Steve McCabe
Main Page: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)Department Debates - View all Steve McCabe's debates with the Home Office
(13 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs May
My hon. Friend raises a very important issue, and action is taken in two ways. The Ministry of Justice is now looking at drug-free wings in prisons, so work is being done on that, but in the Home Office we continue, through not just regional police forces but the Serious Organised Crime Agency, to fight the fight against drug dealers and those who import drugs to this country, and that fight continues.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
12. What assessment she has made of the potential effects of her plans for the national DNA database on the number of DNA matches.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)
The Government’s approach is based on putting on the national DNA database more people who are guilty of crimes, rather than those who are innocent. Simply increasing the size of the DNA database does not necessarily result in more detections. We have been informed in the consideration of our plans by past statistics highlighting falls in DNA detections despite the huge increase in the number of profiles retained.
Steve McCabe
That is interesting. What is the Minister’s response to the Association of Chief Police Officers’ lead on those matters, Chief Constable Sims, who says that there will be 1,000 fewer cases solved because of the decisions that the Minister is going to take?
James Brokenshire
The hon. Gentleman may also know that Chief Constable Sims acknowledged that such estimates were
“notoriously difficult to put figures on”.––[Official Report, Protection of Freedoms Public Bill Committee, 22 March 2011; c. 8, Q1.]
The Protection of Freedoms Bill Committee also heard evidence from GeneWatch which pointed in a very different direction. I again point the hon. Gentleman to past circumstances and to statistics highlighting that, despite the huge increase in the number of people that his—the previous—Government put on the DNA database, DNA detections have fallen.