DNA and CCTV (Crime Prevention)

Emma Reynolds Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope, and I hope that you will pass my thanks to Mr Speaker for granting the debate. It is a welcome opportunity because the debate on the effectiveness of DNA and CCTV in tackling crime has, up to press, been rather sterile. It has been characterised as a debate between those who claim to believe in civil liberties and those who are seen as authoritarian; if one believes in the use of DNA and CCTV, one is automatically regarded as an authoritarian, and if one does not believe in their use, one must believe in civil liberties. I do not accept that rather simplistic premise. Today I want to make the pro-freedom case for CCTV and DNA.

I am a Conservative because I believe in freedom, and I am also proud to be a member of an excellent organisation called the Freedom Association. The last Government were one of the most authoritarian, intolerant and illiberal Governments that the country has ever seen, so I certainly do not support some of the measures they introduced. I consider measures such as identity cards and the ability to lock people up without charge, potentially for 90 days, to be authoritarian

The police asking to see one’s papers is something one would expect to see in an authoritarian state; that would impinge on my individual freedom. However, CCTV cameras being installed on a particular street and forensic laboratories holding my DNA do not in any way impinge on my freedoms, because they do not stop me doing anything that I would otherwise want to do or going about my daily lawful business. We need to distinguish between those measures that impinge on people’s freedoms and those that do not.

The coalition Government have pledged to regulate CCTV and remove from the DNA database the profiles of individuals who are not successfully prosecuted after three years. I believe that the first duty of any Government is to protect the public; it is for that reason that I believe we need, if anything, more CCTV cameras and more people on the DNA database, rather than fewer. Some might argue that that would be an infringement of people’s civil liberties, but I do not know what that term really means. “Civil liberties” is one of those terms bandied about that we are all supposed to believe in because they sound good, such as sustainable development, but no one really knows what they mean. We all believe in social justice, but no one really knows what it means. I am sure that we all believe in civil liberties, but we do not know what the term means. In fact, the definition of civil liberties states:

“They are given to treat all the people equally under the law and make them enjoy rights of speech, protection, enjoyment and liberty.”

It seems to me that the word “protection” is often missed out when people quote about civil liberties. I believe that one of my civil liberties is to walk down the street safely without being the victim of a serious crime. If DNA and CCTV means that more rapists, murderers and muggers are in prison, that enhances my freedoms rather than diminishing them.

I want to be clear from the outset that I am not in favour of the overuse and abuse of CCTV cameras. I do not agree, for example, with local authorities putting cameras into people’s bins to see what kind of rubbish they throw out, which is ludicrous. I am talking about using CCTV as a crime-fighting measure for identifying and prosecuting criminals. There are many reasons for further regulating CCTV; it has been suggested that the images are often of poor quality, that the cameras are costly to install and run and that they can be used for underhand purposes. I want to tackle all those concerns. We should not, however, be provoked into a knee-jerk reaction and, as a result, remove cameras, reduce their numbers or over-regulate their use, which would make them worthless. CCTV images are now often of high quality and have good time frames, and many pictures are now in colour. It is possible to see things from different angles using footage taken from different cameras.

A Scotland Yard study into the effectiveness of surveillance cameras revealed that almost every Scotland Yard murder inquiry uses CCTV footage as evidence. In 90 murder cases over one year, CCTV footage was used in 86 of the investigations, and senior officers said that it helped in of the 65 cases by capturing the murderer on film or the movements of suspects before or after an attack. Scotland Yard’s head of homicide, Simon Foy, said:

“CCTV plays a huge role in helping us investigate serious crime. I hope people can understand how important it is to our success in catching people who commit murder.”

In many areas, CCTV is watched live by monitoring teams who can call the police to the scene of a crime.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me that CCTV evidence has had a big impact in reducing the number of contested prosecutions and, therefore, the cost to the criminal justice system?

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right and has pre-empted what I was about to say. In this age of austerity, we should be trying to find ways of reducing the cost of the criminal justice system, and as she rightly noted, CCTV is a key way of doing that.

Unless millions of police officers are stationed on every street corner, in every park and on every road, without CCTV those crimes would go unreported and often undetected. A prime example is that of the so-called “crossbow cannibal”, who was arrested on suspicion of murdering three prostitutes in my home city of Bradford, but only because he was caught on CCTV. Without CCTV, that arrest would never have been made. We would never have been able to identify the 7 July bombers without the CCTV footage from the tube because the police would have been unable to track their movements on that day.

Let us look at the cost-effectiveness of CCTV. The average running cost of a CCTV system with 150 cameras is about £320,000 a year, and on average 3,000 events are monitored every year by each system, giving an average cost of about £100 per incident. It seems to me that that is good value for money in this age of austerity. It seems even better value when we consider that a 12-month experimental study in Burnley showed a 28% reduction in crime in an area with CCTV, compared to a 10% increase in crime in an area that relied solely on policing. Therefore, CCTV is not only cost-effective, but effective in reducing crime in the real world. An initiative in my constituency in west Yorkshire set up a CCTV camera, which cost only a few thousand pounds, and Crimestoppers has stated that the number of arrests and charges has increased by 40% as a result, so its cost-effectiveness has been proved beyond doubt.

As the hon. Lady pointed out, CCTV is a valuable tool not only for the police, but for the courts. It is an invaluable tool on two levels: for convicting the perpetrators of crimes; and for acquitting those who have not committed a crime. CCTV footage provides conclusive and unbiased evidence, void of anyone’s spin or mistaken recollection. When viewed by defendants and their solicitors, footage often leads to a change of plea, from not guilty to guilty. That invariably happens in cases in which defendants were drunk or on drugs when they committed an offence and could not recall it. That not only saves the courts time and money, as the hon. Lady suggested, but prevents witnesses having to give evidence in court, which is often a stressful and unpleasant experience. CCTV prevented Richard Whelan’s girlfriend from having to testify against his murderer, Anthony Joseph, who brutally stabbed Richard on a bus when he was attempting to defend her. That attack was caught on camera and Joseph, a paranoid schizophrenic, was jailed.

Equally, CCTV can prove that someone has been wrongly accused of committing a crime, as was the case with Edmund Taylor, who was convicted of dangerous driving. His conviction was quashed on appeal, when CCTV footage showed that a white man had committed the offence—Mr Taylor was black. Similarly, Garry Wood was cleared of raping Natalie Jefferson after police studied CCTV footage of his movements on the night of the rape and realised that he had not committed the crime.

I want to touch on the automatic number plate recognition scheme because it was through its use, and that alone, that the murderers of PC Sharon Beshenivsky were caught. Without an ANPR system around Bradford, those people would never have been brought to justice. On 18 November 2005, PC Beshenivsky was shot and killed during a robbery in Bradford. The CCTV network was linked in to an ANPR system and was able to identify the getaway car and track its movements. Because of that system, the police realised that the people responsible were in London, virtually before those people knew it themselves, and six suspects were arrested. At the system’s launch in May, Chief Superintendent Geoff Dodd of West Yorkshire police called it

“a revolutionary tool in detecting crime”.

Many of my constituents are sick to the back teeth of drivers who do not have insurance, and who not only put other people at risk, but cause them unnecessary expense. Many of my constituents think that it is absolutely fantastic that the police can use ANPR to stop people who drive without insurance, and can confiscate the cars. I would not want anybody to try to stop the police doing that.

I am obviously interested to know what the Minister thinks of CCTV. In 2007, he was calling for more CCTV cameras in his then constituency of Hornchurch. On his website he stated:

“I think CCTV would help to make an important difference in supporting the local police. It will also make clear to those intent on causing crime in Elm Park that their images will be recorded, increasing the likelihood that they will be identified, prosecuted and punished for their offences.”

I could not agree more. I absolutely endorse everything that the Minister said then, and hope that he still feels the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Reynolds]

Have the Minister or the Government made any assessment of the cost to businesses of increasing regulation of CCTV cameras? Many businesses in Wolverhampton North East use them to prevent and tackle business crime, which is still a massive issue.

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about the nature of regulation. We are considering its ambit and scope in relation to public versus private areas, and publicly-owned versus privately-owned CCTV. Of course we are conscious of the regulatory burden and the possible regulatory impact. That will be a factor that we shall consider—and are considering—as part of the regulatory framework we shall bring to the House, so that there can be further debate.

Perhaps I should return to the central issue of the debate and the balance between the public’s right to be protected from crime and individuals’ right to live their lives without undue interference. I do not see that there is necessarily a conflict between the two. We are rightly proud in this country of our tradition of policing by consent. Securing the trust and confidence of the public is vital to the police, to enable them to detect and prevent crime effectively. That extends to the techniques and tools used by the police in their role. I was struck by the remarks of the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart); one of his key points was about the concepts of usefulness and effectiveness. If we ensure that there is trust and confidence, and that the scientific elements are deployed so as to be more effective and so as to secure public trust and confidence in them, that in itself aids policing; it aids confidence, trust and belief in the work that the police do on our behalf to make communities safer. That is an important aspect of the debate and I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s speech.

We are all aware of cases in which DNA evidence has been important in proving guilt or innocence, and several examples have been given this morning. The fight against crime necessitates the use of modern scientific techniques of investigation and identification. Indeed, this country claims a pioneering role in utilising DNA technology. As we have heard, it has proportionately one of the largest DNA databases in the world, with more than 6.1 million profiles stored on it. It has grown by more than 1 million profiles in the past two years. The use of technology must strike the right balance between the wider interest of public protection and the respecting of private life rights. That sense of proportionality is central to the debate.