Olympics (Security)

Jack Straw Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank my right hon. Friend for those questions. Yes, I can absolutely give the assurance that the training will be provided. We will of course want to ensure that at all times we have the correct number and the correct mix of people available to undertake venue security duties. I assure him that the troops will be used for tasks for which they have been fully trained.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Will the Home Secretary be more precise about the numbers? We know that 3,500 additional troops are being brought in. What was the total number of trained staff for whom G4S was contracted, and what is the shortfall in numbers?

[Mrs May]

The overall number that we were looking for was 23,700, which includes 7,500 troops. The right hon. Gentleman can do the maths for himself in terms of the total numbers and make-up of staff, who include volunteers, students, and the G4S staff themselves. G4S undertook the training of all those elements. G4S has said that it is not able to provide the balance of 16,000 to 17,000 guards, and therefore we have taken the step of bringing in the 3,500 military personnel. That is absolutely what one would expect a Government to do in these circumstances, and if he were in government, he would be doing exactly the same thing.

European Convention on Human Rights

Jack Straw Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I will give way to the former Home Secretary.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

May I, in fully endorsing the Home Secretary’s approach and this motion, ask her to comment on the following? The previous Government, including through my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), did make great efforts to get the courts to change their approach, as they did in the Amy Houston appeal—I have details of the grounds of appeal here with me—but it was only when the courts found themselves trapped by their own precedent that this became necessary. I therefore endorse this approach, but it is not for the want of trying an alternative route pursued by the previous Government.

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman makes the valid point that this has been an issue for some time. I think it would have been possible for the previous Government to have done what we are doing today and bring a motion before Parliament, but we have done it and we are giving people that opportunity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) was accusing me or the Home Secretary of “generalised waffle”. Given his record, I fear that it could have been either of us. It was probably both.

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will have read considerably more of the judicial pronouncements on this subject than I have, but the House is being challenged to send a clear signal to the courts, and we are not being clear about what we are doing in the motion. The status of the motion remains unclear because it is neither primary nor secondary legislation.

[Mr Straw]

Although the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is quite right to refer to the important observations of the Lord Chief Justice, does my right hon. Friend accept that even if the Human Rights Act had never have been passed, we would still have been faced with this conundrum about the balance between the articles in the European convention on human rights so long as we remained committed to the convention? That is a key part of the Conservative party’s policy as well as ours.

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right. The convention provides an important framework, and like him I understand that the Conservative party remains committed to it. A strength of the Human Rights Act—I know he was a key pioneer in bringing it into British law—is that it provides Parliament with the ability to debate article 8. It is legitimate for us to do so as part of our debate on immigration rules and all kinds of other legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) has just said that he wants the House to discuss the wider issues of immigration, and I entirely agree with him. The immigration rule changes, to which the motion refers in a coda, go much wider than simply the interpretation of article 8 in respect of the deportation of foreign criminals. I would say, parenthetically, to the Home Secretary that while I support many of the other changes, I remain concerned about some of them, not least the removal of the right of appeal in family visit cases, which I introduced in the late 1990s. That measure has worked well and fairly, and in my experience it has led to abuse in very few cases. I therefore support the motion before the House in the context in which it has been brought forward—namely, to deal with the problem of the deportation of foreign national criminals.

The particular case that got me heavily involved in this matter as a constituency MP was the death in a motor accident of young Amy Houston. She was walking with her brother in Newfield drive in my constituency when a vehicle driven by an asylum seeker, Mr Mohammed Ibrahim, knocked her down and killed her, although she was alive for six hours after the event. He drove off without stopping or giving up any details. Amy’s bereaved father, Paul Houston, lives in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones), who will give the House many more details of the case.

That asylum seeker, an Iraqi Kurd, was convicted of a series of offences arising from the accident. He had no driving qualifications, he was driving while disqualified and uninsured, and driving without a valid test certificate. Subsequently, he was cautioned by the police for the possession of cannabis and for burglary and theft. He was again convicted of driving while disqualified and uninsured, and, six years after the accident, convicted of the offences of harassment, damage to property and theft, for which he was fined. In 2008, he was also arrested and fined £200 for offences arising from a dispute with the woman he subsequently claimed to have married. I shall call her Mrs Smith, as there are children involved and I have no wish to involve them.

That man’s rights of appeal were completely exhausted, and he was due to be sent back. When the matter went to appeal—at Mr Houston’s behest and mine—to an immigration judge, one of the points that the judge regarded as acting in the man’s favour was the fact that the Home Office had made no effort to deport him between 2002, when his right to remain here was exhausted, and 2006. That was because it would not have been safe to deport Mr Ibrahim to Iraq at that time, for reasons of which everybody was aware. Notwithstanding that, it was decided that the relationship he had formed with Mrs Smith, by whom he had had two children, was sufficient to justify a family life entitlement under article 8.

I have to say—I and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) looked at this—that the evidence of a successful family life was very flimsy indeed. There was total confusion in the court about whether the two had been married and where the marriage had taken place—in Blackburn or Birmingham. Those two places are different and separated by well over 100 miles. There was dispute about the date. On her own admission, Mrs Smith visited this man only once during the nine months in which he was detained as an immigration detainee.

At the behest of my right hon. Friend, the former Home Secretary, there was a further appeal. We had hoped that the courts would use this as a test case to change the law in the direction that the current Home Secretary now rightly seeks. I regret to say that, sadly, that did not happen. As a result, I strongly believe that the only alternative, however imperfect, is to bring forward this motion and try to get a change in the approach of the courts.

I want to apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to the Home Secretary and to the House, because I have to leave shortly before 6 o’clock. I also apologise to the Minister for Immigration, as I shall not be in my place to hear his winding-up speech—unusually, in my case.

In saying all this, I make no criticism of the judiciary who dealt with these cases. One thing I learned from much contact with the senior judiciary is that precisely because the system rightly sees itself as subordinate to Parliament but does its best to interpret Parliament’s will, the courts sometimes get caught by precedent. As senior members of the judiciary sometimes told me in respect of other cases, unless there is an appeal that really hits the spot, which they can then sort out, the only remaining course is sometimes for Parliament to seek to clarify the law.

[Mr Cash]

rose—

[Mr Brazier]

rose—

[Mr Straw]

I give way briefly to the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) first.

[Mr Cash]

I am most grateful. In dealing with the critical question of proportionality, which is what arises in these cases when a balance needs to be struck by the courts either way, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, in the absence of very express provision, it will be impossible to fetter the court’s discretion—even with a steer from the wording—in the determination? The evidence is that individual judges will tend to continue to make their own judgment, whatever Parliament seeks to say.

[Mr Straw]

I am afraid that I do not accept that. A feature of our courts is that they are, quite properly, very conscious of the need to apply the law as they believe Parliament has laid it down. I am confident—I cannot be certain—that, had this proposed approach been passed by Parliament and if necessary enshrined in legislation, the courts would have been able to exercise their judgment on proportionality in a way that showed proper respect to the Houston family and to that poor child rather than to Mr Ibrahim and the woman with whom, in my judgment, he formed a relationship solely in order to evade immigration control and deportation.

[Mr Brazier]

The right hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way. He is also generous-spirited in saying that he makes no criticism of the judge concerned, in the light of that truly extraordinary judgment. Does he accept, however, that if the motion is passed and such cases continue to arise, it will be time for parliamentarians to start to criticise judges?

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[Mr Straw]

I think that it is a matter of style. It is perfectly right and proper for Members of Parliament to dissent from what the courts have said, as I do here, but I do not think it proper for them to insult or abuse members of the judiciary. It is the essence of our democracy that we have a separation of powers, and that can work only if each side respects it.

My final point is one that I put briefly to the Home Secretary when she made a statement, and it concerns the ending of the confidentiality of judgments in cases such as this. There is good reason for asylum cases themselves to be confidential; indeed, we are bound to that by the 1951 Refugee convention. However, I do not believe that when someone has failed in an asylum case and subsequently seeks something very different, it is right or in the public interest for the whole of the judicial determinations—pages of them—to be effectively kept secret.

It was only by accident that I got hold of that judgment. I was asked by the Home Office not to disclose it to Mr Houston. It was an extraordinary circumstance. Confidentiality in such cases means that the argument that the judiciary come up with is not open to the public scrutiny that is essential if our law is to apply itself properly.

Family Migration

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but I think that it would be highly unreasonable for the Government to tell people that they could enter the country but could not have any children. When people first enter the country, they will be able to stay for a limited period, and will then have to undergo a renewal process to establish whether they meet the requirements at all stages before they achieve settlement.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

While, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), I do not recognise the parody of the last Administration’s immigration policy, I none the less welcome the decision about guidance on article 8. Young Amy Houston, aged nine, was killed in my constituency by a hit-and-run failed asylum seeker who subsequently invented a family life. Despite the very best efforts of the Home Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) and me to pursue appeals, the appeal decisions were, I believe, incomprehensible to most people, and that family have been left bereft.

May I ask the Home Secretary two consequential questions? First, if it transpires that the changes in the immigration rules and the resolution in the House do not work as intended, will she introduce primary legislation? Secondly, will she look at the current practice whereby the courts keep their judgments confidential in cases such as that of Mohammed Ibrahim? It was very difficult even for me, as Justice Secretary and the bereaved father’s Member of Parliament, to get hold of the judgment of that immigration court. Whatever the arguments may be for confidentiality on asylum applications, there can, or should, be no confidentiality in cases such as this.

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman has made an extremely important point. As he will have noticed, the current Justice Secretary is in the Chamber and will have heard what he has said. I am sure that we can consider the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the confidentiality of judgments.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the terrible case involving the actions of Mohammed Ibrahim. Obviously, Paul Houston has been campaigning for changes for some time, and we expect the changes that we are introducing to deal with such cases. The House of Lords in 2007, and the Court of Appeal in more recent cases last year and this year, have made clear the need for a statement from Parliament about where the public interest lies. The right hon. Gentleman is right, and I am grateful for his support.

Immigration Queues (UK Airports)

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

There have been one or two specific incidents in which either equipment failure or wider technical failure has contributed to problems. For example, there was a problem at Birmingham airport that was caused by a power surge that knocked out all the electrical equipment across the airport for a time. Accidents such as that will happen. On my right hon. Friend’s point about ever-rising numbers, which might well happen, this is a question of being able to deploy staff flexibly enough so that, when we know that more people are coming in, we can have more staff at the right gates and encourage as many people as possible to use the technology at the e-gates, which enables more people to go through more smoothly. That is the focus of what we are trying to do.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

While no one doubts the Minister’s good intentions, does he not understand that quoting averages at passengers who have been waiting for two or three hours in very difficult conditions only makes Britain’s reputation worse, rather than better? Does he also understand that, among many senior business people—in Turkey, for example, but elsewhere as well—there is a high level of frustration at being put through an unnecessary number of hoops to get a visa in the first place, when they have been coming to this country quite safely for years, then at having to face an insulting environment when they get to Heathrow or Gatwick?

[Damian Green]

I make no apology for the fact that our visa checks are more thorough and more secure than they were when the right hon. Gentleman was Home Secretary in the previous Government. His other point is simply wrong. If he had listened to what I said, he would have heard me quite deliberately quoting the longest queuing times. I am not trying to hide behind averages. I said that the longest queuing time was one and a half hours, and that that was unacceptable and we would seek to do better. I should also say that the use of average times was not invented by this Government; the previous Government did it as well.

UK Border Agency

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Sadly, the chief inspector describes in the report poor communication and poor managerial oversight in the Border Fore. He makes it clear that the information systems within the UKBA and the UK Border Force were not being used properly to enable proper assessments to be made of the proposals that were being made.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

May I take it from what the Home Secretary has said that she agrees with my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary that the number of those refused entry is 100 lower than she claimed, rather than higher? Will she say briefly what she thinks she has learned in the past 18 months about how she manages her Department?

[Mrs May]

I did not say in November that the overall number of refusals was higher. The report does indeed say that the number of refusals was lower, which was a result of the chief inspector’s investigation of what was happening at the border. We reported to Parliament about certain numbers of individuals who were stopped and about numbers of drug seizures.

Abu Qatada

Jack Straw Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I do not believe that millions of people are losing confidence in our legal system. I believe that they are concerned about the ability of the European Court to come to decisions that we do not believe to be in the best interests of the United Kingdom. This decision on Abu Qatada is clearly a case in point. That is why it is important for the Government to pursue the work that we are doing, not only in looking into the possibility of a British Bill of Rights but in trying to make changes to the way in which the European Court operates, so that in future we will be able to deport people who present a danger to us.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady’s peremptory answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) was simply not acceptable for a Home Secretary. My right hon. Friend asked her a very serious question, but she failed to give him any answer to it at all. All of us believe that Abu Qatada should be sent back to Jordan. Many of us, myself included, personally sought to negotiate with the Jordanians—unsuccessfully—to achieve that. If that cannot happen, however, and if the bail conditions lapse at the end of three months, will she accept that, on any analysis, the powers that she has put on to the statute book—these so-called TPIMs—are much weaker than the powers of the control orders that were in place and that worked satisfactorily in the past?

[Mrs May]

I will repeat the point I made in response to the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett)—that our work now is to try to get the assurances necessary to ensure that we could deport Abu Qatada, but also to look at the other available legal options, such as whether or not to refer the case to the Grand Chamber.

The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and many of his right hon. and hon. Friends have raised in the House on a number of occasions the issue of the conditions relating to TPIMs and I have every confidence that they will be raised again in future. I repeat the comments I made in response to the shadow Home Secretary, which I have made previously, that we have put together, from TPIMs and additional funding available to the Security Service and the police, the package that we believe is right and with which the police and the Security Service are content. Let me say to the right hon. Gentleman as I did to the shadow Home Secretary that the bail conditions applied in this case are more stringent than control orders, so even if control orders were in place, it would not be possible to apply the same conditions as have been made available under these bail conditions.

Border Checks Summer 2011

Jack Straw Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I have already made it absolutely clear to the House that the premise of the right hon. Gentleman’s question is wrong. My pilot did not put border security at risk. That is not just my assessment; it is the assessment of UKBA and of security officials.

Mr Clark says that

“those measures have been in place since 2008/09.”

But if he is talking about the warnings index guidance, published in 2007, that guidance makes it clear that any relaxation of warnings index checks should be done in extreme circumstances for health and safety reasons. It does not permit the extent of the relaxations that were allowed. And if he thought that these measures were already allowed, why did he seek ministerial approval for new pilot measures this year? I gave no authorisation for the relaxation of checks beyond what we had allowed under the terms of the pilot. But, given that Mr Clark says that his relaxed measures were allowed since 2008-09, can Ministers from the last Government give the same assurance?

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Could the Home Secretary tell us which ports or airports she has visited, from the instigation of the pilot in July up to now, and with whom she discussed the progress of the pilots on those visits?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman is fully aware that we allowed the pilot to take place, and the evaluation of it to come up to Ministers at the end of the pilot.

Mr Clark says that I implied that he

“relaxed the controls in favour of queue management”.

[Mr Straw]

Do I take it from the Home Secretary’s answer that she visited no ports or airports in that time period?

[Mrs May]

I say to the right hon. Gentleman that I was willing to allow officials to make an evaluation—[Interruption.] I will come on later in my speech to the point about the information that was available to Ministers.

Mr Clark says that I implied that he

“relaxed the controls in favour of queue management”

and that he came under pressure from Ministers to reduce queues, but I have never speculated about his motives, and I have never told officials to reduce queues at the expense of border security. Finally, Mr Clark says that he had been pressing for the trials “since December 2010” and that he was pleased when I agreed to the pilot arrangements. He certainly was pressing for changes to border checks, including the suspension of automatic fingerprint checks of visa nationals, which I rejected. But now, of course, he says that such measures were already available to him, and have been since 2008-09. I stand by every word I told the House on Monday and yesterday and again today.

I now want to turn to the questions raised by the shadow Home Secretary. She said repeatedly that I had not yet answered them—

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[Mr Clappison]

Yes.

Coming back to this motion, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into this debate. I am afraid that she and her party have failed to produce a single fact or any evidence in support of the motion. They have not even bothered to wait for the evidence of the Home Affairs Committee or for any of the three inquiries that the Home Secretary has rightly put in place, including the one by John Vine, who is the chief inspector and an appointee of the previous Government.

In trying to throw the kitchen sink into the motion, the right hon. Lady even mentioned the 100,000 legacy figure. She asked who was responsible for how the 100,000 people under the legacy exercise have been dealt with. She need not have looked much further than the person sitting next to her—the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne)—because the former Immigration Minister was partly responsible for the legacy exercise. The question she really needs to ask is how she thinks the 500,000 cases arose before 2006, which had to be dealt with in the legacy exercise. Asylum cases had not been properly dealt with. Some of the people involved had waited for many years and some had been refused permission to remain in the country. Now, however, the right hon. Lady is trying to blame the Government for that. She made some comment about 2006 being a starting point, but who had been in power before 2006? She need look no further this time than the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), who has been in his place for this debate. He was the Home Secretary who put the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 in place. Against that background, how did we reach a position whereby 500,000 people’s cases were lingering, mouldering, waiting to be dealt with and had to be the subject of a legacy exercise in 2006?

[Mr Straw]

rose—

[Mr Clappison]

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will speak in this debate, so I will get a chance to intervene on him. He can explain how each of two previous asylum exercises came to admit more and more people irregularly.

[Mr Straw]

rose—

[Mr Clappison]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman if he will tell me what a success that was.

[Mr Straw]

As was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), the problems involving asylum backlogs date back until at least the early 1990s, when the Berlin wall came down. I do not think that we are assisted by the trading of histories—what matters is today—but if the hon. Gentleman wants to do that, let me add that a computer system introduced by Lord Howard, which we were promised would become operational in November 1998, failed to operate at all. That was the mother and father of the backlog then, and it still is.

[Mr Clappison]

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will allow me an equally long intervention when he makes his own speech.

I happened to be a member of a Committee that the right hon. Gentleman addressed, as Home Secretary, in 1999. I will stand corrected if I am wrong, but I recall that he said, “There is no greater challenge to the Labour Government than to put in place an asylum system which works.” We can see what happened after that.

The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford overlooked another problem that occurred in 2006: the terrible problem of prisoners who were not deported. A thousand prisoners were not even considered for deportation. It was not just a question of people being allowed into the country; people were allowed into the country, committed offences, and then were not considered for deportation. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on having established a system which now ensures that criminals who commit offences are considered for deportation; and, as will be acknowledged by the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), his Committee’s report congratulated her on that as well.

I shall wait for the evidence and the facts to be produced. What I am clear about, however, is that the present Government have a policy intention of reducing migration to proper levels, of establishing a proper system enabling the right migrants to be chosen to come to this country, and of not allowing the unrestricted immigration that we have seen in the past. Furthermore, they are tackling the long-standing problems of asylum, and are introducing systems to bring about the deportation of foreign prisoners that is so important to my constituents.

I believe that the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford is a person of high intellect and high ability who puts the case as well as she can, and she did that today. I am afraid, however, that she completely failed to establish any facts or evidence in support of the motion. What she did demonstrate beyond peradventure was that, however great her intellect—and it is great—she has an even greater brass neck, in view of the record of the last Labour Government.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) has just told the House that he is ready to wait for the evidence and the results of the inquiry before reaching conclusions, and I think he is right to do so. It is a great shame that the Secretary of State jumped to conclusions impetuously, without any proper evidence and without allowing others to respond.

At the heart of this debate are the issues of the conduct of the Home Secretary and the level of ministerial responsibility, in terms of both competence in running a Department and moral responsibility for what happens in that Department.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

There is a long-established principle that Ministers take responsibility for what goes on in their Departments, and to be fair, the Home Secretary confirmed that principle earlier in the week. Would my right hon. Friend care to speculate on what she means by taking responsibility for her Department?

[Mr Straw]

As I shall explain, the issue is not whether a Minister mouths the words, but whether, in practice, that Minister acts in a way that demonstrates his or her responsibility for what happens in his or her Department.

The truth about the Home Office—which is the subject of all kinds of dark jokes, particularly when new Home Secretaries enter it—is that things are more likely to go wrong there than in any other Department. That is not because its staff are of less high quality than other staff; far from it. Overwhelmingly, the staff in all parts of the Home Office who served me during the four years for which I was Home Secretary showed the highest possible skill, dedication and commitment. They possessed the added attribute that they were dealing with people—such as prisoners, criminals and illegal immigrants—with whom most of us would not wish to deal day by day or week by week.

The fact that the Home Office is so often in the limelight for the wrong reasons, because there is a “fiasco” or “crisis”, is due to the nature of its business. Other Departments generally work with the grain of the people with whom they deal. There are two obvious examples. In schools, parents and pupils want, roughly speaking, what teachers and the Secretary of State want, which is better education. When it comes to health, patients and their relatives want the same as nurses, doctors and the Secretary of State, which is improved health care. The same does not apply in the Home Office, which is at the sharp end of the operation of the state. However much we may dress it up, the business of the Home Office is actually about enforcing the state’s monopoly over the use of force, and its monopoly over the deprivation of other people’s liberties. It is a hard, tough job, both for the person at the top and for those all the way down.

The other aspect that lies behind one of the core arguments in the debate is that, because the Home Office’s business is about the use of force, the deprivation of liberty and the refusal of rights, junior, young and quite inexperienced staff must often be accorded a very high level of discretion—discretion to arrest people, to allow them in, to lock them up, and so on—which is not accorded to equivalent people elsewhere. The whole system will seize up unless those lower down believe that those at the top are worthy of their confidence, and are ready to take responsibility when things go wrong.

I am not dewy-eyed about what can go wrong in a very large Department—of course not—and no Secretary of State is responsible for locking every cell door or checking every border. I recall occasions when, after a full and careful inquiry, one or two people had to be invited to pursue their careers elsewhere. That is inevitable. However, I believe that it must be done in a way that is judicious and judicial. Secretaries of State must ensure that they take the overwhelming majority of their staff with them. What they should not do—I am sorry that the Home Secretary has embarked on this—is adopt what appears to me, whatever the right hon. Lady’s personal motives, to be both a vindictive and a punitive approach of hanging someone out to dry because it seemed to her that that would be a way of saving her career.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I think that the House would take the right hon. Gentleman slightly more seriously were it not for the case of, say, Mr Steve Moxon, who in 2004 revealed the evident failings of the previous Administration on immigration, particularly in relation to one-legged Romanian and Bulgarian roofers. For his pains he was hounded out of office, as indeed was the then Member of Parliament for Stretford and Urmston, the right hon. Beverley Hughes.

[Mr Straw]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman was not suggesting for a second that any illegal immigrant painted my house. If that is what he was suggesting, he should withdraw the suggestion immediately.

[Mr Jackson]

I am happy to clarify what I said. There is evidently a double standard in what the right hon. Gentleman says. He talks of keeping the respect and trust of people who work in the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice, but those who have revealed the failings of the last Administration on immigration have been hounded out of their jobs.

[Mr Straw]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am a little concerned about the length of that intervention. I am also concerned about what the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) was trying to allude to when he mentioned double standards.

[Mr Straw]

I am afraid that I find the hon. Gentleman’s point, at best, completely incomprehensible.

[Mr Blunkett]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Straw]

Let me return, if I may, to the issue of the Home Secretary’s responsibility. As I was saying, it is the nature of the business, not the nature of the staff, that makes Home Secretaries so vulnerable to things going wrong. I find myself comparing the behaviour of the present Home Secretary with that of Sir Paddy Mayhew, now Lord Mayhew, when he was Northern Ireland Secretary. Some of us were in the House at the time.

On 2 January 1995, the Northern Ireland equivalent of the House of Commons suffered a serious fire and was almost burnt to the ground. Sir Patrick Mayhew, as he then was, set up an inquiry. He gave the results to the House on 19 April, and I remember sitting there admiring the way in which a Secretary of State had taken responsibility for a disaster on the chin. He described what had happened. He pointed out that there had been no fire drills for five years, and that the fire hydrants had suffered from a particular defect: an “absence of water”. He said that new instructions had been issued and disciplinary action had been taken against the staff, but that was after a full inquiry—not before those staff had had a chance to explain themselves—and the staff were not named. It could have been a catastrophe for that Secretary of State because he was, indeed, responsible, but because he set the tone for the inquiry and followed proper procedures, he left the Chamber with his reputation enhanced, not diminished.

Among all who have held the post of Home Secretary there is, regardless of party divide, some camaraderie and understanding about the predicaments one can face. My concern about the current Home Secretary is that she will end this episode with her reputation diminished. I had dealings with Mr Brodie Clark, and I found him to be a very good official. It may be the case that he has done all the things said of him, but, like anyone in such circumstances, he deserves a proper inquiry—he deserves a proper hearing. Hanging him and the other officials out to dry without their having any opportunity to respond or there being any proper process, thereby condemning him before there has been a trial, not only damages his rights, but greatly demeans the reputation of the current holder of the great office of state of Home Secretary.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I had expected Opposition Members to take a humility pill before today’s debate, but they have clearly left their prescriptions at home. Labour has admitted that it presided over a Government Department that was not fit for purpose. Members on both sides of the House will be personally aware of the backlog of 450,000 asylum cases from the impact that has had on many of our constituents over many years. When the spokesman for the official Opposition opened the debate, she admitted that border checks were not strong enough in 2006—although I cannot recall her admitting that at the time. I am sure she can also confirm that in 2004, when there were no controls at all at Heathrow, border checks were also certainly not strong enough. I wonder whether she has attempted to calculate how many people passed through the Heathrow borders in 2004.

[Mr Straw]

On the issue of humility, would the right hon. Gentleman like to confirm that the Liberal Democrat party opposed each and every measure introduced by the previous Government starting from, and including, the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, which was designed to strengthen border controls, and which did precisely that?

[Tom Brake]

If we look at—[Interruption.] If we look at the catalogue of disasters under the last Labour Government—[Interruption.] The catalogue—[Interruption.]

UK Border Force

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

No one is asking the Home Secretary to take lectures. What she is being asked to do is take responsibility for the shambles over which she is presiding, 18 months into the Government’s term of office. Will she now answer the question posed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)? How on earth did it come about that neither her immigration Minister nor she spotted that—as she claims—her instructions were not being followed? Does she never talk to immigration officers, or go to a port or an airport?

[Mrs May]

I do indeed go to airports and I do indeed talk to immigration officers, and I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I find my discussions with immigration officers very fruitful because of the ideas they advance about better measures that we could take to improve security at our borders and reduce immigration, which is, of course, what the Government intend to do. Last week, during a period when the pilot was due to be operating, the chief inspector spoke to the chief executive of UKBA to express his concerns. As a result, conversations were held with the head of the UK border force, which led to the action that is now being taken.

Metropolitan Police Service

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I have asked the IPCC to undertake a number of reports. It will report to me by the end of the summer on the report I asked it to undertake last week into allegations it has received about corruption in the police force previously and any lessons that need to be learned in relation to that. It will, of course, pursue investigations against any individual officers who have been named. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that it is right and important that that is done properly and fully. I understand the point he is making, but I am sure that none of us would want the results of those inquiries to be in any way jeopardised by a desire to do them speedily rather than fully and properly.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

May I underline the comments that have been made about the reputation of Sir Paul Stephenson, who was a very fine chief constable of Lancashire police before he moved on to be deputy commissioner and then Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, which he pursued with similar very high standards? Will the Home Secretary explain the point about conflict of interest? Was it not entirely proper and consistent with Sir Paul’s level of integrity that, unusually, he decided that he could not disclose information to the Home Secretary because of what he perceived to be a conflict of interest at the heart of government? Why is she trying to shuffle off responsibility for this when it is at that point that the conflict exists?

[Mrs May]

As I said earlier, I believe that the police should be able to investigate every allegation and to chase evidence as far as it takes them without fear or favour. When a conflict of interest arises—if the Metropolitan police feel there is a conflict of interest—that should be made transparent and that is why I believe I should have been told earlier. However, I say to the right hon. Gentleman that the Metropolitan police did not make the appointment of Neil Wallis known to previous Home Secretaries—notably previous Labour Home Secretaries—either.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Jack Straw Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I will not expect to recall Parliament every time a recess is called. We are talking about exceptional circumstances and I hope that Members will recognise that in exceptional circumstances it might be necessary to recall Parliament to put these powers in place.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

My question follows that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson). I had to propose a recall of Parliament, to which the Prime Minister and the Speaker agreed, to introduce emergency legislation following the Omagh bombing. The bombing took place on 15 August 1998, but with the very best will in the world we were not able to get a recall for almost three weeks, so Parliament was not recalled until 3 September, as the right hon. Lady might remember. That was a three-week period. If the prosecutors have a suspect whom they wish to continue to question, how in practice will the Home Secretary be able to shorten that time? The right hon. Lady shakes her head. I promise her that we were seeking the shortest possible time, and it is very complicated. How far has she thought about that?

[Mrs May]

I understand the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making about his experience in relation to the Omagh bombing. I believe that it is possible to shorten that period to ensure that we can recall Parliament in such exceptional circumstances if that is needed. It would be wrong for hon. Members to expect that the only circumstances in which that would be required would be towards the end of a 14-day period of pre-charge detention. The period that would be available for the recall and for the new measures to be put through might be a little longer than the right hon. Gentleman is considering.

I want to move on to stop and search, which is the other aspect of counter-terrorism legislation that we will deal with in the Bill. As well as scaling back the excessive counter-terrorism legislation of the past, we need to stop the misuse of these laws. The extensive and disproportionate use of stop-and-search powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is one example of that misuse. It has eroded public trust and dented public confidence. But the evidence, particularly in Northern Ireland, has demonstrated that when there is a credible threat of an imminent terrorist attack, the absence of such powers might create a gap in the ability of the police to protect the public.

The Bill therefore repeals section 44 and replaces it with a tightly defined power which would allow a senior police officer to make a targeted authorisation of much more limited scope and duration for no-suspicion stop-and-search powers. These would be authorised to prevent a terrorist attack only when there is a specific threat. The new power to search a person or vehicle would be subject to a number of additional safeguards, including a requirement that a senior police officer should reasonably suspect that an act of terrorism would take place and that the use of these powers was necessary to prevent the act of terrorism. The duration of any authorisation must now be no longer and no greater than is necessary to prevent the act of terrorism.

The purposes for which an officer may search a person or vehicle will be limited to looking for evidence that the individual is a terrorist or that a vehicle is being used for the purposes of terrorism. The Secretary of State would have the option of amending the authorisation, rather than only accepting or refusing it, as previously. Finally, the Secretary of State will be required to prepare a code of practice containing guidance on the use of the powers. These changes will provide the police with the powers that they need to deal with terrorist threats, while also ensuring that the public are not needlessly stopped and searched. The measures will also prevent the misuse of stop-and-search powers against photographers, which I know was a significant concern with the previous regime.

As recommended by the counter-terrorism powers review, I have considered whether the police need these revised powers more quickly than the Bill would allow. Given the current threat environment, I have concluded that they do. The most appropriate way of meeting the legal and operational requirements is to make an urgent remedial order under section 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 to make immediate changes to the legislation. I will be doing this shortly. This is only an interim solution. The proposed new powers will remain in the Bill to ensure full scrutiny of the provisions.

Another important area where we will roll back the state’s power to common-sense levels is in the vetting and barring and criminal records regimes. The previous Government created the vetting and barring scheme with reasonable intentions, but, as with much that they did, their implementation was disproportionate and over-reliant on the state. There is no doubt that a small minority pose a risk to vulnerable people, including children, but requiring more than 9 million people to register and be monitored is not an appropriate response. We should be encouraging volunteers, not treating them like criminals.

The Bill will therefore introduce a new regime, whereby employers will be given a much more central role in ensuring safe recruitment practices, supported by a proportionate central barring scheme. We will retain the sensible features of the vetting and barring scheme, but will not require registration or monitoring, which means that there will no longer be an intrusive state-run database containing the details of 9.3 million people. The scheme will cover only those who have regular or close contact with vulnerable groups. This will create a more convenient and proportionate system for both employers and voluntary organisations and the people seeking to work or volunteer with children or vulnerable adults.

On the criminal records regime specifically, the Bill will enable criminal records disclosures to become portable, through a system which allows for continuous updating. This would enable an employer to establish whether new information had been recorded since the certificate was issued. It will also remove the provision requiring a copy of a certificate to be sent directly to an employer. This will allow an applicant legitimately to dispute the information released on the certificate, without this information already having been seen by the employer.

To administer the new scheme, the Criminal Records Bureau and the Independent Safeguarding Authority will be merged into a single, new organisation. These changes will ensure the continued protection of vulnerable people and children, while at the same time allowing those who want to volunteer to do so without fear or suspicion. It will end the unnecessary state scrutiny of law-abiding people.

As well as dealing with recent illiberal laws, today’s Bill rights historic wrongs. Consensual sex between men over the age of consent was decriminalised in 1967, yet more than 40 years on, gay men can still be penalised and discriminated against because of convictions for conduct which is now perfectly lawful. It is right that we should change the law and wipe the slate clean. The Bill establishes a scheme whereby an individual with a conviction that would today not be considered an offence would be able to apply to the Home Office to have the conviction and caution disregarded. If an application were approved, details of the conviction or caution would be removed from police records and the individual would be able legally to conceal their previous conviction in any circumstances. It would also no longer appear on a criminal record disclosure.

Greater transparency is at the heart of our commitment to open up government to greater scrutiny and to allow public authorities to be held to account, so the Bill makes a number of changes to the Freedom of Information Act to extend its provisions. We will consult the House authorities on these provisions before the Committee stage to ensure that parliamentary copyright is properly safeguarded. The Bill also makes changes to the Freedom of Information Act and to the Data Protection Act to enhance the independence of the Information Commissioner.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh). This is the first time that I have ever heard him endorse anything Liberal Democrat.

I share the hon. Gentleman’s opinion of the Bill, which he described as pretty unimpressive. The content of the Bill does not remotely justify its extraordinary and wholly inaccurate title. We would expect a debate on a Bill to protect our freedoms to include a far more wide-ranging discussion by the Home Secretary of the nature of freedoms in this country and how they should be properly balanced. We would also see a description of such essential freedoms in the Bill. However, the Bill, parts of which are worthy and others downright dangerous, is no more than a standard criminal justice amendment Bill.

[Mr Leigh]

indicated assent.

[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.

[Tom Brake]

I do not think that any Government Member is saying that the previous Government achieved nothing in relation to civil liberties. However, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that on the other side of the balance, in terms of what the Government did, were the fiasco over 90 days’ detention, control orders, blanket stop-and-search powers and some very draconian measures that went to the heart of threatening our civil liberties?

[Mr Straw]

I will deal with each of those measures in turn, and then come to the contents of the Bill. I will run through them in the order they appear in my notes. On surveillance measures, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 was introduced, again by me, to do what it says in the title—to regulate investigatory powers. My predecessor, now Lord Howard, had started that regulation. Before 1996, there was no regulation of those powers, and the most extraordinary situation obtained inside the police. They suited themselves whether to put microphones in walls. They had guidelines from the Association of Chief Police Officers, but there was no statutory supervision or proper regulation, and no account was taken of the equipment used. That was improved, to some extent, by my predecessor, and then comprehensively by RIPA. However, I accept that the provisions in RIPA have been used by local authorities, in respect of minor offences, in a way that was never intended, so I support the change proposed in the Bill.

I also support the change on wheel-clamping. I will have to look at some of the detail, but like my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary I strongly celebrate the campaign by my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Ms Winterton), who has been promoted partly because of this and has now had to take Trappist vows as Opposition Chief Whip. I also strongly support a campaign that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) began on the elimination of all convictions involving consensual relations with gay men.

The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) asked me about counter-terrorism powers. Although we did not get everything right, the introduction of those powers needs to be seen in context. The Terrorism Act 2000 was approved by the House—I cannot remember where the Liberal Democrats were, but I remember that the Conservatives supported it. However, section 44 was intended to be used in a much narrower way than has been the case, so I have no objection to its effective redefinition in the Bill.

We got it wrong on 90 days—I am perfectly happy to say that—but it must be seen in the context of what happened on 11 September 2001. People were terrified, and the first responsibility of any Government is to secure the most fundamental liberty—the right to life. Of course, we still needed to have a balance, and we sought one, but we did not quite get it right. I am perfectly happy to say that. I simply say to the hon. Gentleman, however, that although the prescription in the Bill of 14 days is fine as a standard, the contortions in the Bill and in draft legislation that would provide for a reserve power of 28 days will prove impractical. The reserve power, which we all agree ought to be there, has to be used in circumstances in which it is virtually impossible for the Home Secretary to disclose the details. The full-scale parliamentary legislative process that would follow a recall of Parliament—you can bet your life that that is how it would happen, because that is how terrorists operate—would be the most extraordinary and mocking ever seen: the Home Secretary would have to come to the House and say, “I want this legislation to double the period of maximum detention, but I can’t tell you why.” It would be far better, in those circumstances, to say, “Here is a power for the Secretary of State for which he or she will be accountable in due time.” Given that he or she is the only individual in possession of all the information that should trigger this power, the responsibility for triggering it should rest with the Secretary of State by way of a special order.

[Mr Cash]

Will the right hon. Gentleman, to whom I am listening carefully, seek, as a former Home Secretary, to answer the question I put to the shadow Home Secretary regarding habeas corpus? I also asked Charles Clarke, another former Home Secretary, whether habeas corpus would survive these provisions. I never got a satisfactory answer. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that these provisions do affect habeas corpus, but that, as I insist in my Bill, which comes out tomorrow, habeas corpus is absolute and must apply in all terrorism cases?

[Mr Straw]

I do not want to get drawn too far down this road, but the hon. Gentleman will know that until the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and the recommendations of the royal commission that preceded it, there was no statutory regulation of the length of time for which, or the circumstances in which, the police could hold a suspect. It is extraordinary, if we think about it. There were judges’ rules, which were non-statutory, and the only effective check on an arbitrary use of power—apart from practice—was habeas corpus. If somebody was locked up for too long, his solicitor or friends would threaten a writ of habeas corpus. That was how it worked, and I would refer those who think that those were halcyon days for criminal justice to the 2010 Judicial Studies Board lecture in which the current Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, reflected on his time as a junior at the Bar and on how that non-statutory system of regulation led—as I saw when I was a young barrister in the 1970s—to fitting up, to words being put into criminals’ mouths and sometimes to very substantial and totally unacceptable physical pressure and violence against suspects. Of course, one consequence was that confession statements were often successfully challenged. Habeas corpus is one part of the law, but where there is more recent statute, the courts will go to that first.

Let me turn now to other matters in the Bill about which I have some serious reservations. As the Member of Parliament for Blackburn, I have had many representations about closed circuit television. I do not know whether my experience is any different from that of anyone else in the Chamber, but all the representations I have received about closed circuit television have been requests from constituents to introduce more of it. In the whole of my 32 years in this House, I have never had a single representation seeking the removal of CCTV monitors. Not one. The demand is there because it makes people feel safe, and I bet that this experience is shared across the Chamber. I cannot remember an occasion as Home Secretary when I received any representations suggesting that the existing system, which we should bear in mind is subject to control under data protection and other measures, was unsatisfactory.

[Steve Baker]

Just on a point of information—as the right hon. Gentleman invites it—during the election campaign I received at least one request to reduce the amount of CCTV.

[Mr Straw]

I am grateful for that intervention, which makes my point, because that one representation is balanced by the large number that we receive the other way. I just wonder whether the Government are setting up significant and costly bureaucracy to solve a problem that does not exist.

On criminal record certificates, let me say this. I have been a governor of Blackburn college—a further and higher education college—for the last 20 years. Following the post-Soham measures, each member of the governing body had to fill in a lengthy form and produce their passport, as part of the application process for an enhanced CRB certificate, a process that I regarded as frankly rather tedious. I am pleased to say that it confirmed what I had already told the clerk to the governors, which was that I had no convictions since, as far as I knew, nothing adverse had been recorded by the police. At first blush I thought, “This is going a bit over the top.” I certainly accept that there ought to be a lighter regime for the generality of volunteers, but I would just offer this salutary point to the House.

Just before we were asked to fill in those CRB checks, there was an apparently entirely respectable man on the governing body who, to shorten the story, was convicted of very serious sexual offences against someone who was vulnerable—albeit an adult, and not at the college—and he went to prison. I cannot be certain about this, because I do not have access to the information, but I know enough about that man to know that there was information that could not have led to an earlier arrest but which was on the police database and would almost certainly have been included in a CRB check. I happen to believe that although it was tedious for me and everybody else on the governing body to apply for a CRB check, the balance in terms of public safety—and particularly the safety of young people and children—favours having such checks.

I just think—I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) on the Front Bench believes this too—that this issue has to be examined with the greatest care. We forget too quickly the context in which the measures in question were put in place. The Soham murders were awful. Huntley, like many serious sexual offenders, was brilliant at deception. Indeed, there are no better deceivers—of themselves as well as everybody else—than serious sexually predatory men such as Huntley. If it means a bit more bureaucracy, but also that our children and grandchildren do not become the next victims, we should err on the side of safety.

Finally, let me come to DNA and the taking of other biometric data, including fingerprints. The hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), who is no longer in his place, asked about the 1 million “innocent” people on the database. That prompts the question whether people who are “innocent” actually mind having their DNA on the database. Again, I do not believe that my constituents are significantly different in character or profile from those elsewhere, but plenty have had their DNA or fingerprints taken when either the case has not proceeded to charge or they have been acquitted, yet I cannot remember a single case of someone complaining to me about it. On two occasions in my life—this was before DNA was available—I have had my fingerprints taken. The first was at school when there was a burglary and it was necessary to eliminate a group of us as potential perpetrators, and I was happy enough to give my fingerprints.

As an adult, when I was a special adviser there was a criminal investigation into the leak of a limited circulation annexe to some Cabinet documents, and a Commander Habershon, with a sergeant who looked like Oddjob out of “Goldfinger”—I should tell the House this was before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—came to interview me. I was invited to give my fingerprints; and, looking at Oddjob, I decided that this was probably an invitation I should accept. I gave my fingerprints, not least in the belief—which turned out to be accurate—that doing so would be a means by which I would be eliminated from the police inquiries. They asked me, “What should we do if you are eliminated?”, and I said, “I really don’t mind if you hang on to these.”

As it happens, I have not given my DNA, unlike my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), but I would be perfectly happy to do so. Most people believe—I know that some Conservative Members also take this view—that that is sensible for two reasons. One is that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford said from the Front Bench, doing so helps to protect the innocent. Since the introduction of DNA, not only have more guilty people been convicted of serious crimes, but a number of serious miscarriages of justice have at long been last ended, resulting in justice for the innocent person who had ended up in prison.

I would also remind the House why I introduced the change that meant that once there had been an arrest or charge, the samples should be retained indefinitely. There were two cases in 2000—one was called Weir, the other was called R v. B—one of which involved a murder, the other involving a rape. In both cases DNA samples had been taken in respect of offences for which the defendants had been subsequently acquitted, but the courts held that that DNA evidence could not be used to convict them later. In the case of R v. B, there was a rape—an awful rape—in 1997 of an elderly person where DNA swabs were subsequently taken from the victim. In 1998, this man B was arrested and charged with an unrelated burglary and his DNA was taken. He was subsequently acquitted of the burglary; meanwhile, the forensic examination of the DNA taken from the rape victim was proceeding. After that acquittal, that DNA and B’s DNA were matched and he was charged with rape.

The case went to trial, and the trial judge took a submission from the defence that the critical evidence—in fact, the only evidence; but as the trial judge himself said, it was compelling evidence—of the defendant’s guilt, namely the DNA, could not be adduced in evidence because it should have been destroyed.

The matter went to the Court of Appeal, which said that, on a construction of the Act, that was correct. I do not criticise the senior judiciary for that decision, because they have a job to do, and it is to construe the law, not to invent it. We should not criticise them in any circumstances. It was quite inappropriate for the Prime Minister to criticise the judiciary recently. Any decision that they make, including those made by the Supreme Court, can be overturned by this House. It is different in respect of the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, but I shall not tread that particular path just now.

As a result of the Weir case and the R v. B case, someone who was unquestionably guilty of murder and a guilty rapist were found not guilty because of the inadmissibility of the evidence. They were both allowed to go free and, my guess is, to commit further crimes. I then introduced changes in what became the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough then amended the legislation further.

I mention those cases to remind the Home Secretary that, in talking about freedoms, we must strike a balance between the important rights of defendants charged with crimes—which have been strengthened quite profoundly, not least by the Human Rights Act 1998—and the rights of victims and the public. The Law Lords said in their judgment, when they reluctantly had to endorse part of the Court of Appeal’s decision, that there had to be a triangulation—their word, not mine—to balance the three sets of rights.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford spoke of the risks that the Home Secretary is taking by introducing these measures. It is a truth about being Home Secretary that something will go wrong, and that when one thing goes wrong, something else normally does as well. Indeed, when I was Home Secretary, there was one week in which I had to come to the House to make an emergency statement each day. That was exceeded only by the late Lord Whitelaw, who had to make two statements on one day about things that had gone wrong—sometimes very badly wrong.

It is possible that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) will turn out to be the luckiest Home Secretary since 1782, when the post was created, and I wish her well. I do not think that she will be, however. She is the person proposing these dangerous measures that will put freedoms at risk for the vast majority of the British public, and she needs to have a care both for the British public and for her own future. In her speech, she denied that these changes would undermine the detection of crime or lead to fewer guilty criminals being convicted. She said that she would go on to explain how and why she was able to make that statement, but I noticed that the rest of her speech was completely silent on that point. I was not surprised. The changes are bound to lead to some people whom we all know to be guilty and dangerous being allowed to go free.

After the right to life, the next most important right and freedom is the right to security. We were the first Government since the war to preside over a year-by-year reduction in crimes of all kinds, as the Library paper makes clear. There was a 43% reduction, according to the British crime survey. That dramatic reduction made this country safer. I celebrate all the freedoms, including those mentioned by the hon. Member for Gainsborough, but I also celebrate the fact that, although we are a long way from perfection, this country is now safer for people living in their homes, for people out on the streets and for people driving their cars. Those are real freedoms, and some of the changes in the Bill will put them at grave risk.