to become a smaller, reorganised and more strategic body. There was to be a new, employer-led national training organisation, a core curriculum for police training and an agreement in principle to establish cluster colleges. There was going to be a central police college, a centre of excellence to carry out leadership training and a dedicated training inspectorate within HMIC. I welcome the appointment of an inspector to lead that organisation. I have had a useful meeting with him.

Those were the proposals. Following the consultation, the Government made a statement in the House and also produced the paper ``Police Training: The Way Forward''. I will not read all of it, and I hope that the hon. Lady will admit that I have not been long-winded in setting the matter in context. As far as I can see, proposals following consultation did not include a new authority. The explanatory notes seem to suggest that the new body in some way came out of the consultation process. However, as far as I can see, it did not.

I want to ask the Minister about the nature of the body. Apparently, it will provide services to the police on behalf of the Home Office. Its budget will come from the Home Office. It may not actually provide the services itself—it may buy them in, and I have some further questions about that for later in the debate.

We need to know why the organisation is to be described as an authority. Normally, one would think of a police authority or a local authority as different from the sort of body under discussion. The agencies around Whitehall include the Passports Agency, which issues passports for the Home Office and is funded by that Department. The Benefits Agency delivers benefits. The central police training and development authority seems to be providing services on behalf of a Government Department, and I should be grateful if the Minister would explain to the Committee why it is not an agency but an authority.

When we debate schedule 4, I shall have some more detailed questions about the way in which the body is to be set up. Clearly, the Home Secretary retains the power to direct in clause 87(4). The body's objectives are in part set by the Home Secretary—he lays down performance indicators for it and takes action with respect to it when an inspection has occurred. Why, then, is the body not described as an agency—a concept that we all understand in Whitehall?

Jackie Ballard (Liberal Democrat, Taunton)

There seems to be some logic in the hon. Gentleman's remarks. The authority created by the provision could be confused with a police authority.

The new authority is also wholly appointed by the Secretary of State, and would seem to be similar to other quangos. In passing, I note that it is not many years since the Labour party pledged to remove quangos. So far, the Government have created many more of them. It would be interesting to hear the Minister's response on the matter, but I do not think that it is a substantial point about which we should have a lengthy debate.

Charles Clarke (Labour, Norwich South)

I will not repeat the points that have been made. This part of the Bill contains an important development, about which I am delighted. It represents the development of an entirely new approach to training, which brings us to the key point of the remarks by the hon. Member for Taunton. The authority has a range of different functions, which clause 87 sets out. It will provide police training, promote the value of the provision, give advice about it, provide persons serving or employed for policing purposes with assistance in relation to the provision of training and provide such persons with advice and consultancy services.

The Home Secretary, in nominating the board, will nominate from the service as a whole, because we want the authority to be owned by the service as a whole. That is critical. That is the important distinction between an agency and an authority. An agency, in the classic structure of government, is excluded from the definition of a non-departmental public body, as it is deemed to be part of a Government Department. It is particularly important that the new authority is not seen as part of a Government Department, like the Benefits Agency, which has a direct relationship with the Department of Social Security.

The authority is so called because we want to reflect the important aspiration for training to be the property of the police service and not the Home Secretary alone. In addition to that fundamental reason, it is an authority because of the results of widespread consultation on the matter. I always enjoy debating names—although I confess that it is not always the first item on my agenda—whether the debate concerns phrases such as ``the British Islands'' or names of bodies such as this. Considerable consultation took place, and we decided that we did not want the connotations associated with being part of a Government Department, which is why the term ``agency'' was not high on our list.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Will the Minister give way?

The rest of the debate is in Hansard.