Child Abuse Allegations (North Wales)

David T C Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We will of course listen to any comments, remarks or proposals that come from the individual who looks into the Waterhouse inquiry, and we will treat them with the seriousness with which they should be treated.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

I welcome the fact that, following these serious allegations, the Home Secretary has acted very quickly indeed to investigate the specific problems in north Wales. Will she reaffirm that if anybody is found to have been involved in this, they can expect absolutely no mercy and that the full force of the law will be pursued in the courts?

[Mrs May]

I am sure that what we all want, especially for the victims, is that justice is done and seen to be done. As I said, it is for the police to follow any avenue of inquiry that they believe they should follow and to follow it without fear or favour.

Extradition

David T C Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We will hear from Top Cat in a moment, not just yet. I should have explained. Mr David Davis—he with the slightly greyer hair and the longer service in the House.

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[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman knows that I have set out my position in relation to the Secretary of State’s discretion, so on that matter we will have to disagree. As I said, I recognise that there may continue to be some concerns in the House in relation to the perception of the information or evidence available on both sides of the Atlantic when an extradition case is being considered one way or the other. I think I am right in saying that the United States has never refused an extradition request from the United Kingdom, and that should be recognised. Very often people look at the treaty and assume that all it ever does is extradite UK citizens to the United States. Of course, the opposite is true. A good number of people have been extradited from the United States to the UK to stand trial.

[David T. C. Davies]

As a member of the Home Affairs Committee which considered the matter, I offer my warmest congratulations on behalf of all those who feel that the Home Secretary has stood up for the rights of British nationals and, in her subsequent comments, for the wider British national interest.

[Mrs May]

I think I am grateful, Mr Speaker, that you allowed both Members with the surname Davis or Davies on our Benches to speak.

Oral Answers to Questions

David T C Davies Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

Of course that is part of the task we have set out. If the hon. Gentleman has any specific cases in mind, he can raise them with me and I will see what I can do to look into them for him.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Forced marriage has been a particular problem, especially within some communities. What consideration has the Minister given to raising the age at which one can get married as a means of trying to reduce this abuse?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, and he will know that I have now taken over the lead in the Home Office on combating human trafficking and related matters. We have already tackled the issue he raised to some extent, and now that he has raised it with me, I will look to see if more can be done to tackle this important issue.

Abu Qatada

David T C Davies Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I think that the hon. Lady will be able to tell from some of the comments that have been made today that there is no need to whip up feeling about the European Court of Human Rights. May I correct her on two points that she made in her question? First, she said that I had made a claim about the European Court of Human Rights in a deportation case relating to a cat; I did not. That concerned a case in the UK courts. She also referred to the cases of Praha and Otto, to which the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) referred earlier. Those two cases are not about a referral to the Grand Chamber. Perhaps she should look at them more closely.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Would the Home Secretary like to challenge Opposition Members who are now shouting their criticism to say whether they would support the abolition of the Human Rights Act 1998 and withdraw from the European convention, which has led to this mess in the first place? [Interruption.]

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend tempts me down a road that I suspect it would not be wise to go down, but he had one or two sedentary responses from the Opposition. I repeat that it is the Government’s view that we should reform the European Court, and that is precisely what we are working to do.

Policing and Crime

David T C Davies Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

May I begin, as I often do, by declaring an interest as a special constable with the British Transport police? A few people might wonder why I do that job. When I was on the Home Affairs Committee, I justified it by saying that I have always felt deeply about policing—that is the reality. That is one of things that brought me into politics. I felt even more deeply about the matter when I became the victim of a burglary myself. I can tell the Home Secretary the effect it can have on a family, particularly when one of the partners is often away from home and young children are involved, to know that someone has been walking around their house with a knife in their hand

In many ways, I am sorry to have to make this speech—it is not even a very well-prepared one—but I have to tell the Home Secretary that I am deeply concerned about some of the directions we are taking. I have a view that might be unfashionable, which is that burglars, rapists, murderers, people who commit acts of violence of any sort and people who sell drugs—there is a family in Monmouthshire selling ketamine to young children in school—need to be taken off the streets and sent to prison. They should not be released early from their prison sentences, and they do not deserve 50% off their sentences, which is why for the first time ever, I think, I was unable to follow the Home Secretary into the Lobby earlier tonight. I regret that very much, but, I will not be part of any Government who want to let people out of prison. I do not think the Labour party did a good job on law and order, but when I hear colleagues say that it banged up more people than we will, I start to question what I am doing here.

Home Secretary, I will find it much easier to follow you into the Lobby tonight, because the Opposition have tabled a motion based on money, and we all know that, frankly, you are in a no-win situation. Labour Members did what they always do—they taxed and spent, they borrowed and they spent, they printed money and left us all with a £1 trillion debt.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Will the hon. Gentleman address the House through the Chair, rather than the Home Secretary?

[David T. C. Davies]

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I was saying that I have no problem in following the Government into the Lobby on this motion, because it is about money. I understand full well that cuts have to be made, because we do not have the money and because basic economics means that we cannot live off other people’s money for ever.

There is much we could be doing to support the police. Morale in the police is very low. We could be doing a lot about bureaucracy. That has been said for years—of course it has—but I can give specific examples. Officers spend 10 or 15 minutes filling out a stop-and-search form for each person they stop and search. They cannot stop and search the right people because code A relating to section 2 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 prevents them from searching somebody who has committed an offence that is probably non-arrestable when the police do not have direct evidence or anything on them at that moment. For example, at Liverpool Street station, I once stopped a beggar who had a long criminal record for carrying knives and drugs. I wanted to give him a quick frisk—not an invasive strip search, but a frisk—but I could not because although he had 20 or so convictions, I had no evidence that he had drugs on him at that particular moment. Give the police the tools to do the job, and they will do it well.

Public order police officers have one of the hardest jobs going. One minute they are told that they should not kettle people because it is against their human rights, but the next they are told, “There’s been a riot, the Conservative party’s offices have been invaded. We want robust policing next time.” The next time there is robust policing, but then there are more complaints about it from Members on both sides of the House who have never had to stand, outnumbered 10:1, in front of a load of rioting people and had to try to work out which rioters are passing the iron bars, which are throwing them and so on. There is no way that the police can turn round and run because they are in uniform. It is a very difficult and dangerous job, and if they do not always get it right, it is not altogether surprising.

There are things we could be doing to support the special constabulary to make much better use of it, such as employer-supported policing, which I have spoken to the Home Secretary about before. Quite frankly, however, if it comes down to money, there is a difference between me and Opposition Members. I would like more money put into the police force and the Prison Service so that we can look after our people properly. The first priority of any Government should be the defence of the realm and the rule of law. Where I differ from Opposition Members, however, is that I would say to the Home Secretary—even though it is not her decision—that I cannot understand why we are pouring into the third world money that is being spent on Mercedes Benz by dodgy dictators in Africa, while having to cut funding to the police and prison services here, resulting in our people being not as safe as they ought to be.

Let us be honest about this. If we are going to reduce funding to the police force, there will be a cut in service. There is no point trying to pretend otherwise, no matter what reforms we make. I offer the Home Secretary a serious suggestion. I have noticed that on many occasions the police have to waste a lot of money providing translation facilities for people who claim not to speak English. I have actually arrested people who were able to tell me in perfect English that they were not responsible for whatever they were doing—usually bag thefts and such things. They have an amazing level of English, but take them back to the police station and suddenly it has all gone and a translator has to be found at £50 an hour—and no doubt the translator follows them all the way through the court process as well. On rare and happy occasions, these people actually go to prison. When that happens, though, we have to spend money housing in our prisons people who are often illegal immigrants—that involves a certain expense, although not as much as the figures often quoted suggest—and afterwards we have to spend money trying to deport them if their countries will take them.

The Home Secretary should take some of the money that is meant for the third world in the third world, and use it on people from the third world who are over here breaking the law—not all of them are, of course, but some of them do. [Interruption.] Yes, I appreciate that I quite often put my arguments across in a clumsy fashion—although from what I have seen, that is no barrier to high office in this place—but I have one priority in mind: the safety of our people.

The other day I was talking to somebody who was brought up in a mining village—I can tell the Home Secretary who it was afterwards. That person was a Conservative party agent—a true working-class Conservative of the sort who put in people such as Margaret Thatcher and John Major. She was not just a member of the Conservative party, but someone who went out and campaigned, and had been an area chairman. However, she has now left the Conservative party because she feels that we have abandoned people such as her on issues such as crime and immigration. I have the utmost respect for the Home Secretary—far more, in fact, than for many other members of the Cabinet—and I will happily follow her through the Lobby this evening. However, I very much hope that working-class Tory voters—and perhaps even working-class Labour voters—will be voting Conservative at the next election, and will not feel let down and betrayed. I have canvassed many houses in my lifetime and met many people who said that they would vote Conservative. Not one of them has ever said to me, “I’m voting Conservative because I want you to let more people out of prison.” Let this not be the message from the Conservative party if we ever want to win an election again.

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[Tom Brake]

Indeed, and I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Clearly, a number of forces around the country are adopting approaches or policies to ensure that police numbers are maintained. Another good example is Cleveland, where by working with Steria the force has been successful in achieving savings of £50 million over a 10-year period; it has been able to achieve 20% reductions in the areas on which they are working by focusing on cutting bureaucracy, increasing mobile access to make the police more effective when they are out in the field, and improving case file preparation, which no doubt leads to more successful prosecutions. When the will is there, much is achievable in making greater efficiency savings and focusing on police numbers. The Government are right to tackle the issue of police terms and conditions. It has been on the agenda for many years, but has never been tackled. It was time for the Government to grasp that particular nettle and progress is now being made.

It was also the Opposition’s choice not to debate one of the most effective ways of tackling crime, which is by cutting reoffending. Community sentences were mentioned in the earlier debate. With community sentences, 51% of people reoffend as opposed to the 59% who reoffend after being given a prison sentence. These are comparable groups of offenders: in one case, with a community sentence properly enforced, there is only a 51% reoffending rate; when a similar group of prisoners are sent to prison for one year or less, 59% reoffend.

[David T. C. Davies]

Is the hon. Member aware that that report also showed that anyone sentenced to more than 12 months in prison had the lowest reoffending rate of all? Is not the lesson we should draw that long prison sentences are more effective than anything else?

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am drawing on one part of the report; he is drawing on another. It is very clear that community sentences, for people who would otherwise have been given a short prison sentence, actually reduce reoffending. That means fewer victims. Surely, if we are having a rational debate, that must be a matter of interest to all Members.

For community sentences to be effective, I underline the importance, as stressed to me by User Voice, of ensuring that rehabilitation is retained within the community sentence scheme. In its view, those sentences are more effective than prison sentences because the rehabilitation component is there. I hope that that will remain part of the community sentences that are going to be issued.

Work in prison is also important. It is effective in tackling reoffending because it gives prisoners skills that they can use, as well as providing—according to the Howard League, which published a report today—something like £17 million that can go into the victims fund. I am sure that everyone would welcome that as well.

Volunteering in prison is potentially just as effective in reducing reoffending as work in prison. Last week the Prison Reform Trust launched a very successful scheme at High Down prison drawing on the skills of listeners, and I am certain that the reoffending rate among former prisoners who have participated in it will be less than that among those who have not.

The Opposition did not, of course, choose to call a debate about the most cost-effective ways of solving crimes. Today I was fortunate enough to visit Crimestoppers, which happens to be based in my constituency. What it is achieving at a cost of £4.5 million has been valued at £120 million. Last year it helped to solve 50 murders. It favours payment by results, because it believes that it has a very successful model. By using the public as a resource, it is able to bring cases to court much more quickly than it could have done had it followed the normal court and police processes.

The Government have set out in a concrete and substantive way what we believe will be effective in tackling crime and what we believe is necessary to deal with inefficiencies in, for example, the back office. I feel that it was incumbent on the Labour Members who tabled a debate on this subject to set out what their alternative would have been, but I am afraid that that has been totally lacking this evening.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

David T C Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is right, I am afraid; but I almost said I was happy to give way to him. I am not going to rehearse all the arguments we have had on the issue he raises. I am well aware of the vote in the House on the Backbench Business Committee motion on prisoner votes, and the Government have made it absolutely clear that we are not happy about having to give prisoners votes and we will be looking to do so in the most minimal way possible.

The first issue the Bill addresses is DNA. The police national DNA database, established in 1995, has led to a great many criminals being convicted who otherwise would not have been caught, and I am sure all sensible people support it, but in a democracy there must be limits to any such form of police power, and we simply do not accept that innocent people’s DNA should be kept for ever on a database, as the last Government seemed to think was appropriate. Storing indefinitely the DNA and fingerprints of more than 1 million innocent people undermines public trust in policing and goes against any sense of natural justice, so we will be taking innocent people off the DNA database and putting guilty people on.

The Bill introduces a new regime, whereby retention periods depend on a number of different factors, including the age of the individual concerned, the seriousness of the offence or alleged offence, whether they have been convicted, and, for under-18s, whether it is a first conviction. So in future, as now, an adult who is convicted or cautioned will have their fingerprints and DNA profile retained indefinitely, and we will take steps to plug the inexcusable gaps in the DNA database where the profiles of those who have previously been convicted of a serious offence are not currently included on the database.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Although I recognise the Home Secretary’s concerns about privacy, does she accept that these moves will inevitably mean—this should be stated—that some people who have committed crimes will not be caught and convicted?

[Mrs May]

No I do not agree, and my hon. Friend will see that that will not be the case if he looks at the many provisions in the Bill setting out the circumstances in which people’s DNA can be retained. I come back to the fundamental issue, which is whether we think it is right for the DNA profile of innocent people to be retained on the database. Before and since the election, both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have consistently taken the view that it is not right for the DNA of innocent people to be retained on the database, but that it is right for guilty people’s DNA to be retained. The last Labour Government did not do that.

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[Mrs May]

I was waiting for the dénouement of the right hon. Gentleman’s question. There is a requirement for people to fill in the census. It is an extremely useful tool for Government. Previous Governments wanted a census because it informs Government in the production of policy. What I would say to the right hon. Gentleman’s constituent is that the census can provide useful information better to inform Government to produce better policy.

[David T. C. Davies]

rose—

[Mrs May]

I will give way for the last time.

[David T. C. Davies]

I am grateful to the Home Secretary. I was waiting for her to be specific about surveillance cameras. I understand that it will be much harder for the police and local authorities to use them. Will newspaper editors be subject to the same restrictions?

[Mrs May]

I always wait with interest and occasionally trepidation for the points that my hon. Friend makes. [Interruption] I could make a response to the sedentary comment by the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), but it would probably be better not to do so in the context of the Chamber of the House.

On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), the Bill contains a great number of significant measures that will be to the benefit of the people of this country and will ensure that surveillance cameras are used for the proper purposes for which they were introduced.

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[Mr Straw]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman endorses that view.

I am sorry that the Home Secretary has left the Chamber, although I understand the pressures on her. She made some extraordinarily hyperbolic remarks, and described the situation under the previous Government as the creeping intrusion of the state and a slow march to authoritarianism. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has accepted, the previous Government got some things wrong, and, in the light of experience, some things turned out not as intended. I will deal with those later, but on our record of balancing necessary security with the expansion of freedoms, I and the Labour party defer to no one.

Labour was the party that introduced the Human Rights Act 1998. I remind the Conservatives that they voted against it on Second Reading. I am glad that, following amendments to the Bill, which I sought to make to build the kind of consensus of which my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary spoke today, the then Conservative Opposition supported it on Third Reading. The then shadow Attorney-General, the late Nicholas Lyell, said from the Opposition Dispatch Box that he wished the Bill well.

I also remind the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) that the 1998 Act is about bringing British rights home, so that they can be adjudicated on by British courts. The Act does not create a sovereign Supreme Court. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, under section 4, even if the British Supreme Court declares that legislation made by this House is incompatible with the incorporated European convention on human rights articles—that happens rarely, and not in the cases of DNA or votes for prisoners—the legislation is not unenforceable: it stays in force unless and until this House decides otherwise.

The Labour Government introduced the Human Rights Act 1998, the title of which was never disputed, because it was indeed about human rights—we could have called it the “Human Rights and Freedom Act”. We also introduced the Freedom of Information Act. I am proud that I was the Home Secretary who produced those measures and a number of others. The previous Conservative Government opposed the freedom of information legislation at every stage for 18 years. They wanted only a non-statutory, unenforceable code. That is all they would have introduced.

[David T. C. Davies]

I wonder what the right hon. Gentleman made of the claim in Tony Blair’s book that one of the two worst things he did was to pass the Freedom of Information Act—the other one being to pass the Hunting Act 2004.

[Mr Straw]

I will pass lightly over the Hunting Act, if I may. I do not happen to agree with Tony Blair on that point. Although freedom of information requests can be irritating, especially if one is in government, I did not change how I operated as a Minister. It did not mean that I ceased to record my decisions or comments on submissions. As was brought out by the Dacre report, whichever party is in power there is a case for the proper protection of Cabinet discussions and collective responsibility—that issue might need to be reconsidered, because it has not worked out as intended—but I am in no doubt that overall the Freedom of Information Act has been a force for good.

In addition to those two Acts, we passed the Data Protection Act 1998. There had been no provision to protect people’s personal data before I introduced that Act in 1998. We also introduced extraordinarily important freedoms and protections for people who do not happen to have white skin, including in the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 following the Lawrence inquiry.

I am sorry that the Home Secretary is not here, but while we are on the subject of freedoms, I would draw to the House’s attention the extraordinary difficulty that we had in providing freedoms for gay men and women by reducing the age of consent—equalising it at 16. The first attempt, which was an amendment to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, was defeated in the Lords so strongly that we lost the whole Bill. I then had to introduce a further Bill containing simply a reduction in the age of consent to 16. That, too, was defeated in the Lords, and it was not until we used the Parliament Act that it got through, against vehement Conservative opposition, including from some in this Chamber—to the shame of the Conservative party—and a huge amount in the other place. So let us hear no more nonsense from the Conservative party or the Liberal Democrats suggesting that we in the Labour party failed to balance liberty and order effectively and properly. Yes, we introduced a number of measures on the other side of that equation, but most of those—as far as I can recall, all of them during my period—were actively supported by the Conservative party in opposition.

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[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

I want to highlight my concerns about the Government’s proposals, which seek to restrict the scope for using DNA to convict dangerous criminals. First however, I shall briefly touch on CCTV, which many of my colleagues have also mentioned this evening.

Although in doing so I run the risk of receiving an avalanche of e-mails by tomorrow morning, I want to take this opportunity to say that I have only once been approached by a constituent who was concerned about the level of CCTV coverage in my constituency. That speaks volumes when we take into account the fact that Airdrie was the first town in Scotland to have open-street CCTV, and that many lists indicate that its centre has a particularly high ratio of such cameras in comparison with other Scottish town centres. On the other hand, many constituents have requested the installation of CCTV on their streets, to protect them and their neighbours from crime, vandalism and other antisocial behaviour. In fact, we now seem to have an issue with crime being driven into areas that are not covered by CCTV. I therefore support the expansion of CCTV coverage in my constituency. Crime in Airdrie town centre fell by 24% in the first two years after the introduction of open-street CCTV. It continues to be supported locally, and is seen to be a great success in reducing crime and antisocial behaviour.

DNA evidence has proved to be a powerful tool in helping us bring to justice violent criminals and sexual offenders. Although I support many of the Bill’s proposals, I have serious concerns about any change that will make it much more difficult for the police to catch criminals and build cases against them. It was my hope that the Scottish law on DNA storage would move towards that currently in place in England and Wales. However, instead I find myself today criticising Government attempts to restrict the use of DNA, even though the way it is currently used has led to rapists and murderers being convicted when they otherwise might not even have been identified.

As Members may know, there is currently a different law on DNA retention in Scotland. North of the border, DNA that is taken as part of a police inquiry is automatically removed if the person concerned is not convicted, with the exception that in extreme cases someone charged with a violent or sexual offence but not found guilty can have their details stored for up to three years. In England and Wales there is currently much greater retention of DNA samples by police. At present, people charged with, but not convicted of, a crime will have their DNA samples held indefinitely. As a result, several serious crimes have been solved and many more criminals convicted than would otherwise have been the case. Violent and sexual offenders have been brought to justice by virtue of the fact that their DNA had been taken during inquiries into previous, unrelated and often minor offences and then matched up.

[David T. C. Davies]

Is the hon. Lady critical of both the Government here in Westminster and the Scottish Parliament for the changes they are making? The Government’s changes on DNA will bring them into line with what the Scottish Parliament are doing, so I presume she is critical of both institutions.

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[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

We have heard from many people on the Government and Opposition Benches for whom I have the utmost respect, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). However, I do not share the enthusiasm of all Government Members for all aspects of the Bill. There are many parts with which I heartily agree, and we have heard a few examples of areas where the current legislation has gone wrong.

Years ago, I was involved in a case in the Welsh Assembly in which a bus driver who worked for a company that undertook school bus runs was told that he might lose his job because 20 years previously he had incurred a minor conviction for shoplifting or a drink-related offence at the age of 19. For 20 years, he had lived a perfectly good life and suddenly he was about to lose his job over that minor offence. Clearly, such examples are totally and utterly disproportionate and I hope that we will do something about them.

I am less keen when I hear people talking about a police state. I declare an interest as a serving special constable in the British Transport police. I assure Members that when I go out it does not look like a police state. I have conducted many section 44 stop and searches, and I do not recognise the descriptions that have been given. I would challenge the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who is not currently in his place, to ask the gentleman who says that he was stopped and searched every time he stepped out on the streets of London to produce the written evidence. Written evidence there most definitely will be, because every stop and search of that nature required about 20 minutes of paperwork.

One problem with section 44 stop-and-searches was that they were carried out entirely at random and were never actually picking people up. The police officers themselves were not enthusiastic about doing them, because they knew that they would annoy a member of the public who was probably not doing anything at all, incur at least 20 minutes of paperwork and be most unlikely to get anyone for anything.

Section 44 is going, which is fine, but the Government ought to consider the fact that the other stop-and-search legislation is not adequate to catch people who are clearly breaking the law. For example, on many occasions— I assure Members that I mean many, many occasions—I have stopped people for committing offences that were never going to be arrestable. The first thing that a police officer does in that situation is to check whether the person in question is known to the police for anything and whether they have a previous record. Very often it turns out that they do, and that there are warning markers indicating that they regularly carry knives, guns, drugs or other illegal paraphernalia.

At that point, faced with somebody who has committed an offence that will not get them arrested—perhaps begging or abusive language—but who regularly carries guns, knives or drugs, one would think that the officer would have the power to search them, but they do not. Unless the police officer can actually see the knife or drugs sticking out of a pocket, there are no powers to search somebody. The officer cannot take account of a person’s previous record. If we are going to get rid of section 44 stop-and-search powers, which is absolutely fine, we should at the same time ensure that people who are likely to commit offences or carry illegal apparatus can be properly searched.

We need to let the police know that when they see people acting suspiciously, they will still the have the power to stop and search. A lot of police officers, myself included, having undergone courses such as the behaviour spotting one—it is called BASS, but I will not bore Members with the details of what that means. It is about spotting people behaving in a suspicious fashion. Many police officers I have spoken to still feel uneasy about simply going up to somebody to stop and search them, even if they have been displaying obvious signs of acting in a manner that is likely to mean they were about to commit an offence.

Members of the public might feel that the police are for ever stopping and searching them—every time they go out on the streets of London, according to one Member—but police officers actually feel very nervous about going up to people to stop and search them. They feel that they are likely to get complaints if they do so. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will think about that. I have tabled amendments in the past suggesting that officers should be able to take account of somebody’s previous criminal record in deciding whether to conduct a stop and search, but I have not succeeded thus far. I do not know whether I have any more chance under the current Government than under the previous one—I suspect possibly not.

[Tom Brake]

The hon. Gentleman has referred to me both since I came back into the Chamber and, I understand, while I was not here. I would be very happy to introduce him to the baroness in question at the other end of the building, who will explain to him precisely what her son-in-law experienced. Then he will be able to make his own judgment.

[David T. C. Davies]

I would be delighted. I believe the hon. Gentleman said that every time that baroness’s son-in-law set foot on the streets of London, he was stopped and searched. The first thing that I would ask him would be, “Did you ask for the copies of the pink slips that have to be lodged every time you are stopped and searched?” If he was stopped and searched there will be a record of it, and we should be able to prove whether that happened every time he set foot on the streets of London. I look forward to pursuing the matter.

The issue of previous criminal records brings me to that of DNA, on which I have some sympathy with Opposition Members. I do not think that there was anything fundamentally wrong in collecting people’s DNA. I have done it myself, and I will be quite honest in saying that I am not sure that the Government have got it right. I asked the Home Secretary earlier whether she accepted that, as a result of the change, people who had committed crimes would be able to get away with it. She said that that was not true. I have the utmost respect for her, but I am very direct and I must say that I do not believe that and cannot accept it.

We see in the Bill that the Government have decided that anyone who is arrested for specific types of offences—terrorism, drugs, violence, rape and that sort of thing—will have their DNA kept indefinitely if they have a previous recorded offence. The Government recognise that keeping people’s DNA is useful when they have been arrested for offences such as murder, rape, violence or terrorism even if they are not convicted, which I welcome. However, it surely follows, therefore, that DNA can also be useful in respect of less serious offences, such as burglary or taking a vehicle without consent. We should make it clear to members of the public that we are increasing their rights and liberties, but that there is a cost—that is obvious, and we should be honest about it. One cost is that some burglars and car thieves will not be caught.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill is about striking a balance between maintaining law and order and ensuring that crimes are properly investigated, and maintaining civil liberties and ensuring that we do not live in the sort of society in which people who are completely exonerated of the smallest misdemeanour find that their DNA is kept for ever or even for a considerable period? The previous Government got that balance wrong, and this one are putting it right.

[David T. C. Davies]

One’s DNA might be kept for a long time, but that would be irrelevant if one did not go out and commit another offence. If one did, one would be arrested.

I agree, however, with my hon. Friend’s general point on the balance. The previous Government may have got it wrong—they have accepted as much—but we should also look at the context in which they took some of their decisions. The terrible tube bombings in 2005 caused people to think long and hard about it, and perhaps it always changes. To be philosophical for a moment, would my hon. Friend rather live in a failed state where there is no police presence or law and order whatever, or in a rather unpleasant dictatorship of the sort that we currently see falling in north Africa? Although that is not an easy choice, most people would rather live under Mubarak in Egypt than under whatever passes for a Government in Somalia, because at the end of the day, security is one of the most important things that people have—without it, we have nothing.

The only general complaint that I have heard about CCTV and surveillance cameras is that there are not enough of them, but I accept that the police and some local authorities have recorded people inappropriately. The police have a great deal of paperwork to fill out before they can use surveillance cameras on people, but I am not sure about local authorities.

The stringent new rules will presumably stop the police targeting criminals and local authorities from targeting the ubiquitous karate instructor who claims disability benefits, but will they apply to newspaper editors? This is a serious point. As I said, men who have had consensual sexual relationships with other men will no longer have to declare that as an offence—and quite rightly; that is one of the many measures in the Bill with which I agree. However, what if a newspaper surreptitiously films people having consensual sex, and because they are in the public eye, publishes the details and puts the film on the internet? I suggest that if anyone else tried to do that in any capacity, they would quite rightly find that they had breached a law—yet newspapers get away with it. Will the Home Secretary assure us that, in future, newspapers will have to abide by the same codes and laws that are and will be applied to local authorities that are looking for benefit cheats or police officers who are looking for criminals? Benefits cheats and criminals should be targeted far more stringently than footballers who have slept with somebody to whom they are not married.

I have one final point on that. I notice that some sort of ombudsman or commissioner will be responsible for ensuring that the rules on surveillance cameras are applied, but they will have no powers. They will have the ability to say, “I think that that was wrong,” but they will not have the ability to do anything about it. However, they will have a salary of £250,000 a year. That is extraordinary, given that Members of Parliament have been told to change the law to ensure that we do not get any salary increase at all. We are being paid £65,000 a year, and if it is good enough for us, it should be good enough for whoever is put in charge of this rather toothless surveillance camera body. I would like an assurance from the Government that we are not putting through a Bill that will get rid of a lot of quangos only to create a job that will pay £250,000 a year. Mind you, there will be quite a few MPs looking for jobs in four years, so perhaps one of us will be the lucky one who gets the £250,000 salary.

Last but not least, a few people have got the wrong idea about the police. I know that you might think that I am a bit biased—not you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I forget the correct use of language or terminology. However, I am sure that most people will understand that the police have a very difficult job to do. One hon. Member went out with protesters during the G20 riots. I was out with the police the day before. I turned up for duty on the day, but spent most of my time sitting in a police station, drinking tea and watching the events unfold on Sky—such is the way when we sign up for these things. However, I went out the night before, and I was threatened by people. I knew that the police were outnumbered and felt very threatened. Police officers are human like everybody else. They get scared when confronted by people, when they are outnumbered 10 to one and when people are throwing iron bars and trying to attack them, and I think that we should show a little bit more understanding when we talk about a police state, and realise that the police are very often the victims of crime, yet also end up as the people about whom complaints are made. I hope that everybody in the House recognises the very difficult job that the vast majority of them do courageously and well.

Public Order Policing

David T C Davies Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I look forward to appearing before the Home Affairs Committee tomorrow. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will have a number of very pertinent questions. There has already been a review of public order policing, but Sir Denis O’Connor is looking again at that review, in the light of what has taken place.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Does the Home Secretary acknowledge that one problem is that the police know that any attempt to deal with violent protest will be met by a barrage of complaints to the IPCC, which some in high places will support? Does she accept that it is time that we started to think a little more about the human rights of police officers to do their jobs free of assault and injury?

[Mrs May]

In any such instances, the police have a balance to attain when policing protests. It is right that they should be accountable for their actions, and that the IPPC looks into questions and complaints about police actions, as with the individual who was seriously injured. However, it is also right for us to make it absolutely clear that the violence was the fault of those who came along determined to perpetrate it.

Identity Documents Bill

David T C Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson]

I will make some progress and then give way.

Of course, for the Government, as the Home Secretary said, it is conveniently symbolic to have this debate so early on in this Session of Parliament. It is a symbolic act to prove that the coalition can actually agree on something, as it certainly cannot agree on Europe, the alternative vote, or even the Human Rights Act.

It is certainly true that the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have been consistently smug in suggesting that a simple ID card scheme will mean the end of civilisation as we know it. Not for nothing are the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister known as the self-righteous brothers, although they are bound to have lost that loving feeling before too long. The Deputy Prime Minister has a Dutch mother and a Spanish wife, so he should know that the claim that ID cards are an affront to liberty and freedom would be greeted with bemusement in Holland, Spain, France, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and all the other countries that have managed to provide their citizens with the cards’ pragmatic advantages without becoming despotic oligarchies.

The Bill has provisions to keep the clauses of the 2006 Act that relate to false documentation, and we welcome that, but we need much more than penalties for false documents if we are to win the fight against identity fraud and illegal immigration.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Was it the shadow Home Secretary’s intention that it would be compulsory for everyone to have ID cards? If not, how on earth could they help to prevent terrorism, benefit fraud or anything else, given that the people who were likely to commit those acts were unlikely to apply for an ID card?

[Alan Johnson]

That is a very good point. No, it was not my intention to make the cards compulsory. Indeed, we made it absolutely plain that people could use their biometric passport as an identity document or use an ID card, which was a smaller, simpler, cheaper version. France has a voluntary ID card scheme, as do many countries in Europe that would not go to the compulsory stage, and it helps people to protect and prove their identity, which is the fundamental reason behind it. As I said, it was the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden who mentioned the link with terrorism, not moi.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I congratulate you on your appointment, Mr Deputy Speaker. I can already sense you melting into that Chair, and I wish you many years in the role. I can also see the other Mr Deputy Speaker bursting to get on to that Chair, dressed in what can only be described as the best of Deputy Speaker finery.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on a fine maiden speech. He had some remarkable predecessors and he paid a fitting tribute to Rudi Vis, who was very much respected and liked across the Chamber. We have heard some other fantastic maiden speeches, including a fine and passionate one from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). He brings vast experience to the Chamber and I look forward to hearing many more robust and meaningful contributions from him as this Parliament progresses. The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) gave a passionate defence of the Welsh language, and my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) and I are similarly passionate about the Gaelic language. We hope to hear many more speeches on that theme as she makes her contributions in Parliament.

I enjoy the maiden speech season. It is great because we hear all these fine tributes to former colleagues and are given an encyclopaedic tour of the UK’s constituencies. We have several more maiden speeches to hear and I must say that I could hear one every day for the next Parliament if so many are as fine as the ones that we have heard in the past few days; all the speeches have been excellent, and I look forward to hearing some more this afternoon.

I congratulate the coalition Government because they have been as good as their word. The Con Dems have condemned Labour’s hated identity cards to the scrap bin of history and I say well done to the coalition Government. Is it not bizarre, even in these days of political cross-dressing, that it has taken a right-wing Conservative Home Secretary to scrap perhaps the most anti-civil libertarian measure of recent times, which was proposed and introduced by a Labour Government?

[David T. C. Davies]

I hate to give the hon. Gentleman a politics lesson, but he ought to know that right-wing Members of Parliament have always been supporters of liberty and that we have had to defend our liberties from the authoritarians on the left.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that. I observed with great interest the Conservatives’ new interest in civil liberties when they were in opposition. We must hope that they maintain it in government and do not go back to form, because the Conservatives have not got a great track record on these issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[David T. C. Davies]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who has been an excellent Chairman of the Select Committee. I suggest to him that if we were unable as a Parliament to look after our own data on the activities of MPs, it will be difficult for the public to have any confidence that we will do a better job with their data.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is right; we have to be very careful with data protection and the way in which we look after data. We have not had a lost disc for some time; at least, not for the last three weeks, which is pretty good. The last major loss was several months, if not a year, ago. Maybe the civil servants and others with responsibility for all this will ensure that no further discs will be lost in the future. I hope that we will have assurances about how that will be done.

In conclusion, although the Home Secretary made a terrific case against identity cards—she is always very good at putting the case—the Opposition will not vote against the Bill. Speeches from people such as me should be relatively brief; that is why I will not take up my full allocation of time.

--- Later in debate ---

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

May I, too, Mr Deputy Speaker, offer my warmest words of congratulation to you, Sir, on your elevation? I have been well aware of the dignity and gravitas that the Deputy Speaker can bring to important occasions ever since he acted as my best man about 10 years ago—but that is another story.

I also offer my warmest words of congratulation to the Home Secretary and to the other Home Office Ministers. It is fitting that a Government who promised to make law and order a top priority have today introduced a Bill that is about both law and order, and supporting and protecting human rights—real human rights, that is, not the ones that Labour Members sometimes talk about. I have taken a great interest in that matter through my membership of the Home Affairs Committee and in my work as a special constable with the British transport police.

I have heard all sorts of claims about the benefits of ID cards, and we have heard some of them today. We have heard about how they would defeat terrorism, prevent people from claiming access to benefits, solve criminality and all sorts of other things. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) came out with a new one when she talked about NHS tourism. I tried to bring that issue to the attention of Health Ministers in the previous Government on several occasions and was assured that there was no problem at all, so at least we are getting somewhere if the Opposition now accept that there is a problem. The hon. Lady also talked about illegal immigration, but perhaps she did not hear the Home Secretary’s speech, which made it absolutely clear that people coming into this country will still require a form of identity document—not the ID card, but another form of identification. That issue therefore does not even begin to arise.

There was a gaping hole in the argument that the previous Government advanced, which was that the cards were always going to be voluntary. That, of course, meant that they would have been ineffective, because the people who fiddle their benefits and break the law would not have applied for them. Everyone could see that glaring hole in the argument. There would have been some argument for having ID cards—although I would not have supported it—if they had been compulsory, but that was not suggested, or at least it was not talked about openly.

My personal view is that if ID cards had been introduced in a voluntary form and the programme had continued, somewhere along the line it would have become compulsory to have them. Otherwise, there really would not have been much point in them. There have been times when, working as a police officer, it has been hard to ascertain someone’s identity. Had they had an ID card and been compelled to carry it at all times, that would have been quite useful, but the previous Government were not willing to say whether it would be compulsory to have one, and if so, whether it would be compulsory to carry one at all times and on all occasions.

I could have foreseen the cards being rolled out on a voluntary basis at first, and then, when the take-up had reached about 60% or 70%, the Government making them compulsory. They would then have had the problem of whether to enforce the law strictly and ensure that people carried them all the time. I suspect that there would have been all sorts of civil disobedience, with protestors deliberately going out of their way not to carry ID cards and the police not being terribly enthusiastic about prosecuting a lot of otherwise law-abiding students for a minor infringement of the law. Prolific criminals would not have carried the cards, and we would have spent thousands of pounds dragging them before the courts and fining them 75 quid or so, which they would never have paid. Then somebody in government would have said, “Hold on a minute, this is outrageous. The Daily Mail journalists are ringing me up all the time saying that we’ve got this law and nobody’s obeying it, so we’ll have a target. We’ll tell the police to go out and prosecute a lot of people.” Then, a lot of pensioners and otherwise law-abiding people who had unfortunately forgotten their cards one morning would have been stopped and fined large sums of money. The whole thing would have been chaos, because this country is just not ready for it. I am glad that we have got rid of it.

It was something of an anomaly that although the Labour party talked about human rights rather a lot, they gave us a so-called Human Rights Act that in my opinion was nothing more than a spurious means for all sorts of people involved in terrorism and on the fringes of criminality to sue the Government for large sums when their “human rights”, as they put it, were not respected. At the same time, all sorts of law-abiding people were having their liberties infringed in all sorts of ways, one of which was the introduction of ID cards.

I say to Members such as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who was so passionate about the matter, that we on the right of politics have always believed in liberty, and we do not separate social liberty from economic liberty. I do not believe that we can have a truly libertarian Government when half our gross domestic product is being spent by the state. I look forward to my Front-Bench colleagues introducing further Bills that will reduce state interference in our lives socially and economically. As we have a great big happy family now, with people whose views are as diverse as mine and those of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), I say to Opposition Members—even the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), with whom I have served on the Home Affairs Committee for several years—that they should come and join the true libertarians on our side of the House, and we will continue to cut red tape, look for ways of reducing costs and support real human rights and, most importantly, liberty for all British people.