Crime and Security Bill

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The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairmen: † Sir Nicholas Winterton, Frank Cook

† Baldry, Tony (Banbury) (Con)

† Brake, Tom (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)

Brokenshire, James (Hornchurch) (Con)

† Burns, Mr. Simon (West Chelmsford) (Con)

† Campbell, Mr. Alan (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department)

† Dobbin, Jim (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab/Co-op)

† Flello, Mr. Robert (Stoke-on-Trent, South) (Lab)

† Hanson, Mr. David (Minister for Policing, Crime and Counter-Terrorism)

Hogg, Mr. Douglas (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)

Iddon, Dr. Brian (Bolton, South-East) (Lab)

† McDonagh, Siobhain (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)

† McIsaac, Shona (Cleethorpes) (Lab)

† Oaten, Mr. Mark (Winchester) (LD)

† Rosindell, Andrew (Romford) (Con)

† Seabeck, Alison (Plymouth, Devonport) (Lab)

† Watts, Mr. Dave (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury)

Alan Sandall, Committee Clerk

† attended the Committee

Witnesses

Sir Hugh Orde, President, Association of Chief Police Officers

Gary Pugh, Director of Forensic Services in the Metropolitan Police Service, on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers

Isabella Sankey, Director of Policy, Liberty

Dr. Helen Wallace, Executive Director, GeneWatch UK

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Public Bill Committee

Tuesday 26 January 2010

(Afternoon)

[Sir Nicholas Winterton in the Chair]

Crime and Security Bill

Written evidence to be reported to the House

CR 01 JUSTICE

CR 02 GeneWatch UK

CR 03 RAC Foundation

4.10 pm

The Committee deliberated in private.

4.17 pm

On resuming—

Q 7272The Chairman: I welcome our witnesses to this afternoon’s sitting. I welcome in particular Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Police Officers and Gary Pugh, director of forensic services in the Metropolitan Police Service, on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Sir Hugh, you and Gary Pugh will have studied the Bill. If in two minutes you could give us your introductory views, that would be helpful. I was going to ask you to introduce yourselves, but as there are just two of you and I have mentioned your names and everybody knows you and, I suspect, Mr. Pugh too, that would be a waste of time. Could you, Sir Hugh, give us your general run-down of the Bill?

Sir Hugh Orde: Thank you, Sir Nicholas. I bring apologies from my colleague Chris Sims, who is a real expert on DNA at the ACPO level. Gary, of course, has done a huge amount of detailed work. I will leave him to do the detail and I will just give a broad overview of what I see to be the key issues around this Bill, mindful of the European Court judgment. From an ACPO perspective, we are very keen to see the Government lay down some clear guidelines, as articulated by Chief Constable Sims at the Home Affairs Committee, that give absolute clarity about what is and what is not acceptable in relation to the retention of deeply sensitive personal data.

I fully understand the concerns of the public about that retention. The key points for me are as follows. First, I continue to stress that the retention of DNA is critical for serious crime investigation—I emphasise “serious”. On the successes, one case in the press only yesterday—an historical case solved through the use of DNA—describes better and more articulately than I can the reason why we need to use this proportionately, carefully and sensitively, and within some clear guidelines about what is acceptable in terms of retention, particularly in relation to unconvicted individuals.

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I stress from a professional police perspective, however, that just because someone is not convicted of an offence, there are still good professional reasons why we need that information when dealing with serious crime. In my previous world, in Northern Ireland, some very dangerous people were entirely innocent in law—as in, they were never convicted—but I was greatly reassured that I had a better position in terms of keeping the public safe by knowing that I had some information, which, if crimes were committed by those individuals, I could use to deliver an effective investigation, certainly in accordance of article 2 of the Human Rights Act.

I will keep my comments as brief as that, because I am mindful that this is a Bill Committee, not the Home Affairs Committee. I shall hand over to Gary, who may want to touch on some key changes and proposals in the Bill, which we support fully.

Q 73The Chairman: Thank you, Sir Hugh. I ask Gary Pugh to give his overview.

Gary Pugh: Thank you, Sir Nicholas. I am here today in the capacity of chair of the National DNA Database Strategy Board, which is relevant to the Bill in terms of the governance arrangements for the database. I hold that post as the nominee of ACPO.

I agree with Sir Hugh’s comments, to which I shall add my own from a police perspective, and certainly from the perspective of the National DNA Database Strategy Board. It is imperative that we get some guidance from Parliament and the Committee on retention periods in relation to those arrested and not convicted. This is a live and sensitive debate and I deal with this on a daily basis. There is a risk that if we do not deal with the issue, it could undermine confidence in police investigations generally.

I should like to mention three things. First, on the performance of and contribution to the database, there is an element of trading statistics here. There are two issues for me. I reinforce Sir Hugh’s points on violent crime and sexually motivated crime. You have only to think about the nature of those crimes to understand the potential for DNA to be transferred from the perpetrator to the victim or the crime scene, and therein lies the value of DNA. What we have done in the UK is much broader than that, however. We use DNA profiling in a much wider range of crime, particularly burglary and acquisitive crime. There is a different set of evidence for the value of that, in terms of the number of matches that are made from the national DNA database.

The majority of the output from the database is, in volume crime, in identifying potential offenders. I draw the Committee’s attention to the study in the States—I think it is one of the most rigorous studies—that looked at what difference DNA makes. It found that twice as many people were arrested when DNA was involved and twice as many people were put into the criminal justice system. That was a Department of Justice study.

The second broad area for us is the mechanics of the Bill and the proposals. Clearly, the retention periods are a matter for Parliament. Our plea is for simplicity in being able to administer the Bill and its implications when it becomes law. We want to be confident that the proposals can be implemented through what I would describe as a systems approach, rather than through police officers managing individual records. There is

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potential here for us to be managing 5 million individual records. That would draw on a lot of police resources that would be better used elsewhere.

Finally, on the deletion process, we strongly support a centrally managed, transparent process and clear guidance on that set out in regulations. We support that and feel that we need it in light of the recent media interest.

Those are the points that I would like to highlight in my opening statement. I shall close there.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Pugh. The first question will be put by Alison Seabeck.

Q 74Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Devonport) (Lab): What percentage of the 33,000 crimes detected using the national DNA database were direct detections, as opposed to indirect detections, where somebody subsequently confessed to multiple crimes? That does not link into your comment about volume, but I will come back to that in a minute. Do you have figures to hand to show how convictions and crimes solved are split between the two categories?

Gary Pugh: The simple answer is no. There is a point here about the contribution that DNA profiling makes and, in a sense, we are looking for a causal link. We can identify those cases in which there was a DNA match and a detection, but the precise input provided by that the DNA match would almost require a case-by-case study. That is not to duck the issue, but to say that that is the way that DNA works in policing. DNA does not convict anyone; it provides a starting point for an investigation. I can go and look at the 33,000 detections in more detail, but I will come up against that problem.

Q 75Alison Seabeck: It is just that you can see the potential criticism here. There are 33,000 detections, but only a small minority might have been direct detections, as opposed to people confessing to 15 burglaries. We are trying to work out the value of profiling, so this is quite an important issue.

Gary Pugh: I can say from my experience in the Metropolitan police—I must reinforce that this is about the role of DNA profiling and the databases in identifying a potential offender, giving us a name to start an investigation—that there are many cases where we already have a potential suspect, so we are talking about making a one-to-one comparison, rather than a search of the database. Thirty to 40 per cent. of detections result from identifying the offender in the Metropolitan police fingerprint and DNA databases. Therefore, by providing a name, DNA profiling and fingerprints make a powerful contribution in what is a difficult situation today, because people move around and our knowledge of communities, and even criminal communities, is not as it was many years ago.

Perhaps I can add another point, which relates to the evidence that we gave to the Home Affairs Committee. It was widely reported that only 0.67 per cent. of crimes were solved using DNA. That is perhaps unfair, in that in the vast majority of crime, we do not look for and we do not find DNA. You therefore need to look at the proportion of crimes in which we look for and find DNA. Many crimes, such as shoplifting and fraud, do not provide the opportunity to find DNA to compare with samples on the database. The 0.67 per cent perhaps undervalues the contribution of DNA profiling.

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Q 76Alison Seabeck: Do you have an assessment of the percentages based on what you have just described?

Gary Pugh: I have the figures, for example, for rape and other crimes. In the last year, there were 160 DNA matches in rape cases. I do not have a detailed breakdown, but I can provide you with more detail.

Q 77Alison Seabeck: It is just that to understand your argument, the Committee probably needs to have a look at those figures.

Sir Hugh Orde: May I just add to that, Sir Nicholas? The issue of the complexity in policing is one that I have been trying to articulate since I took up my present job. It is hard to say that DNA was the decisive thing in a particular case, although with some rapes, you can pretty much say that the overwhelming evidence was provided by DNA because of the nature of its recovery; but DNA is part of the critical mass that gets you to the point where the prosecution can be mounted and it is part of the interview plan that allows officers to put a suspect in a place so that they have to give an explanation that the officers can then deconstruct and use to prove a point through different investigative means. We are talking about DNA being used in the holistic sense of an investigation, rather than saying precisely, “DNA can solve this.” A fingerprint is exactly the same; it puts a person in a place, and they then have to explain that. Without trying to be over-detailed, DNA profiling is just one technique, but we would argue that is a very important one, and there are many anecdotal cases. I fully understand that anecdotes make bad law.

Q 78Alison Seabeck: I assume that the figures are based on DNA and fingerprints being part of the primary tranche of evidence, rather than anything else.

Sir Hugh Orde: If you read some background papers on murders in London last year, you find that senior investigating officers say that DNA was important in about 80 per cent. of those crimes, but they could not properly say that it was the reason for solving the crime.

The Chairman: Can I say to both our witnesses that if you are asked questions and you do not have the detailed answers, we will be very pleased to receive that information later, and of course it can be included in our papers as a memorandum or as a supplement to any evidence that you have already submitted?

Q 79Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD): We may get a sense of dÃ(c)jà vu with these questions, having gone through a similar set of questions with the Home Affairs Committee. Nevertheless, I want to come back to this question of the cost-effectiveness of DNA, because I think that in both of your statements you have stated that DNA is effective in tackling crime. Clearly it is effective, but we also now know and have received written confirmation that there is no independent assessment of the cost-effectiveness of DNA techniques. Therefore, it may well be that training officers in how to deal with rape cases, such as the Warboys case, is more effective at solving crime than DNA is.

In the Home Affairs Committee, we have had Greg Hands giving evidence in which DNA was taken from him as a Member of Parliament and from his extended family, including his elderly aunts, with police officers travelling the length and breadth of the country to

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collect that information. I would like some guarantee from you that there is actually something that can demonstrate that DNA is an effective use of taxpayers’ money, in preference to using that money to recruit more officers, provide more training or in another way, because we do not need the Bill to concentrate on DNA if, in fact, there are more effective ways of tackling crime.

Sir Hugh Orde: As I have just described, DNA is one of the techniques. That does not detract from the fact that there are individual cases where we have not got it right. We fully accept that, on occasion, police officers do not get it right, and training has a critical part to play in effective police investigation.

However, I want to step back from saying that, by taking away the money from investing in DNA, we could do something that is likely to be more effective. Frankly, the reason for that is that, in serious crime, where the costs of an extended investigation are likely to be exponentially higher than in the routine of the business—we do not use DNA for that anyway, so it is not part of the argument—I would be deeply nervous if we lost the technique. I think it is essential.

We have to keep ahead. We need the technology. As technology has got better, as we have advanced the processes and the methods by which we capture DNA and develop it, the use of DNA has become more effective. The value is huge, but it is very hard to put a value on it and say, “This costs x-thousand pounds and if I shifted that to something else, I could be more effective.” It is how you carve up the police cake.

Where there is some value is not in that end of the business, but in having clarity—not about the cost, but the confidence. Where the Bill goes a substantial way post the judgment is hopefully to give the confidence that DNA will be properly managed and that it is Parliament that has decided what is acceptable and not police officers dealing with this flaky idea of what is an “exceptional circumstance”. I think that’s the real thing. It is an opportunity-cost, but I think it is very important.

Gary Pugh: I would add to that. We have had the dialogue. There is not an underlying business case, if you like, for the use of DNA profiling but, as I have said before in other forums, there is not an underlying business case for other aspects of policing.

What I would say is that we do not use DNA in dealing with a lot of relatively minor crime. Perhaps to add to my comments earlier, I should say that there is a forensic intervention—a scene examination—only in about 17 per cent. of recorded crimes. So we are focused on using DNA profiling on those crimes where we are likely to recover DNA, particularly serious acquisitive crime and violent crime, and on those crimes where a search of the database may, as Sir Hugh said, provide a name that is a starting point for the investigation.

In many of those instances, we would not have got that name by any other route. So an investment in other aspects of policing would not have given us the name of that suspect to start an investigation. Therein lies some of the value of DNA profiling and the database.

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Prepared 27 January 2010