Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I shall go carefully, because I am seeking to persuade noble Lords opposite that their amendment is not effective in the way in which they might envisage and could, to an extent, be self-defeating. I ask them to bear with me. The provisions in the Bill allow the police to forfeit indecent images of children and the storage equipment that holds them. The amendments would amend our proposed procedures so that, once it is found that the property should be returned to the owner, the police must destroy all information about the property which is in their possession. Clauses 44 and 45 and Schedules 12 and 13 amend the current law so as to close a small technical loophole in the law. They will allow the police to forfeit indecent images of children and the devices that hold them following any lawful seizure. As we have explained previously, this is a small loophole, because if the person is convicted of an offence in respect of the material, it can be forfeited on conviction under Section 143 of the Powers of the Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000. These new provisions do not affect that power. However, there are limited circumstances in which there may be no conviction. In those cases, the Protection of Children Act 1978 allows the courts to forfeit such articles following a seizure under a warrant under that Act, but the court has no power to forfeit articles brought before it under other powers of seizure; for example, during a fraud investigation. Technically, in such instances, the articles may have to be returned to the offender. Our reforms will move the power of forfeiture into the hands of the police, regardless of the powers of seizure used, and will provide an avenue of appeal to the courts for owners or third parties with an interest in the articles. The amendments would require the police to destroy any record of lawfully seized material once the courts have decided that material is non-forfeitable and should be returned to owners. I hope that I can persuade noble Lords that these amendments are unnecessary. Their effect would be to require the police to destroy records lawfully made which would otherwise be retained in accordance with current law, including the Data Protection Act 1998, and accepted operational police practice and procedure whenever such property is seized and a court orders its return. The amendments would amount to an unreasonable restriction on the extent to which police are allowed, and expected, to exercise discretion as to the need to retain and use all factually accurate information. This is both in connection with the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of crime, and when they are called to account in civil proceedings. For example, let us say that in their dealings with a known sex offender, the police believe he no longer has access to a computer in his home and is not viewing indecent images of children or adult pornography. This suggests, in this case, that the individual is of a lower risk and the police, through the Multi-agency Public Protection Arrangements, adapt their management plan accordingly. However, evidence comes to light that the offender’s credit card has been used to purchase indecent images of children over the internet and the police arrest the offender and find a laptop computer in his home. The images appear, to the police and Crown Prosecution Service, to be of children aged 16 or 17 but the court finds that they are of an adult aged 18 or over. Therefore, the laptop and images would have to be duly returned to the offender and, under this amendment, the police would have to remove from their records any suggestion that the individual, who is a convicted sex offender, has access to a computer and is viewing pornography. This is despite the fact that such intelligence might be used by the police to adapt their management plans, and might even be the evidence they need to apply to a court for a sexual offences prevention order to impose prohibitions on the offender in order to protect the public from serious sexual harm. The provisions in the Bill provide the police with a simple but secure mechanism to ensure that seized indecent images of children and the devices that hold them can be forfeited once investigators no longer need to retain them. In addition to this, we have provided a simple and fair mechanism to allow owners and interested third parties to appeal against forfeiture. So there is a safeguard there already. I hope that, having heard that, the noble Viscount and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, will think again about their amendments and will not feel the necessity to table them again at Third Reading.