Protection of Freedoms Bill

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I join the Home Secretary in thanking all hon. Members who have toiled throughout the passage of the Bill, and pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), whom I congratulate on his appointment to the shadow Cabinet, and my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), who, conveniently, has been moved to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport just in time for the Olympics. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), who has done important work particularly on child protection, and my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), who has kept us all in order. I thank, too, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who in the last couple of days have stepped in admirably to steer the debate through its final stages in this House.

There are sensible measures in the Bill that we support, such as removing old convictions for gay sex, removing restrictions on marriage, adding sensible extensions to freedom of information and putting in place tighter restrictions on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and stop-and-search powers. We also welcome the action on rogue wheel clampers, but we would have preferred the Government to go further by taking further action on rogue ticketers. We agree, too, with the principle of moving down to 14 days of pre-charge detention. However, the Home Secretary was unwise not to have made changes as a result of the last debate, in which Members from both sides of the House who served on the Joint Committee that she set up raised concerns that the mechanism that she has put in place to deal with emergencies will be impractical and unworkable. Why did she set up a Committee if she was just going to ignore its expert views?

We have some serious and deep concerns about the Bill, however, which mean that we cannot support it tonight. We agree with making changes to child protection, especially now that Criminal Records Bureau checks can be made portable, but it is vital that as we do so, we make sure this House can reassure parents throughout the country that sensible and strong safeguards are still in place to protect their children.

The Government cannot now do that, as a result of this Bill, because they are creating serious loopholes in child protection. They have been urged to close them not just by our Front-Bench team but by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Action for Children, the Children’s Society, the Government’s own Children’s Commissioner, the Scouts, the Rugby Football Union, UK Athletics and many more sports organisations. The Government have consistently ignored their advice.

I wonder how many Conservative Members realise what they voted for in the Lobby this afternoon. They voted to stop someone who has committed a sexual offence against children being automatically barred from working with them in future. Conservative Members voted today to stand up for the right of convicted child rapists not to be included on a barred list: that is what they voted for. The Bill also means that if someone who has been barred for grooming a child applies for a supervised post working with children, the organiser will not be told that they have been barred.

The Government have chosen to stand up for the privacy of people who have been barred by the experts from working with children, against the concerns of head teachers, sports organisations, children’s charities and, above all, parents who want to know that their children are safe. I say to the Home Secretary very strongly, as a parent, that parents across this country do not want to discover that a voluntary teaching assistant or a supervised sports coach who spends hours with their child has, in fact, been barred by the experts from ever working with children again, but that—thanks to the Home Secretary’s decision to protect that person’s privacy—nobody was told. That is the consequence of her Bill; it is the decision that Government Members have just voted to support.

It is not just on child protection that the Government are getting the balance wrong. The Home Secretary’s decisions on DNA will also make it harder, not easier, for the police to fight crime. She has talked with pride about the 13,000 convicted criminals that she wants to put on the DNA database, but what she fails to point out is that taking retrospective DNA, which we strongly agree with, was made possible only by Labour’s Crime and Security Act 2010, which was passed before the general election and which she opposed. Not only did she oppose the whole Bill then, but she failed to enact those provisions when that should have happened, straight after the general election. She waited for a year to get round to it, and she still has not enacted the provisions in Labour’s Act to take DNA from people who commit crimes abroad.

As for the provisions in this Bill, the Home Secretary is ignoring the evidence. She is ignoring not only the evidence from the police, who estimate that 1,000 fewer crimes will be solved every year as a result of these measures, and the wise words from my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), who tabled amendments, but the evidence that Ministers tried to hide, which was produced by their own Department. It shows that every year crimes will be committed by 23,000 people who would have been on the DNA database under Labour’s plans but will not be on it under her plans. We are talking about 23,000 criminals each year, and these are cases in which she wants to make it harder for the police to bring them to justice. Some 17,000 rape suspects will be taken off the database straight away as a result of these measures.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the hon. and learned Gentleman, but I ask him whether he can give a good reason for removing those 17,000 rape suspects so swiftly from the database, against the advice and the pleas from Rape Crisis.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful for the right hon. Lady’s anticipation of what my intervention might be. What would she say, and what would her party say, to the millions of innocent people who regard it as offensive that their DNA is retained when they have never been convicted of any crime whatsoever? Is that really the policy that the Labour party thinks ought to be pursued in this country?

[Yvette Cooper]

I point out to the hon. and learned Gentleman that that is his policy and that of his party. That is what he has voted for. People will be on the DNA database who have not been convicted of any crime, but his party wants to hold their DNA for three years, based on no evidence whatsoever, whereas we believe that it should be held for six years, based on the evidence, because that is the best way to ensure that we get the balance right between protecting people’s civil liberties and ensuring that we can take the action needed to solve crime. The hon. and learned Gentleman has not given an answer to Rape Crisis and others who are deeply concerned about the impact of these measures on our ability to prevent rapes and to solve rapes in future.

We know that every year there are nearly 5,000 cases in which someone has been arrested on suspicion of rape and the police believe that there is a case to answer and have passed the file to the Crown Prosecution Service, but the CPS has decided—we know that rape cases can be complex—not to charge. In all such cases, the DNA will be wiped straight away under this Government’s proposals, despite the fact that there is considerable evidence, as well as the concerns raised by organisations such as Rape Crisis, that more, not less, needs to be done to tackle the crime of rape and to bring more rapists to justice.

Government Members have their priorities wrong if they think that it is more important to keep people’s DNA for three years rather than six than it is to solve 1,000 more crimes, that it is more important to do that than to have DNA matches for 23,000 more criminals each year, and that it is more important to protect the rights of a rape suspect to keep their DNA code off the database altogether than to take the action that Rape Crisis has called for to make it easier to catch rapists in future.

Finally, on CCTV, which was critical in identifying the culprits in the riots, the Bill adds layers of bureaucracy that make it harder for the police to do their job.

We believe that it is important to protect people’s freedom, but protecting people’s freedom means not just protecting them against unwarranted interference by the police or by the state but protecting them against unwarranted interference, abuse or violence by other people. Freedom means protecting people from crime, too. The measures to which the Home Secretary objected in her speech helped cut crime by 40% and mean that there are now millions fewer victims of crime each year because we brought crime down. Yes, balancing acts and difficult decisions are required, and the freedom of victims of crime as well as the freedom of crime suspects should be considered. Decisions should be based on evidence, and time and again the Government have either ditched or denied the evidence in front of them.

The Home Secretary has made great play of attacking the Human Rights Act 1998, which at its heart includes protection for people’s freedom against oppression or abuse, but we should be clear that it is not the Human Rights Act that is putting privacy for child sex offenders ahead of sensible child protection measures, or putting the privacy of rape suspects above action to prevent rape in future, but this Government. It is not the Human Rights Act that is putting three years of holding DNA above action to solve 1,000 crimes a year, but a Conservative-led Government. Although the Home Secretary is very keen to be tough on the Human Rights Act, it would be rather more effective if she were tougher on crime and made it easier for the police to do their job.

We believe that this is a risky Bill that puts at risk freedom for crime victims, makes it harder for the police to do their job and ignores important evidence about the way in which crimes need to be solved. That is why we cannot support it on Third Reading, and will vote against it tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Redwood]

If overall crime is falling, that is extremely welcome news, although there are disputes about the figures. But it is obvious that the last Government created an enormous number of new offences, without which we lived perfectly well for hundreds of years. We need to review how many criminal offences are on the statute book.

[Stephen Phillips]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we probably did not need the new criminal offence, introduced by the last Government, of impeding an apricot orchard inspector in the course of his duties?

[Mr Redwood]

My hon. and learned Friend has come up with an admirable example that I did not know about; there are many others, but we do not have the time to list them all. I hope that the Home Secretary and her colleagues will review the number of crimes so that we can concentrate on the serious ones—the ones that most people consider to be proper crimes—rather than spending so much time arguing about and enforcing things of rather less significance, for the convenience of some bureaucrats and not others.

I know that others wish to speak, Mr Speaker—

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicola Blackwood]

I take all issues of crime and the victims of crime extremely seriously, and so must this House. I would not distinguish between them in that way.

I move on to the question of a six-year limit versus a three-year limit. The Opposition have decided to lay the accusation that their choice of six years is based on secure evidence, but one of their pieces of so-called statistical evidence was based on an extremely small sample that was carried out by the Jill Dando Institute for Crime Science. Its director later noted, in September 2009, that that research study

“was probably a mistake with hindsight, we should have just said ‘you might as well just stick your finger in the air and think of a number’”.

[Stephen Phillips]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is no magic in six years, as the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) would have us believe? There is no significant or substantial evidence that supports six years; it is a number that has simply been plucked from the air in an opportunistic attempt to attack the Bill.

[Nicola Blackwood]

The decision to go for three years is based on the recommendation of the Home Affairs Committee, which took extensive evidence on the issue. Three years versus six years is merely a matter of judgment. Furthermore, it will be three years plus an extension of two years, to ensure that there would be the option of retaining the DNA for five years. I weigh that against the fact that the Bill will remove the DNA of 1 million innocent people from the database—people who feel that they have been criminalised by the system that was put in place. It was done with the best of intentions, to ensure that victims are protected—that is well understood—but it is important to bring proportion into the system, and that is what the Government’s proposals are designed to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Phillips]

I rise, of course, to lend my support to this welcome Bill and to thank the Government for starting to deal with the plethora of inroads into our civil liberties that were made by the last Labour Administration.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) said that this is a Christmas tree of a Bill. It deals with a number of separate matters or, as he described them, baubles on the tree. It is none the less welcome for the simple reason, of which the House will be aware, that inroads into the fundamental freedoms that this House exists to protect and that we have taken for granted for the entirety of our lives and our history need only be made, in short order, for us subsequently to see further inroads made into those liberties, in a way that none of us in this House ought to welcome.

One has only to consider the point I put to the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) about the retention of the DNA of innocent persons to know that the last Labour Government struck the wrong balance. The proposals in the Bill, in my judgment—and it is a question of judgment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) made clear a few moments ago—strike the right balance.

[Andrew Miller]

The hon. and learned Gentleman is mathematically wrong. It is not a question of judgment, it is a matter of probability, tending towards certainty, because 23,000 people will now be out there with the potential to commit crimes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Phillips]

The hon. Gentleman expresses a view with regard to his judgment, but it is a view—

[Andrew Miller]

It is not judgment, it is a fact.

[Stephen Phillips]

It is an exercise of judgment, and in my judgment and that of the Government whom I support, three years is sufficient to retain DNA. Making inroads into the civil liberties that we have come to expect and respect, and that we wish to have in this country, is not a reason to go beyond three years. The hon. Gentleman debates whether to retain for three or six years, but I ask him and the whole House, where is the magic in the six-year figure? If six years, why not nine? If nine, why not 15? If 15, why not retain the DNA of 11 million people never convicted of a crime for the entirety of their lives and into the future?

[Andrew Miller]

Simply because the curve produced by the self-same Home Office that produced the Bill demonstrates what the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), said: that there is a clear mathematical relationship and in six years we have a way of dealing very neatly with a substantially greater number of potential criminals than the three-year period offers.

[Stephen Phillips]

So there we are, the House has it—it is a curve. Does that not savour of the statistics, initiatives, targets and strategies that we had from the last Government? Is it not about time that hon. Members started exercising judgment with regard to what is important? In my judgment, what is important is that the British people are entitled to have their liberties respected. They were not respected under the last Government, and this coalition Government are beginning to address the inroads that the last Government made into the liberties of the British people.

I am going to draw my remarks to a close—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Well, I am pleased to have some assent from the Opposition Benches. We have a Bill before the House of which we can all be proud, and I urge right hon. and hon. Members on the Opposition Benches who sat idly by while the liberties of the British people were not respected to go through the Aye Lobby tonight and give the Bill the Third Reading it deserves.

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.