Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 145)
WEDNESDAY 18 JUNE 2008
Mr Tim Wilson
Q140 Lord Marlesford:
To follow up on the DNA, you have answered, to some extent, the
question, but do you believe that a European level DNA database
is both desirable, practical and useful?
Mr Wilson: No. I think that it would
raise huge problems in terms of effective governance. I think
it is quite unnecessary. I think that biometric information needs
to be kept close to the place where it is going to be used in
the course of investigations. What you need is the ability to
find out if people can help you.[30]
I think that will work in a search request system because, basically,
it is indicating: "Have you got a string of numbers in a
certain sequence on your database that corresponds to what we
are trying to search for"; you are actually not uploading
information from another country's database. It is possible, I
think, to have a reasonable robustness in the audit trail, and
it is also something that I think is an approach that you can
use with third countries, given that, clearly, a lot of trans-national
crime is not going to be confined to the EU but it avoids all
the problems of depositing information on third country databases.
The fact that you have got a single point of expertise that is
handling the transaction between countries means that they should
be able to undertake a risk assessment of the forensic robustness
of the information you may get back but, also, the ways in which
confidentiality and privacy may be respected. I have got slight
reservations about being able to impose a European model of data
privacy on third countries. We seem to be having enough trouble
trying to get the data protection framework for the Third Pillar
in force in any case, even within the European Union. Now, the
FBI has a quite different approach to ensuring privacy, ensuring
that information is not misused within their database, which is
basically a kind of internal audit process. My view on that is
fine, they are not going to have external data protection supervisors;
therefore, our experts who are advising on the exchange of information
with the FBI need to go to Quantico on a regular basis, and need
to understand how the US is operating, and need to consider, on
a pragmatic view, whether the safeguards are adequate for co-operation
or not.
Q141 Lord Marlesford:
Is there any difference, for this purpose, in the context of what
you have been saying, between a DNA database and a fingerprint
database?
Mr Wilson: I think, on the whole, it
is very close because both sources of information appear quite
hard but they do depend on the way in which the information is
taken, the quality within which the information is initially processed
and then how that is interpreted. You can do a lot with machines;
the police in the UK now use a system called LiveScan which means
that someone coming into a police station can have their fingerprints
taken and it can be checked against about six million fingerprints
within about half-an-hour. That is done by machine but, basically,
the machines are coming up with a list of candidate matches. I
think they provide 10. At the same time, within the 24/7 fingerprint
bureau in Scotland Yard, there is a team of people checking the
matches visually to ensure that the machine has got it right.[31]
I think this is a rather significant cost element, because you
can make the process work more efficiently, faster, more effectively,
through modern ICT but you need to ensure that you have dedicated
expert people always looking at the results coming out, always
providing quality assurance. You cannot, in an area like criminal
justice, abandon yourself to reliance solely on machines.
Q142 Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts:
Surely, if the business process is robust enough we should not
necessarily be concerned about the information being held in Lyon,
so long as access to it is properly controlled. All our Criminal
Records Bureau checks are done from India now—if you wish
to be a school governor you talk to someone in Mumbai; they ask
you about your background and everything else. That is where the
form goes.
Mr Wilson: That may be where the form
goes and it may be decided that that is quite acceptable in terms
of that particular activity, but if you download the entire UK
DNA database to Lyon you are duplicating the amount of stored
data. If you are weeding records for various purposes there is
always the risk that some may be missed at the weeding stage.
In the UK we have very extensive powers to take and retain DNA.
It is theoretically possible that you could duplicate the database
in Lyon and you could use that as a back-up database. In a country
with very complex DNA retention rules[32]
I think that that would be extremely difficult to achieve.
Q143 Lord Harrison:
Mr Wilson, in your evidence you comment on different national
patterns of investment in DNA profile coverage. Can you describe
the extent of the effects that poor infrastructures abroad have
on UK investments in forensic technologies?
Mr Wilson: It is a factor, I think, that
affects—if I take the example of a DNA database—the
match rate. If a DNA profile is obtained at a crime scene and
then loaded on the national database and, let us say, a profile
is found in England and Wales, the chance of matching it with
the profile of a known individual is about 52 per cent. In Scotland,
if you go through the same exercise, you are likely to get a match
rate in about 68 per cent of cases, despite the fact that the
Scottish law is slightly more restrictive in terms of DNA profiles
that may be retained, compared with England and Wales. If you
look at Austria, which is probably the second highest proportionate
size of database in the European Union, the match rate is 39 per
cent. I think that is partly a reflection of different retention
rules, it is partly a reflection of different sizes of databases,
but I think it is also a reflection of greater mobility and greater
trans-national offending. When you look at the number of people
imprisoned in England and Wales compared with Scotland, for foreign
citizens, you are looking at about 10 per cent in England and
Wales under 2 per cent in Scotland. Scottish crime tends to be
much more local than English crime, particularly if you live somewhere
like Kent, where, I believe, at one time Kent Police were talking
about 40 per cent of offenders actually not being UK citizens.
There is some arrest data, from nineteen police forces in the
UK that indicate that about 12 per cent of people arrested are
foreign citizens, but when you compare that with the Austria situation
about 26 per cent of arrestees are foreign citizens. I think that
mobility itself limits the effectiveness of the way in which you
might be able to use forensic science and national databases to
detect crime, but there are a lot of factors that come into it,
and I think that is only one of them. Clearly, retention is likely
to be a factor as well—the legal rules on retention.[33]
Q144 Baroness Garden of Frognal:
Mr Wilson, I think you have touched on this, but do you believe
that there are any immediate benefits for Europol in the current
configuration of forensic science co-ordination?
Mr Wilson: I certainly have been very
grateful to Europol for assisting with the Search Request Network
project. I think that it does provide a source of information
that will assist in their work with national police forces in
dealing with serious crime. I think it also can be used for trying
to analyse what is happening out there, in terms of the Belgian
example I mentioned, in looking at patterns of offending across
borders and trying to assess within the UK the level to which
offending is undertaken by non-UK citizens who our databases may
not be able to reach. So it has an analytical power which I would
hope to see joined up with Europol support for the Police Chiefs'
Task Force, for training and for encouraging other countries to
think seriously about the use of forensics in general, as I think
that it is not just a matter of investing in fingerprint and DNA
databases. I think it is equally important to encourage good practice
at the crime scene in order that valuable material is not missed,
that it is handled professionally and that there is a safe element
of continuity in removing whatever is recovered from the crime
scene to laboratories and, in due course, as evidence that appears
in court.
Q145 Lord Teverson:
Mr Wilson, coming back on something really on a broader scale,
about engagement with Europol in some of the areas that you think
about there, really to ask you what national parliaments should
do to be fully engaged with the work of Europol. Before you answer
that, I notice from your job title, you are a Visiting Fellow
in Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences, which is a broad canvas which
I am interested in, particularly in this area. In terms of Europol,
if we look at it from the other end of the telescope—the
main organised crimes are things like carousel fraud, money laundering,
people trafficking and drugs trafficking—are there ways
in which the European Union could reorganise so that those crimes
are not such a problem, if you like. Carousel fraud, I presume
is one. I do not want to go into this in great depth, and not
that I am saying we should get rid of the need for Europol, but
is there a supply side answer to some of this, as well as the
other side, if you like?
Mr Wilson: A couple of years ago I thought
there was possibly a way of simplifying the tax system to make
carousel fraud less viable. I cannot now remember what I thought
through at that time, but I think there is certainly a role for
Europol to provide advice by way of risk assessment in terms of
fraud against community institutions and national governments
within that kind of fiscal structure, and, also, cohesion and
structural funding9. I am rather diffident to offer solutions
to parliamentarians in terms of greater governance, but what struck
me (and I do not quite know how the changes under the Treaty of
Lisbon—if it takes place—will work), with a Director
General and a Management Board Chairman for 18 months, and possibly
also the Chairman of the Joint Supervisory Committee for Data
Protection, is that fairly irregular sessions with the European
Parliament, particularly if this could be
9 Note by the witness; Of the Commission's
2006 proposals the more extensive use of reverse charges seemed
attractive, but having read since giving evidence the Committee's
Report on Carousel Fraud (20th Report of Session 2006-07), I would
like to comment that the concerns expressed there about the risk
that this would result in migration to other areas and mutation
into other forms adds to the case for more general analytical
work by Europol on crime trends, including the destination of
the proceeds and whether they have an effect on other types of
criminal activity or corruption within government. Ultimately
more public use of such an analysis may result in greater urgency
in responding to the Committee's proposal that a more effective
supply side solution meriting further study would be tax harmonisation,
a possible longer-term solution that has also been proposed recently
by Mrs Sharon Bowles MEP as raporteur for the European Parliament's
Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.
joint sessions with representatives from national
parliaments, might be extremely valuable in order to examine to
what extent Europol should have the opportunity to feed in suggestions
about how the VAT system might be improved to reduce the prospect
of carousel fraud, and also to contribute to thinking about how
other aspects of EuropeanUnion activity might benefit from some
engagement from operational police forces that are seeing the
consequences of that, particularly in areas such as corruption
in funding programmes that has resulted in the suspension of funding
to Bulgaria for infrastructure funds. I think that would be extremely
valuable. May I say, while talking about data protection, I think
that Europol has the advantage of an arrangement for data protection
involving independent inspections as well as an audit trail, which
is something, perhaps, we might reflect on in the UK. A great
deal of discussion this morning has been about governance and
our concerns with protecting privacy and ensuring that data collected
in the course of Europol's work is safeguarded. I think the same
considerations apply within the UK, and it may be that we are
reaching the point, rather like the precedent of the Exchequer
and Audit Act of 1866 in recognising how piece of legislation
changed nominal control by Parliament over money to practical
control over money. Increasingly the information held by agencies
is a vital factor in public confidence in the quality and honesty
of governments, and it may be that we need to move to a greater
proactive, external inspection approach to the whole range of
data protection. I think we need that in the UK just as much as
within Europol. I think, increasingly, that data that government
bureaucracies hold about individuals, in some respects, is equivalent
to the way in which in the 19th century governments and local
governments were extracting more money from individuals.
Chairman: Thank you. Are there any other points
that any of my colleagues would like to raise before we come to
an end? I see none. Mr Wilson, thank you very much. We have had
a very full and very fascinating morning, to which you have contributed
fully. Thank you very much indeed.
30 Note by the witness: what appears to be
the best evidence of the effectiveness of this approach produced
to date is an indication that the introduction of Prüm enabled
710 hitherto unidentified DNA profiles recovered from German crime
scenes to be linked with persons known to the Austrian authorities
(quoted in the Committee's 18th Report of Session 2006-07 at paragraph
36). Back
31
Note by the witness: That is in predicting the candidate
match most likely to be accepted as a valid match in the opinion
of several experts. The experts may decide that another candidate
match or none should be accepted as a valid match. Back
32
Note by the witness: For example, unlike England, Wales
and Northern Ireland, and for many offences also Scotland, in
other jurisdictions a person's fingerprint and DNA profile records
may have to be removed from the national database if he or she
is not convicted of the offence for which that person was arrested,
if the conviction is quashed, or after a period of time since
conviction specified for certain offences has elapsed. Back
33
Note by the witness: once a method or methods for effectively
sharing internationally the forensic information that the law
in each jurisdiction allows to be held on a national data base
has been resolved, as indicated in some detail in our memorandum,
the contribution this can make to detecting crime will depend
on whether comparatively modest resources are available in all
the countries concerned to take advantage of the contribution
forensic science can make to detecting offenders. Community financial
assistance to poorer member states in this area is likely to have
a greater impact on a wide range of crime (including some that
would be found to be serious and organised) in the EU than a similar
increase in Europol's budget, although the Agency could make a
major contribution to ensuring that any programme to deliver improved
forensic science facilities is managed and supported effectively
through the modest injection of extra resources proposed in reply
to Question 134. Back
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