DNA and CCTV (Crime Prevention)

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

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

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

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

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

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

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

“a revolutionary tool in detecting crime”.

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

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

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

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

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

I do not think that in this debate any Member is likely to say that they are not in favour of CCTV, but I do want to see where the boundaries of the hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm for these systems stop. The ANPR system in Birmingham was installed in a predominantly Muslim area, with a view to tracking vehicles coming in to and going out of the area. Does the hon. Gentleman support that? Does his enthusiasm go that far?

[Philip Davies]

One purpose of this debate was to flush out the fact that people do support CCTV, even though they are always reluctant to say so, and I am therefore grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying that he now supports it. On his point, surely the solution is to have more CCTV, because if there is more CCTV and more ANPR systems no community can feel that they are being unduly picked on, or picked on to the exclusion of others. If everybody has the systems, nobody can feel that they are treated unfairly. I think that the hon. Gentleman’s argument is, therefore, for more rather than fewer of these systems, and I wholly support him in that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I agree with the right hon. Lady; she is absolutely right.

There is always the risk that, the day after any cut-off point, someone could, for example, go out and commit a murder. In that instance, such a person’s previous DNA would not be available to the police so that they could detect the crime and prevent further murders, because it would have been destroyed in the name of civil liberties. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will consider that carefully before coming up with any reduced time scales for the retention of data, as it is Ministers who will have to live with the consequences of their actions further down the line.

In the fight against crime, effective technology such as DNA and CCTV should be encouraged, not discouraged. Those methods can hugely speed up police detection of crime, which could mean the difference between life and death for someone else. It really is that serious, which is why I am so determined to fight any proposals to restrict the use of those technologies in the name of so-called civil liberties.

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again—he is very generous.

Is his position the same as that argued by his hon. Friend sitting next to him, the hon. Member for Bury North, that the DNA database should be extended to include everyone?

[Philip Davies]

I think I dealt with that in an earlier intervention. If my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North was proposing taking people’s DNA at birth, I would agree. However, that is a battle for further down the line. What I am worried about at the moment is that we are removing from the database a limited number of people’s DNA. We have not yet reached the issue of whether to extend the database—I wish we were and that that was the nature of the debate we are having today.

I am trying to stop the Government from making the stupid mistake of removing people from the DNA database. That is why I am so determined to fight the proposals to restrict the use of such technologies in the name of so-called civil liberties. Organisations such as Liberty are not really arguing for civil liberties but for anarchy, which cannot be right. I am sure that they would prefer it if no one was arrested for anything, but I am afraid that in the real world that is not what we are here to do.

All our liberties are at stake—our liberty to walk down the street safely is at stake. Again quoting the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs, I totally agree with what he said in a speech last week:

“crime can never be too low; our streets can never be too safe and there can never be excuses for inaction.”

Unfortunately, the Government give the impression that they do not believe in CCTV or DNA. They may not go as far as I would, but I hope that this debate will at least give the Minister the opportunity to make it clear to the House and to the police that he supports the use of CCTV, DNA and automatic number plate recognition as essential tools in fighting crime that keep us safe, enhancing our freedoms, not diminishing them.