On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday the Chancellor of the Exchequer made a written statement about bank recapitalisation, in which he said:

“I have today arranged for final, signed versions of the agreements to be placed in the Libraries”.—[Official Report, 18 November 2008; Vol. 483, c. 7WS.]

Since yesterday I have been trying to get those final versions, but those that are available are undated and have gaps in them, so that the space after “Amount” has been left blank. They cannot be the final versions, so I wonder whether you could help me to obtain them, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the matter. I will look into it and see that the agreements are delivered to him.

I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 24, to debate a specific and important matter that requires urgent attention, namely,

the funding emergency which is mounting for charities like Naomi House as a result of the continuing banking crisis in Iceland.

Naomi House provides emergency support for terminally ill children living in my constituency and in the constituencies of a great number of right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House. Some six weeks ago, Singer and Friedlander, a British bank that was taken over by an Icelandic bank in 2006, was put into administration by Her Majesty’s Treasury. Naomi House had £5.7 million on deposit with that bank, which amounts to one third of its assets.

When the Government took that action, specific reassurances were given to charities such as Naomi House that special arrangements would be made for them. Indeed, the Leader of the House made it clear on two separate occasions, both here in the House and in the media, that charities such as Naomi House would receive particular support. Yet now it would appear that under the Financial Services Authority regulations, Naomi House may not be eligible for any such special protection and faces the prospect of a protracted fight to recover any of its money at all.

That would have serious consequences for the services that this unique charity provides for very ill children in Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset, West Sussex, Berkshire, Wiltshire and Surrey. There were plans to extend to other areas the outreach service provided in my constituency, but if the money is not recovered, those plans will not come to fruition. That would be devastating for the children involved and their families and for the staff and volunteers, and would be a blow for the people who raise money for this important organisation.

This could take years to resolve—years that many of those children simply do not have. Naomi House was using a bank that was regulated by the British Financial Services Authority and, indeed, that was on a list specifically approved by the Charities Commission. There are very serious questions to be answered, Mr. Speaker, including whether the Prime Minister himself was aware of the impending banking disaster in Iceland as early as March this year. A full debate in the House will certainly help Members get the information and certainty that charities such as Naomi House need at this difficult time, and I hope that you feel that it is right to grant such a debate at this time.

I have listened carefully to what the hon. Member has said. I have to give my decision without stating any reasons. I am afraid that I do not consider that the matter that she has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 24. I cannot therefore submit the application to the House.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for no-fault compensation for personal injury in road traffic accidents where liability cannot be established.

As the House knows, British civil law says that in cases where an accident has taken place, negligence and liability must be established before compensation can be paid. In the vast majority of cases, negligence and liability are established through insurance firms and compensation is awarded to the injured party. Where liability and negligence are contested, the case may go to court and the decision on the levels of compensation will be made by a judge.

Every year, a small number of people are injured in road traffic accidents where liability cannot be established and a defence of automatism, or involuntary action, is used by the defendant. The victim is left injured, with no compensation to ameliorate the situation. It is because of such a case in my constituency that I have been moved to act on this issue and to seek to introduce this Bill.

In 2004, my constituent, Mr. Rajendra Vanker, a research chemist, was seriously injured when he was hit by another car while helping his father to load boxes into his car at the roadside. The driver of the other car had suffered a heart attack prior to the car’s impact on my constituent. Tragically, that driver died later in hospital. My constituent was left unable to walk unaided and in considerable pain. He was unable to return to work, so his career in the chemical industry was ruined. Four years on, he has not received any compensation for the injuries he suffered and he is still receiving medical attention, despite the fact that he played no part in the accident and is an innocent party.

The deceased’s insurers, Halifax Insurance, have refused to pay out any compensation, citing the defence of automatism because the deceased was unconscious at the time of impact and not considered liable for his actions. Halifax Insurance says that, because the deceased cannot be said to be negligent as he was not suffering from cardiovascular disease previously and could not have known that he would suffer a heart attack, it is not liable for any compensation claim for injuries sustained by my constituent, Mr. Vanker.

Where the defence of automatism is being cited by an insurer to avoid paying compensation, the case must ultimately be tested in the courts. Naturally, my constituent sought legal advice and received various experts’ opinions that, even if his case came to court, he was extremely unlikely to succeed. That left my constituent in a difficult position. He is not a wealthy man, particularly since he has not been able to work during the last four years, and he felt unable to take the risk of mounting a court case that he was advised he was unlikely to win.

The Association of British Insurers advises me that cases like this, where liability cannot be established, happen extremely rarely and that insurance companies are often prepared to look sympathetically at such cases and make ex-gratia payments to the injured party. That is not an admission of liability, but it does at least mean that the injured party receives some compensation. However, in my constituent’s case, the deceased’s insurers, Halifax Insurance, have refused to do this. Despite the small numbers of people affected by this legal situation, I feel that it is unfair that anyone injured in an accident where they are not at fault must either pursue such cases to court at their own risk or simply accept that they will not receive any compensation for what is sometimes a life-changing injury.

This issue has been raised periodically in the House. Most recently, my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) made two attempts to change the law with his Motor Accident Injury Compensation Bill, introduced in both 1998 and 1999. That Bill was a little wider than mine, in that it sought to change the way in which compensation entitlement was determined to ensure that payment was made more swiftly, and that everyone injured in an accident, regardless of liability, would be compensated. Despite the excellent intentions of my hon. Friend’s Bill, it made no progress in the House.

In the 1970s, attempts were made to change the law surrounding compensation to ensure that when people had been injured and liability could not be established, they could receive some compensation through their insurance companies. Campaigning on the issue culminated in the formation of the Pearson commission, which reported in 1978 and made some fairly radical proposals. It recommended that the traditional tort law applicable in such cases should be replaced by non-fault insurance and strict liability. Disappointingly, neither the Government of the day nor successive Governments have been receptive to the commission’s recommendations, which have fallen by the wayside. In 1991 the issue of compensation and the workability of a no-fault compensation scheme returned to the agenda when it was examined by the Lord Chancellor’s Department, but the Department’s report concluded that the current system should remain in place.

The principle of no-fault compensation exists all over the world. Perhaps the most well-known scheme is that of New Zealand’s Accident Compensation Corporation, which ensures that anyone injured in an accident—even if he or she was responsible—receives compensation. In return for the scheme, New Zealanders are not allowed to sue for personal injury other than in exceptional circumstances. Similar schemes operate in certain states in America and Australia and, in various different forms, in European countries such as Sweden. The introduction of such a scheme here would be a radical departure from our current civil law, and would have wide-ranging implications. I believe that there would be considerable merit in the Government’s re-examining the issue of no-fault compensation and investigating the workability of introducing a scheme such as New Zealand’s in this country.

I am determined that other people should be protected from experiencing the unfairness of the position in which my constituent finds himself, and my Bill would help to do that. When a driver who causes an accident through negligence has no insurance, or leaves the scene and is untraceable, the Motor Insurers Bureau steps in and provides compensation for the injured party. The MIB is funded by a levy on all insurance underwriters. I believe that a small scheme, possibly administered through the MIB, providing for compensation for injured parties when the defence of automatism is used could be a solution to this problem. The cost of such a fund would be unlikely to impose a great burden on our insurance industry, and my Bill would ensure that the guidelines for administering the fund were strictly defined in order to ensure that insurance companies did not try to get out of their responsibilities in regard to compensation.

I believe that the establishment of a fund to allow compensation to be made available to the very small number of people who are affected by the present situation would go some way towards ameliorating the unfair position in which a tiny minority of people, such as my constituent Mr Rajendra Vanker, find themselves every year, and I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Dr. Brian Iddon, Dr. Desmond Turner, Dr. Ian Gibson, Mr. David Kidney, Mark Lazarowicz and Christopher Fraser.

Road Traffic (Accident Compensation)

Dr. Brian Iddon accordingly presented a Bill to provide for no-fault compensation for personal injury in road traffic accidents where liability cannot be established: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 21 November, and to be printed [Bill 167].

I have to inform the House that privilege is involved in Lords amendments Nos. 2, 82, 113 and 127. If the House agrees to these amendments, I shall ensure that the appropriate entry is made in the Journal.

Before Clause 14

Lords amendment: No. 2.

I beg to move amendment (a) to the Lords amendment.

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment (b) to the Lords amendment and the Government motion to disagree thereto.

The Bill has returned to us from the Lords markedly improved. Public attention has focused on the historic defeat of the proposed extension of pre-charge detention, but there were many other improvements, including on the use of DNA samples. The amendment would improve the Lords amendment by tweaking it to make it more practical. This is key, because it illustrates one of the big failures of Government strategy throughout the passage of the Bill. The Home Secretary evidently believes that the tougher we sound, the more effective we are in fighting terrorism. The Conservatives believe that to fight terrorism successfully, we need precise, proportionate and effective legislation. That was the intention of the Lords amendment, and it is what our amendment seeks to do as well.

Our amendment would require the Secretary of State to draft and lay before Parliament regulations governing the procedures by which people can discover what information is held about them, and in what circumstances a request can be made for any samples that may have been taken during an investigation to be destroyed. We have sought to improve the Lords amendment by ensuring that Ministers will be able to decide which agencies are affected, because we fully accept that there will be covert operations where different rules may need to apply. However, at present the underlying problem in all possible situations is that there is simply no transparency, and it is extremely difficult for completely innocent people to be able to ensure that their details are not kept indefinitely, thereby infringing their privacy but serving no purpose in terms of increasing the security of the country.

It is not just a question of getting information removed; lack of information is also a problem. The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with the case of his party colleague, the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands), who has been trying to get certain details removed. He is totally innocent of any crime, and he has written letters, but not, I think, received replies. Such a lack of information is the main problem.

The right hon. Gentleman is completely right. I agree with him on this matter, and I am, of course, familiar with the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands). I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s indication of support in this area. None of us disputes the value of DNA information in identifying not only criminals but, at least as importantly, terrorists, and it will, of course, continue to play a useful role in identification and bringing criminals or terrorists to justice.

DNA is not only a detective tool; it is a huge deterrent in itself. Because it is such an effective detective tool, it stands in the way of anybody who might be planning offences. I am in the minority, but I think that there is a great case for extending the DNA register.

My right hon. and learned Friend is correct that he is in a minority in holding that position, and I know that that will not disturb him one wit. However, there is indeed a case to be made for, and a debate to be had about, a universal, national DNA database. I would disagree with him on the issue, but the debate would be worth having.

Why do we not include it in this debate?

We could include it in this debate, but you might feel, Mr. Speaker, that that pushed the boundaries of order. I should tell my right hon. and learned Friend that many of us, both in this House and outside, have been pressing for a proper debate on the use of DNA for some years now, but so far the Government have resolutely refused to have it. It is convenient for the House that we can have the debate today.

I am a little concerned about amendment (a), because it would afford a latitude to the Secretary of State that I am not sure is entirely appropriate. It would enable him to pick and choose the agencies that hold the information and include them in regulations. The Secretary of State already has the power to make the regulations, and therefore to exclude matters that might have the sensitivity to which the hon. Gentleman referred. Why does he feel that it is okay to give carte blanche to the Secretary of State simply to decide, if he wishes, that no Government agency is appropriate for such national guidelines? That would be out of kilter with the intention of another place.

The hon. Gentleman may well feel that the amendment, which seeks to improve markedly the rights of the citizen vis-à-vis the Executive, does not go far enough. I am always happy to be persuaded. It was in his power to table an amendment if he felt that mine was in some way inadequate, but he did not do so.

I should tell the hon. Gentleman that his amendment would act against the interests of the citizen in favour of the interests of the state. I am content with the Lords amendment.

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman and I substantively disagree. Obviously, I believe that we need to take the terrorist threat seriously. I imagine that the amendment would mean, if we were talking about a sensible Secretary of State, that there could be exemptions in certain circumstances regarding specific agencies—obviously meaning the security services—that deal daily with potential terrorist threats. I am happy to say that the amendment is designed to ensure that there would be absolutely no weakening of our defence, or the effectiveness of our defences, against terrorism. I cannot believe that that disturbs the hon. Gentleman, but if that is what he is worried about, so be it. We will have to part company.

I am sorry to be sniping from the back, but as I understand it the amendment would not give the House an opportunity to express a view on which Government agencies should be required to provide the information. Disclosure from some agencies may well be undesirable, but we should be in a position to identify whether an agency comes into that category.

I do not quite agree with my right hon. and learned Friend on that, and I cannot believe that he is really worried about sniping from behind.

No, I am not; I said it just in case.

My right hon. and learned Friend is, as ever, courteous, but I do not agree with him because I believe that, as a point of principle, putting details such as the names of agencies in Bills is often a bad idea. Names can be changed, and we would have to return to the House to make further legislation, including, perhaps, in certain circumstances, emergency legislation. One thing that I have learned in the House is that, on the whole, emergency legislation is bad legislation. I am seeking via the amendment to make the legislation as flexible as possible. I share absolutely with my right hon. and learned Friend the desire to bolster the powers of the House against the Executive, but in such circumstances I think that one could rely on the Home Secretary of the day to take a reasonable view on the appropriate use of the powers that the amendment would give to him or her.

The changes are necessary because of the worrying nature of the guidelines under which we operate. They are produced for the police, and go under the spectacularly opaque title “Retention guidelines for nominal records of the police national computer”, which could almost have been designed to stop anyone finding out what the guidelines are for the use of DNA—a rather important term that the document carefully refuses to mention in its title. Frankly, the guidelines are draconian. They state:

“Chief Officers have the discretion to authorise the deletion of any specific data entry on the PNC ‘owned’ by them.”

It is interesting that when a person’s data are entered on to the PNC, they are owned by the police. The guidelines continue:

“They are also responsible for the authorisation of the destruction of DNA and fingerprints associated with that specific entry. It is suggested that this discretion should only be exercised in exceptional cases.”

According to the guidelines, the discretion to destroy the information will rarely be exercised, which in itself is enough to raise eyebrows. The guidelines later state:

“In the first instance applicants should be sent a letter informing them that the samples and associated PNC record are lawfully held and that their request for deletion/destruction is refused”.

Therefore, the standard guideline is, “Just say no, you can’t have your records deleted.” The last paragraph of this part of the guidelines states:

“It is not recommended that any proactive exercise is undertaken to determine potentially exceptional cases”.

The police are therefore being told in their guidelines first that everything must be exceptional, and secondly that their first and standard response should be to say no. Indeed, elsewhere in the guidelines—I shall not detain the House by reading this out—is the standard template letter of refusal, in case the police cannot work out how to write a refusal letter. On top of that, they are instructed not to make any effort to tell people what they can do or what criteria they might have to fulfil to get their records out of the system. That approach is not satisfactory.

Compounding that, an example is given for those who want to know what an “exceptional case” is. It is the only such example in a 236-page document of what might be an exception. I shall quote it in full:

“For example, where a dead body is found in a multi-occupancy dwelling and the cause of death is not immediately obvious. All the occupants are arrested on suspicion of murder pending the outcome of a post mortem. All arrested persons are detained at the local police station and samples taken. It later transpires that the deceased person died of natural causes. No offence therefore exists, and all persons are released from custody.”

That is the only example given in the guidelines of an allowable exception. The House will recognise that that is an absurdity and that the guidelines are clearly not an acceptable way in which to proceed.

Is not the reason the guidelines are so presumptive in favour of keeping such data that the Government mistakenly believe that they get a large advantage when it comes to solving crimes? In June, the Prime Minister made a speech in which he said that 114 murders had been made solvable and that murderers had been taken off the streets because of the breadth of the database. It would be better if we could have more information on that so that we could see the exact truth of the matter, because I believe that that was an over-estimation.

My right hon. Friend makes an important point that the Minister may wish to address. The Prime Minister appeared to be equating DNA matches with successful prosecutions, but the figures that he quoted were for DNA matches. The House will know that that does not equate to successful prosecutions or, therefore, to successful crime-fighting.

It might help the hon. Gentleman if I tell him that the question posed by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) came up this morning when I was giving evidence to the House of Lords Constitution Committee. I undertook to look into the matter and to write to the Committee with the relevant information. I cannot give the House that information now, but it might be helpful for hon. Members to know that, given that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden has given his apologies for having to leave early.

I am grateful to the Minister for giving us that assurance and I am sure that we would all be grateful if he included others when sending out that letter. I am glad that he has been made aware of this issue.

There are ways of improving the situation. Our amendment represents one, but I hope that the Minister will also take seriously the first annual report of the ethics group on the national DNA database—the NDNAD—which was set up by the Government. It makes a large number of recommendations on how to improve the situation, but I will concentrate on just three of them. One states:

“For those members of the public who are believed to be innocent at the time of sampling and voluntarily donate their DNA to help the police with their enquiries, the presumption should shift to an expectation that these samples will be used only for the case under investigation, that the profile will not be loaded onto the NDNAD, and that the samples and all data derived from them will be destroyed when the case has ended.”

I hope that the Government will take that on board. A further recommendation states:

“A clearer, simpler and less cumbersome process needs to be put in place to enable those who wish to appeal against the decision of a Chief Constable to retain their DNA profile on the NDNAD.”

I am sure that anyone who has gone through the guidelines will find that proposal reasonable. A third recommendation that I want to press upon Ministers is:

“Consideration should be given to further public clarification of the role of the NDNAD and reinforcement of the message that it is intended only to be used for criminal intelligence.”

I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) would agree with that. Ministers would do well to take on board those recommendations from the ethics group.

In addition to commending our amendment to the Government, I should also like to commend some of the principles suggested by the pressure group Liberty on how we should balance human rights principles with the necessity for an effective fight against crime and terrorism. As well as advocating the overarching principle of the proportionate retention of DNA, which I strongly support, Liberty suggests that three further principles be taken into account:

“The relevance or probative value of DNA to the type of crime in question.

The potential propensity of the trigger offender to future crime of a relevant nature.

The gravity of both trigger offence and the type of crime feared in the future.”

I hope that the Minister will be able to look at those principles, as well as seriously to consider our amendment, which would help the process of putting DNA evidence on a proper footing, and therefore help in the fight against terrorism in the long term.

I am happy to follow the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). The Opposition have tabled a very sensible amendment, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will deal with it sensibly. This is a very important issue, and those in another place were right to understand the importance of retaining information and of removing it when its retention is unnecessary.

At the end of last year, the Home Affairs Select Committee published an important report entitled “A Surveillance Society?”. I see that the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) and my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South (Margaret Moran) are in their places today. They were co-authors of that report. In it, we spoke firmly in favour of data minimisation. Of course Governments have to have such information, and our security services have to retain it. The police need it, too, in order to catch criminals. The problem is that such data are retained on innocent people. At the moment, the profiles of 4.4 million people are on the DNA database, according to information that I have been given. About 1 million of those profiles relate to children, some of them very young children. Of course, the consent of a parent is required to take and retain such data, but the fact is that that number of profiles is being retained at the moment. There must therefore be an efficient, transparent and easy-to-follow way for innocent people to apply to have their DNA record removed from the database. If they are not part of any criminal proceedings and have done nothing wrong, it is wrong in principle that that information should be retained.

Will the right hon. Gentleman address a further point? I accept, of course, that a person who is innocent at the moment will feel affronted by the fact that their DNA is on the national database. However, that person might subsequently go on to commit a serious offence. I have come across such cases through my own professional experience. Why should we wish to deny the prosecuting authorities such an important detective tool?

I am reluctant to enter into a discussion of this nature with the right hon. and learned Gentleman, because he knows so much more about the criminal justice system than I do. I am sure that he has come across many examples involving this requirement. However, this is the same argument that Home Office Ministers have put forward whenever this point has been raised at Question Time. Either we retain these data for the whole country or we cover only those who are charged with offences. I am against covering the whole country—I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would be against it, too—because it would be an unnecessary burden on the citizen and because of the many cases of the loss of data that have occurred in the past 10 years. If we have a database that contains information on 60 million people, at some stage, bits of it, or perhaps the whole lot, could get lost—through no fault of Ministers, of course. Such a system would encourage loss simply because of the amount of data being held.

That is why I am against such a proposal. It represents a dangerous argument. There is, however, a high number of profiles of ethnic minority people—Afro-Caribbean people in particular—on the database. Some judges have suggested that, because it is unfair that so many young black people are on it, it might as well cover everyone, as a way of being more fair. I do not think that that is the right approach. We should not retain more information because we need to justify an argument.

One of my constituents came to see me recently. He had been out with his friends one evening, and they had gone to a pub. There was a fight outside the pub, and a young girl was being harassed by a man. My constituent intervened to prevent the fight from developing further. The police were called, and everyone was arrested. Everyone’s DNA sample was taken. The police subsequently released my constituent, saying, “Thank goodness he intervened. He prevented the violence against the woman from being exacerbated.” He wrote to the police asking for his DNA sample to be removed from the database, but the reply that he received was, frankly, pathetic. The sample remains on the database.

The shadow Home Secretary, the hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), is known as a have-a-go hero. I can well imagine him removing his shirt and jacket to reveal a big “S” or a big “D” on his vest, and intervening to stop a crime being committed. The police would arrive at the crime scene and take everyone’s DNA. It would be put on the database. How would the hon. and learned Gentleman, clearly an active citizen and an innocent person, apply to have his data removed?

This is a crucial issue, and it is not enough for the Government to advance the arguments that they have advanced in the past—namely, that we have to retain this information because people will, at some stage in their life, commit an offence.

One of the things that has struck me forcefully, as a constituency Member of Parliament, is the apparently arbitrary nature of the decision on whether or not to accede to a request to remove DNA from the database. On the occasions on which I have made representations on behalf of innocent constituents who have had their DNA taken, it appeared that the only possible rationale behind the decision making was whether the matter was likely to cause embarrassment to the police because of the surrounding circumstances. I do not think that that is an adequate basis for making such a decision, and this reinforces the right hon. Gentleman’s point that we need a proper system.

I do not disagree with anything that the hon. and learned Gentleman says. We do need a proper system, and the present system is totally inadequate. At the very least, if we had letters in reply to reasonable requests, providing information to the person who has asked for his or her profile to be removed, I could understand it. As it is, this is the first time that I have heard the guidelines as they were read out by the hon. Member for Ashford. I did not realise that although everyone is told that they have the right to have their DNA removed, it is only in very, very exceptional circumstances that it will be so removed. I am minded to vote for the Opposition’s amendment, unless the Minister gives a clear sign to the House that the Government will radically alter the current guidelines on removal.

While I will not follow my right hon. Friend into the Lobby on this issue, does he agree that it is important that we have consistency as well as transparency? There is a porous border between Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire and crimes are sometimes committed in the former by my constituents, and their DNA is taken there. I have received conflicting advice from those two police authorities about removal, and it is not acceptable that my constituents should be subject to variable responses on removal depending on the interpretation of the guidelines by chief constables.

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I am surprised that she will not be following me into the Division Lobby. Sometimes we have to take a stand on issues of principle.

Hear, hear.

I note the encouragement from the Opposition Whip. However, the Minister may say something wonderful that reassures me. He may say that he will write tomorrow to every chief constable to say that people should always get a response to their requests for removal and that the guidelines will be changed.

This is an important issue. Hon. Members may have seen the film “Minority Report”, in which so much information is gathered by computer—including DNA profiles—that police officers and SWAT teams arrive just before a crime is committed. They lock the person up even before the crime is committed. Goodness knows how that would affect the shadow Home Secretary if he went around the country trying to protect us from crime.

This is a very serious subject, but as soon as I say that the Minister starts talking to a colleague on the Front Bench. It is an important issue—it will not be good enough for the Minister simply to say that we need this information because people might commit crimes in the future. Nor will it be good enough to say that people can apply to the authorities, because such requests are not answered. The hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) is not in his place and I had not intended to raise his case today, but he has been trying to get this information removed for months. Even I have written to the Home Secretary and asked what is happening in that case, but she has not replied. That silence is unacceptable, and we need some clear guidance or assurances. If the Minister cannot supply that, I will vote against the Government on this amendment.

The Liberal Democrats welcome many of the concessions that the Government have made since we last debated this Bill. It is a shame that they could not have made those concessions earlier and prevented the ugly scenes and arm-twisting we saw when the 42-days provision was passed in this Chamber by the narrowest of margins.

On Second Reading, I said that we would fight tooth and nail against illiberal provisions on 42-days’ detention without charge and on abandoning juries in coroners’ courts. I am glad that, with the help of the official Opposition in the Lords, we have been able to see off those proposals and that the amendments passed in the other place on them will be supported on both sides of this House.

Does not the Lords amendment have the great advantage—in so far as I have correctly understood it—that the Secretary of State must subject all Government agencies to the requirements, rather than picking and choosing between them?

I agree, and the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Ashford would introduce an element of subjectivity into what the Secretary of State could do, which we do not want to see introduced. We would prefer the unalloyed Lords amendment.

I am glad and, given what I said earlier, relieved that my hon. Friend is taking that position. The only argument for supporting amendment (a) would be if the Government were to make it clear that they would drop their motion to disagree if that amendment were to be passed. If not, all that amendment (a) would do is water down the amendments made in the other place, which I wholeheartedly support.

My hon. Friend is, as always, a master tactician, and I entirely agree that were the Minister to make it clear that the Government would be prepared to accept the Lords amendment with amendment (a), we would be happy to support that.

One of the effects of the unalloyed Lords amendment would be that terrorist suspects would be entitled to the available information about themselves. There may be circumstances in which that would be extremely regrettable.

In fact, the guidelines make it clear that if the case is still under investigation, that objection will apply, but if the case is no longer under investigation—if the DNA has been found at the scene of the crime but the crime has been cleared up—the DNA will be taken off the database. The hon. Gentleman’s objection is not a real one.

Prompted by my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), I reiterate to the Minister that if he were minded to accept the Lords amendment and the Conservative amendment, we would be happy to support that.

It is completely misconceived to argue that we need the qualification proposed by the Conservatives to deal with a category of people. Categories of people can be dealt with in the regulations as they cover the range of agencies, so the proper concern of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) can be better addressed by retaining the Lords amendment as it is, rather than by modifying it in the way he suggests.

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and it is similar to the point that I started by making—that the Secretary of State is not required to lay down the same guidelines for all Government agencies, but can vary them. At the least, amendment (a) is otiose, but if Ministers were minded to accept it, I would be happy to support it.

The Lords amendment is sensible and moderate, and it helps to clarify the real problem, which is that the Government do not have a policy on acquiring DNA samples for the database. In reality, a sort of clattering train picks up bits and bobs here and there in a completely random manner.

If I were one of the nearly 1 million innocent people on the DNA database, I would rightly want to get my sample off it. I do not think that the Government should be going on fishing expeditions to bang on bits of extraneous information about citizens merely for the sake of it. Frankly, I would be more inclined to support the Government if they were to target the 2 million convicted criminals who were convicted before the database began and who do not have their DNA samples on the database. If the database was genuinely a database of people who had been convicted of a crime, that would seem to me to be a perfectly fair principle on which to proceed. However, we have 1 million innocent people on the database and 2 million who ought to be on the database but who are not because their convictions happened before 2001.

We have not heard any evidence from the Government that the increase in the numbers of people acquired randomly whose samples are on the national database has led to an increase in the number of successful convictions. We have heard a number of wild assertions and I was pleased to hear the Minister say that he would try to come up with information to test them, but despite the huge increase in the size of the database, the number of successful convictions using DNA has hardly altered. We are putting all the extra samples in, which happens at some cost to the ease with which the database can be manipulated and increases the chances of making an error, which could be extremely serious for any individual concerned, yet we are getting no serious increase in the number of successful convictions using DNA.

I believe that the Lords amendment is a first step towards putting our use of the DNA database on to a sensible footing. I hope that the House will support it and I will listen to the Minister’s response to see whether we should support the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Ashford. If the Minister is minded to accept the Lords amendment with those amendments, we will do so, too.

I am rather torn both on the amendment and on the Lords amendment. I hope the House will accept that I approach most criminal justice matters from within the libertarian wing, so I am conscious that some of the views that I will express are not those that I would normally express in this context. I suspect that they are not shared by those on my party’s Front Bench or by most of my hon. Friends. So far as the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) is concerned, I am bound to say that my preference is for the Lords amendment.

It seems to me that the disadvantage of the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend is that it would enable the Government to choose which agencies will be the subject of the procedures envisaged in the Lords amendment. My hon. Friend has a perfectly decent reason to be worried, as his coda to agencies is based on the question of whether possible terrorist suspects will get information that they should not have.

Such a fear is perfectly realistic, but it seems to me that at least two responses can properly be made. First, we could so construct the secondary legislation as to enable the Government to defuse that risk by the contents of the regulations, on which we could take a view. It seems that that would protect the interests about which my hon. Friend is concerned. Secondly, I am very cautious about giving discretionary power to a Secretary of State because, at the end of the day, we need to cling to the principle that once power is given to any official or to the Executive, it is certain to be abused on occasion. Therefore I do not feel comfortable with my hon. Friend’s amendment and am not minded to vote for it if he presses it to a Division.

That takes us to the Lords amendment. Again, I confess to being torn. There are advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps I could identify them and then suggest the proper view. The advantage of the Lords amendment is that it brings consistency—or is capable of bringing consistency—by the publication of the procedures. I think that it is undesirable that varying police forces should have different approaches to the issue of removal and disclosure. I see great merit in it being said that police forces across the country should operate according to a common code. That is the advantage. It is a considerable advantage and I do not want to pretend otherwise.

The disadvantage is that the amendment is a marked move away from the proposition that we should have an ever-expanding database, perhaps moving to a national database. I want to say a word about that, if I might, before I come to a conclusion. I recognise that there are serious disadvantages and arguments to be deployed against a national database, particularly a DNA one.

The advantage of a national database, leaving aside all other issues, is huge. It is not only the most effective single detective weapon currently available to the enforcement agencies but is a huge deterrent in itself. I did a case two or three years ago involving a very bad rape, and the rapist was discovered only because 10 years after the event the police were going through old samples that they then could not profile and now could and they happened to discover the rapist on the database.

If one projects such an idea forward, one appreciates that many potential criminals, such as rapists, will be conscious that they leave DNA samples on the site. That is a huge deterrent. It is not only a detective instrument but a deterrent, especially as the forensic scientists become more skilled in gathering DNA. Low-copy profile DNA, for example, can operate on very small samples, so such profiling is a huge deterrent as well as a detective instrument. I suspect that it is the single most effective measure that we can adopt to decrease crime.

On the other hand, I acknowledge that there are serious civil liberty issues to debate, although I am not persuaded by them. There is no question but that we need to debate them. There are huge costs involved and I have no doubt that there are huge practical difficulties to resolve. I have not come to an absolute conclusion, but we should not shut the door on the debate. The question of whether we should move gradually towards a national database is very important.

The last thing that we are seeking to do is to shut off the debate. Indeed, as my right hon. and learned Friend will appreciate, the purpose of these amendments is to enable a further debate to take place, which is the very thing that we have not been getting. I take his point; there are arguments. Indeed, Lord Justice Scott put forward some persuasive arguments about why there should be a national database that included even people who came into this country as visitors and who should be obliged to provide their DNA at the airport at the point of entry. Such arguments can be made, but there is something extremely unhappy about a situation in which innocent people go on to the database at random and feel a justifiable sense of grievance as a result.

I am not disagreeing with my hon. and learned Friend. The conclusion to which I am going to come is that we can support the Lords amendment. My point at this stage is that the House and the country as a whole should have a serious debate about the desirability and practicality of a national database. I do not pretend that I have come to a wholly concluded view, because I think that the civil rights arguments might be more powerful than I currently deem them to be. I also question whether we can wholly exclude the risk of wrongful convictions based on DNA and I ask what safeguards should be incorporated. There are very important issues to be reflected on, but we should debate seriously the use of the database and I am very uncomfortable with anything that impliedly stands against it.

Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that the very substantial increase in the number of samples on the DNA database has not led to an increase in the number of successful convictions? That tends to weigh quite heavily against some of the points that he was making in favour of a potentially nationwide database.

I think that one needs to look at the statistical arguments a little more closely, as that is surprising and one would expect the number of convictions to rise. The figures do not address the issue of deterrence, although they do question the database’s effectiveness as a detective tool. However, we need to know more about the statistical base before we draw too many conclusions from the hon. Gentleman’s observation.

As for Lords amendment No. 2, I accept that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) is right to say that it would enable a debate to be had, because an ability to lay regulations does trigger debates. Moreover, as I said earlier, it also has the great advantage in that it would bring consistency.

My conclusion, therefore, is that we should not accept the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), unless he persuades me that I am wrong in my interpretation. I believe that we should accept Lords amendment No. 2 because it would provide consistency and trigger a debate. At some due time, and in an appropriate way, this House really must return to the question of whether we should have a proper national database of DNA samples.

I begin by apologising to the Minister for the fact that I was at an event elsewhere in the building and so missed his introductory remarks—

He has not made any yet.

I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that I missed them as well!

That is good, as we will be at no mutual disadvantage. I therefore redirect my apology to the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green).

I want to make two points in addition to those made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) and the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). The first has to do with the disadvantage of the present system and picks up a point made by the hon. Member for Luton, South (Margaret Moran). At the moment, the police are often hugely discredited in the eyes of law-abiding members of the public by the arbitrary way in which samples are collected and the uncertainty of what then happens to them. I shall give an example that comes from the sort of constituency experience shared by many hon. Members.

I have in my constituency a family—professional parents, teenage daughters—who are entirely well respected. The incident that I am about to relate took place within the Metropolitan police area but outside our borough. The daughters were stopped when in a car being driven by someone else, and samples were taken. It appears that the driver had either a previous charge or conviction, but the teenage girls had no previous criminal record.

It took about a year to get a decision from Lewisham’s borough commander—I was eventually told that it would be his decision—that the girls’ samples would be removed from the DNA database, which would not show their involvement in the incident. There was huge uncertainty in that period, and no courteous, timely, prompt or helpful series of responses.

The girls involved happened to be black, and they have one black and one white parent. It is difficult enough for black teenagers in London to have confidence in the police, and this experience did not help those young women or their parents in that regard, suggesting as it did that the police were more interested in collecting data than in seeing justice done by those absolutely innocent young women.

First, the present system allows data to be collected and retained in respect of people who are never charged, let alone convicted. In my book, that is wrong in principle. Secondly, the system is arbitrary in its operation and subject to no guidelines, and that is really unhelpful on the street. The Minister knows that, as he is a man of the people: he was out with me and others on the anti-knives march; he understands how real people think and talk and his constituency is very like my own. He knows that I am talking about ordinary, law-abiding people in real circumstances, not academics with doctorates—

There are many people with doctorates in my constituency.

There are lovely people with doctorates and, as one would expect, many are the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth), but we are not talking about them.

My second point follows on from what the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham said. I also understand that there is a debate to be had about the relative merit of holding samples as against not holding them. However, it seems to me that proceeding in a logical direction means we should heed the advice and the recommendation given by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh—that is, that we should first seek to hold samples and data on the people who have a criminal record. That must be the first step, as all the evidence in criminology and criminal justice is that people who have previously offended have a propensity to offend again. The majority of citizens are innocent and non-offenders, while the minority—sadly—are either occasional or recurrent offenders.

It is not logical to move to a presumption that a general holding of data is now the right step to take. In that respect, the Government’s view is as flawed as their approach to ID cards. There is an argument that everyone in the country should have an ID card and be required to produce it whenever they are stopped. Many other European countries have that system, but there is absolutely no argument for a system that would require people to have an ID card but not to carry it with them. That is the Government’s current position, and it is entirely illogical.

I anticipate that there will be a Division on these amendments. I hope that the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham will come down on the side of Lords amendment No.2, but unamended by his Front-Bench colleagues. That is the best option available, as it proposes that, at least for the time being, we should have a system whose structure means that people in Bedfordshire or Hertfordshire, Lewisham or Southwark could expect the same set of procedures. Those procedures would determine who collected the data and when, what was held, how the information could be requested, how people would be responded to and what the criteria were for any decision.

My vote will be that data should not be retained on samples taken from people who are not charged or who are innocent. That must be the right starting point, and I hope that colleagues will vote for the Lords amendment on that basis.

When Baroness Hanham moved the Lords amendment in the other place she said that her aim was

“to try to spark a national debate about the retention of samples and to inform the public about what information is being held on them.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 November 2008; Vol. 705, c. 132.]

If this debate is anything to go by, she has certainly succeeded in her aim—if only by virtue of the contribution from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg).

There is considerable disquiet throughout the country, and certainly throughout the House, about the extent of the database. We have heard already that the details of some 4.5 million individuals are currently kept on the database, which is growing at the rate of more than 500,000 entries a year. In a parliamentary answer only last month, we heard that some 857,000 individuals with no current convictions also have their data stored on the computer.

Clearly, no one has any quibbles about the existence of the database, which has proved itself to be an exemplary tool in fighting crime. However, there is disquiet about its extent and, especially for the purposes of this debate, about its opacity when people seek access to the information that it contains and apply to have information removed.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) said, the only guidance appears to be that contained in the Association of Chief Police Officers “Retention guidelines for nominal records on the Police National Computer”. As he also said, it is a masterwork of opacity: it appears to be designed to defeat the efforts of the very best Googler, and I certainly had huge difficulty finding it on the internet earlier this week.

We have heard that the guidelines are clear to the extent that they positively advise obfuscation. They say that the first response, which is to be automatic, to a request for destruction is to refuse it without further consideration. However, we are told that if the applicant persists, the chief constable for the relevant force is to make the decision, yet the guidelines make it abundantly clear that the discretion vested in the chief constable is to be exercised only rarely. We are told that there is a library of precedents to which chief constables can have access when deciding the basis on which to make their decision, but that library—as far as I know—is not available to the public.

Like the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), I have constituency experience of trying to remove a constituent’s details from the database. The incident involved a retired senior police officer who had been charged with a serious offence of misconduct in public office. The investigation and the period before trial took eight months; needless to say, it was a period of extreme anxiety for my constituent and his family. Ultimately the case came before Chester Crown court, where it collapsed in circumstances that can be described only as complete disarray on the part of the prosecution. Subsequently, my constituent, who had suffered extreme trauma as a result of the experience, tried to have his name removed from the database. We are talking about digitised details of the very essence of an individual—in this case, a completely innocent individual who had been exonerated by the Crown court yet who nevertheless found that his data were on the national database in the company of the biometric data of convicted rapists, terrorists and murderers. Understandably, he wanted his details removed.

In response to my request, I received a letter from the chief constable of North Wales police. The letter broadly followed the template that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford mentioned—template A in appendix 2 to the ACPO guidelines. It followed the guidelines almost word for word, except that at one particular juncture the chief constable decided to ski off-piste. He said:

“The Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 amended the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, providing the police in England and Wales with the power to retain DNA samples and fingerprints, relating to persons following acquittal at court or other discontinuance of a case.

I must admit to being personally surprised by this decision and I am not sure parliament fully understood the implications of its decision. However, the Act is clear enough and I am bound to act by its provisions.”

In other words, it would appear that the chief constable of North Wales police decided to enter the debate about the retention of DNA ahead of the House. He clearly thinks that the current legislation is nonsense. His letter continued:

“If I were to exercise my discretion in this case, then I would have to exercise my discretion in similar cases, thus it would not be a rarity.”

There is, therefore, almost no circumstance in which a chief constable will exercise that discretion, which is a lamentable state of affairs. Clearly, the present arrangements are opaque and unsatisfactory.

I entirely understand the point my hon. Friend is making. The lack of opacity is a powerful argument, as is the lack of consistency and perhaps the lack of a statutory basis for the arrangements. Bearing in mind the fact that all criminals were once people of good character—to use the technical phrase—is it a matter of principle to him that the DNA of an innocent person should not be on a database? If so, what is that principle?

Personally, I feel that as a matter of principle the DNA of an innocent individual should not be kept on the database. My view is that the database is a tool to be used in the fight against crime and there should not be a presumption that information about innocent individuals should be on such a database. There is of course a strong argument for putting every individual in the country on the DNA database. That is part of the debate. I happen to take the contrary view; however, in this debate we are concerned about consistency and transparency, and as we have inconsistency and opacity at present, I strongly support the amendment. It would put in statutory form provisions for guidelines that Government agencies could access and which gave consistency of approach to those who may be aggrieved by the presence of their DNA on the national database.

At present, however, the issue of whether DNA records should be removed from the database may depend in some cases on nothing more than the state of digestion of the relevant chief constable. That cannot be a healthy state of affairs, so I strongly support the amendment.

I thank all Members who have contributed to this important debate about the DNA database, DNA more generally and what is right or wrong in how things are done at present. As some Members said, whatever the rights or wrongs of the amendments, they have generated debate and a discussion of the rights and wrongs of the policy, not only in this House but in the other place. I shall try to cover the various points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) and other Members, but no doubt if I miss anybody out they will intervene.

I beg to move that the House disagrees with the Lords in their amendment No. 2, which would, as we know, add a new clause 14.

Order. We have to dispose of the amendment before the Minister moves the motion to disagree. At the appropriate moment, I shall find an opportunity to call on him to do so.

In that case, I shall turn to the amendments proposed by the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). We recognise the concerns about the existing retention policy. The hon. Gentleman has tried to show that new clause 14 would actually include the security services. I realise that is a point of dispute, but the guidelines, as proposed, would apply to samples taken by Government agencies, and would thus include samples acquired during terrorist investigations.

Does the Minister accept that if, for example, the guidelines made it clear that in an ongoing investigation it was perfectly legitimate for Government agencies to hold DNA found and identified at the scene of a crime—terrorist or otherwise—it would meet his objection?

I think the hon. Gentleman is now trying to qualify the problems with the new clause. In this instance, I agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Ashford. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) can ask why we do not do this or that, but in effect if we agreed to new clause 14 we would in primary legislation be allowing circumstances in which DNA samples from terrorists could be used, and in that sense we could damage the capacity and capability of the security services.

My understanding of subsection (1)(c) of the proposed new clause is that it would enable the Secretary of State to establish circumstances in which the request was refused. One would have thought that the regulations provided sufficient latitude, under that specific provision, to enable sensitive information to be withheld.

All I can say is that there is doubt in the mind of the security services and those who have responsibility for these matters. Indeed, the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s party’s Front-Bench spokesmen and many of his colleagues accept the concerns that have been expressed about the fact that primary legislation would be put on the statute book containing provisions that theoretically and practically compromise the security services’ ability to act.

May I say to the Minister, respectfully, that he has been badly briefed? That cannot be the interpretation—to be blunt, that is a completely extended interpretation. The new clause that has come from the Lords states:

“The Secretary of State shall by regulations publish national guidelines for governmental agencies”.

That allows thereafter the definition of the governmental agencies to be covered by the guidelines. That is the first point. The second point is the one picked up by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg)—that proposed new subsection (1)(c) allows the possibility of qualifying that. For two reasons, therefore, what the Minister fears would not happen and need not happen. He really should not try to persuade us otherwise, based on a very poor briefing and a poor argument.

I do not regard the briefing that I received as very poor. No doubt the hon. Member for Ashford received the same—extremely worrying—briefing as I did, and that is why we have reacted as we have.

Responding to the broader debate, we recognise that there are concerns about the present retention policy, but there is strong and convincing evidence to support the current approach. I shall come to that shortly, but first I remind the House that statute in this area under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 has been considered by Parliament twice within the past seven years. First, the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 amended PACE to allow DNA and fingerprints taken from those charged to be retained indefinitely. The amendments arose from decisions in the Court of Appeal relating to two cases in which compelling DNA evidence linked one suspect to a murder and another to a rape, but could not be used, and neither man could be convicted. That happened because at the time the matches were made, either the defendant had been acquitted or a decision had been made not to proceed on the offences for which DNA profiles had been taken. Secondly, the Criminal Justice Act 2003 amended PACE to allow the police to take DNA and fingerprints without consent from anyone arrested for a recordable offence and detained in a police station.

The provisions of the Criminal Justice and Police Act gained Royal Assent on 11 May 2001. According to the most recent figures that we have, between that date and 31 December 2005 there were approximately 200,000 DNA profiles on the national DNA database that would previously—before the 2001 legislation was enacted—have had to be removed because the person had been acquitted or the charges had been dropped. Of those 200,000 profiles, approximately 8,500 profiles from some 6,290 individuals have been linked with crime scene profiles involving nearly 14,000 offences, including 114 murders, 55 attempted murders, 116 rapes, 68 sexual offences, 119 aggravated burglaries and 127 offences of the supply of controlled drugs.

I take the point that a number of Members, including the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) and, I think, the hon. Member for Eastleigh have made. As I told the House of Lords Committee this morning, I will investigate further and share the information I find with the House. However, I agree strongly with the point made by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham: it is important to consider the deterrent effect, as well as the links that are sometimes made with other crime scenes. Where I do not agree with him is on a national DNA database. We have tried to move forward in a proportionate and necessary way, without moving down the route of having a national DNA database.

The successful detection and conviction of offenders, combined with the absence of interference in the daily life of people on the database who do not commit crime, are compelling reasons to retain the existing approach. As the debate has highlighted, there is concern in some quarters about whether it is proportionate to retain the DNA of people not subject to charge or conviction. However, I think we should focus on the crimes that have been solved thanks to that DNA database. I am sure that the House agrees that that is compelling evidence, drawn from real events.

I am sorry, but I do not think that the Minister is answering the points made in the debate. He is certainly not answering our case, outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South (Margaret Moran), that different chief constables decide to interpret requests differently. The position is shambolic; it must be tidied up.

I will get to that point later. I was stating our belief that, in general, the policy is effective because it leads to crimes being solved that would not otherwise be solved. I would not do my right hon. Friend the discourtesy of not answering the specific points he made.

The position on the current statutory provisions was upheld quite strongly by the House of Lords in 2005, in the case of S and Marper v. R. However, the House will know that the matter is currently before the European Court of Human Rights. We have defended our decision, but we await the decision of that Court, which we understand may come before the end of the year.

The text of the amendment would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance relevant to all agencies holding DNA and fingerprint samples on the operation of their retention, use and destruction of fingerprints and samples. Let me say why the guidelines contained in the amendment are unnecessary. The rights of individuals from whom fingerprints and samples are taken by the police under PACE or under the Terrorism Act 2000 are already contained in guidance, including PACE codes C and D, the ACPO retention guidelines for nominal records on the police national computer, and guidance on subject access requests. However, let me say to my right hon. Friend and other hon. Members that I admit there is work to be done to publicise those rights more widely.

I undertake to work with the police to bring together the current guidelines covering the matters raised in the amendment, and to publish them more widely. The guidelines will need to be reviewed in the light of the outcome of the S and Marper case, and a PACE review is currently under way. However, I give my right hon. Friend an undertaking to ensure that the points that he and others have made are fed into the PACE guidelines review, so that we can improve the process.

I am grateful to the Minister for those comments. Will he also ensure that if that work is carried out as he says it will be, some regard will be had to the Scottish system? It is worth pointing out that the system we are discussing is not ubiquitous to the entirety of the United Kingdom, and that the Scottish legal system succeeds in running a process whereby the DNA of innocent people is removed from the DNA database after—I believe—two years.

I know that a different approach is taken in Scotland, and that is a matter for the Scottish Executive.

In an attempt to reassure my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East, I repeat that we are trying to increase understanding and awareness of police powers and the rights of individuals. We know that work needs to be done on improving the notice of rights and entitlements provided to every person arrested and detained at a police station. As part of the PACE review, I will consider some of the points he made with a view to ensuring greater consistency across the country and less of the variation that he described. I shall also try to do something about some of the problems of unfairness that he highlighted. I hope that that goes some way toward meeting his concerns.

It certainly goes some way to meeting the objections that I raised. However, the point remains: if the only exception is to be that mentioned by the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), I am not sure what rights the Minister is proposing to publicise. There are no rights in these circumstances. If the exception remains as it is, there is no point in a person writing in to exercise the rights that have been publicised. Is my hon. Friend giving me an assurance that the exception will be extended?

What I am saying to my right hon. Friend is that although I cannot predict the outcome of the review of the guidelines, I will ensure that we look into the points that he makes and the concerns that he raises, including his worry about variability and the problems that people have in getting their DNA deleted from the database once it is on it. Certainly, we will try to see whether more can be done about that. As he says, it is no good just publicising existing guidelines if there is no change to the situation. All that I can say to him is that I will look into the matter. I cannot predetermine the outcome, but his points are well made, and I will certainly consider them while the review is going on.

I thank my hon. Friend for the approach that he is taking on the issue. Will he ensure that when guidance is issued after the PACE review, the Home Affairs Committee will be able to take an overview of it? As points have been made about confidence, including public confidence, it is important that Members of this House are confident that there will be transparency and consistency. Will he indicate how monitoring will take place, so that incidents such as those to which I referred, in which different approaches were taken by different constabularies, can be reported and addressed, if there are failures?

My hon. Friend makes some important points, but I cannot tell her what will happen as a result of the review, or make commitments that I am just not in a position to make. I can try to reassure her and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East by saying that I have heard what they have said about how the DNA database currently operates. I will look into the issues to do with the deletion of samples that are on the database. I will see that the concerns that have been raised are incorporated into the review. I will bear in mind not only what my right hon. Friend said about the need for change, but the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South made about the need for monitoring. I hope that that provides some reassurance.

rose—

If I may, I shall make some progress.

There is a further consideration that led us to the conclusion that we reached, aside from the position regarding the policy on the retention and use of fingerprints and samples. Lords amendment No. 2, inserted in the other place, would have serious adverse consequences for the retention and use of fingerprints and samples. Only samples held by the Security Service and Secret Intelligence Service would be covered, because the amendment refers to “governmental agencies”. However, it does not cover the police, who are responsible for the retention of PACE samples.

Samples acquired covertly by the police or the security services and held on the counter-terrorism DNA database would be subject to the guidelines, so investigations could be compromised when people found out that they were under investigation through such requests. Amendments (a) and (b) to Lords amendment No. 2 seek to remedy that problem. I understand what the hon. Member for Ashford is trying to achieve with the amendments, but they do not achieve their aim. The amendments permit the Secretary of State to use discretion when deciding on the agencies to which the guidance proposed in Lords amendment No. 2 should apply. The discretion could be used to ensure that the guidance did not apply to the security agencies; the risk of terrorist investigations being compromised would therefore be mitigated. However, the amendments do not necessarily achieve that aim. Lords amendment No. 2 refers to “governmental agencies”, which do not include the police, who hold the vast majority of fingerprints and samples. The amendment would actually exclude the police. I ask the House to reject the amendments.

I shall start by taking on the Minister’s last point, which, frankly, I found bizarre. Unlike the Liberal Democrats, he and I agree that we should not, in any circumstances, compromise any covert activities that it is necessary for the security services to undertake. The distinction that the Minister drew between them and the police is precisely the distinction that I seek to draw in amendment (a). I do not think that the police should carry on in the way that they are enjoined to carry on by the current guidelines. I can see a case for secrecy for the covert agencies, but I can see no such case for the police. At least he recognises that distinction.

I hope that the Minister will also recognise that there was simply no support for the current system from any part of the House. Compelling contributions were made by the hon. Member for Luton, South (Margaret Moran), the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) and my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones). There are practical examples from all over the country that show that the system is unacceptable and does not contribute to proper crime-fighting, let alone the fight against terrorism. Confidence in the system is reduced because of its arbitrary nature and inconsistency across the country. Too often, people simply do not understand the system because it is not transparent enough.

I should like to address one or two of the points made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). He objects to the way in which the Home Secretary will be given the power to decide which agencies should be excluded. I simply point out to him that that the Home Secretary’s decision will be public, so the House would have the chance to comment on, criticise and debate it. He asked on what principle we objected to the national DNA database, to which he is attracted. The principle is that the privacy of an individual should not be compulsorily intruded on by the state, except in the most extreme circumstances. It is the job of this House to try to protect people’s privacy as much as possible, consonant with the proper running of society. A national DNA database, on which the private details of tens of millions of entirely innocent people would be put, offends that principle. In an era when the state does not appear to be able to keep private information safe, that principle is all the more important to us. I hope that he will reflect on that.

My right hon. and learned Friend made the point that every criminal was once of good character; I simply point out that the vast majority of people of good character remain of good character, and do not become criminals. They are entitled to believe that their privacy is valuable and that this House should seek to protect it.

May I push the hon. Gentleman on that? On a point consistent with that position, which I entirely support, does he agree that any guidelines should presume that police officers will remove samples in cases in which the person is innocent? That should be the presumption, rather than there being open discussion about it.

Yes, I agree with that. Innocent people should expect to be treated differently from those who have been convicted of an offence. I agree with the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) that it is particularly absurd that we are collecting DNA from innocent people, but not from people who have been convicted of serious offences. That is one of the many absurdities of the current system.

In conclusion, I am grateful that, in all parts of the House, there is clear support for the principles behind amendment (a), whatever detailed objections people may have. I think that the Minister will realise, from the extent and force of the arguments expressed in this debate, that there is simply no support anywhere for the current situation. I therefore commend our amendment (a) to the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

Before we come to the next group of amendments, I should offer a word of clarification to the House. A revised version of the white amendment paper has been issued, which affects this second group of amendments and the fourth group. The Government are moving to disagree to Lords amendment No. 133 and to agree to Lords amendment No. 113. The revised version should be available in the Vote Office for hon. Members if they have not already acquired it.

After Clause 80

Lords amendment: No. 106.

I beg to move that this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendment No. 133 and the Government motion to disagree thereto, and Lords amendments Nos. 103 to 105, 107 and 132.

As hon. Members will be aware, we share a common desire to resolve the issue of ensuring that an inquest can be held that is article 2 compliant and enables bereaved relatives and other interested parties to be involved to the extent that is necessary to safeguard their legitimate interests and to allow proper understanding of the circumstances of the death of the individual, while ensuring that sensitive material is properly protected. The issue of sensitive material arises in a very small number of inquests, but we need to ensure that the finder of fact can consider all the relevant material while ensuring that sensitive material, and the way in which that material was obtained, is protected from public disclosure. This is because disclosure could damage national security or ongoing police investigations.

In order to address this problem in relation to inquests, the Government’s proposals, which we intend to bring forward in coroners legislation in the next Session, would permit the Secretary of State to issue a certificate requiring an inquest to be held without a jury if in the opinion of the Secretary of State the inquest will involve the consideration of material that should not be made public in the public interest, including to a jury or interested persons.

I am interested in that statement. Is the Minister then saying that given the power to issue the certificate, intercept evidence will be admitted into inquests?

Not necessarily. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, where we go on intercept evidence is subject to considerable debate.

As a result of certification, the finder of fact would be a coroner rather than a jury, as already occurs in 98 per cent. of inquests.

The Bill states, at the top of page 54:

“The Secretary of State may certify in relation to an inquest”

and so on. Does he carry on the certification process privately, or is it susceptible to counter-argument, and is his decision to certify justiciable? [Interruption.] Can I take him to court if I disagree with his decision?

All these details have to be worked through.

They should already have been worked through. That is the whole point about the drafting of the Bill. I do not wish to be unduly aggressive, but the Minister ought to able to answer my questions—if not right now, then having taken advice on them.