Police and Justice Bill

moved Amendment No. 134: Page 127, line 17, at end insert- ““( ) Where the court is not satisfied that the relevant property is forfeitable property, the court must order the relevant officer to erase or dispose of all information in his possession about the relevant property.”” The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 136. I hope that we, too, can take advantage of the open door. This follows on from the previous grouping spoken to by my noble friend Lady Anelay. Due to time constraints in Committee, I was unable to move the amendment before the Summer Recess. As the Joint Committee on Human Rights summarised in its report, the Bill introduces a newer and wider procedure for the forfeiture of indecent photographs of children held by the police. The report stated: "““The mechanism introduced by the Bill contains a number of safeguards for those who may have an interest in property which is liable to forfeiture under the Bill…There is an opportunity for a person who wishes to contest forfeiture to make a notice of claim. Where a notice of claim is received by the police, forfeiture can only be ordered by a court. The court must order return of the property if not satisfied that it is forfeitable, or if satisfied that the person making the claim has a legitimate reason for possessing it””." These probing amendments would insert new sub-paragraphs into Schedules 12 and 13 to ensure that, where the court was not satisfied that the relevant property was forfeitable, the relevant officer extinguished all the information that he had obtained from the forfeiture. The aim of the amendment is to question whether the police should or would keep copies of information seized in this context if the court had ordered its return. In some ways, it has a parallel in the debate surrounding data protection and whether the police should keep DNA records of innocent individuals on file, although it is a different medium. I beg to move.