Digital Evidence

Baroness Gale Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My noble friend is right that this could indeed help to clinch a case one way or another. At the heart of this is that police and prosecutors have a duty to pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry in every investigation. Increasingly, evidence is coming digitally. In response, the police have to ensure that they are acting in a way that is proportionate, but which also protects privacy, as talked about by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.

[Baroness Gale (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that Claire Waxman, the London Victims’ Commissioner, has called on the police and the CPS to implement the ICO’s recommendation of introducing a code of practice to prevent excessive and disproportionate requests for data, as real victims could otherwise be deterred from pursuing the justice they deserve? Will she accept recommendation 1 of that report, as she seemed to indicate earlier, that the Government should strengthen the current legislative framework by producing a statutory code, or other equivalent measures, to ensure that the law is sufficiently clear and foreseeable?