Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, I wonder whether I might speak briefly as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, because Members of the House will have the benefit of our report on the Bill, which is in the Printed Paper Office. In that report the committee—which is of course all-party, and beyond party—expressed the view that the scheme in the Bill is more proportionate and more likely than the previous regime under the Crime and Security Act 2010 to pass muster with the Marper judgment of the European Court of Human Rights. I am not going to bore the House by referring in detail to what the report says, as it explains the issues very briefly and clearly. However, one matter that we expressed concern about, which I think is relevant, is that the committee said that it could not, "““reach a firm conclusion on the proportionality of these measures””," without fuller information, including statistics on the operation of the National DNA Database, and asked the Government, "““to collect better records on the contribution made to the prevention and detection of crime by the retention and use of biometric material in the future””." Paragraph 8 of the report states that, "““the measures in the Bill are likely to be a significant improvement on the measures in the Crime and Security Act 2010””." As for the three-year versus the six-year period, with a renewal of two years, the committee commended and welcomed that as a, "““decision that a narrower approach to retention is appropriate””—" and so on. The noble Baroness makes the point that Parliament should set a six-year term rather than having a three-year term renewed on application under the Bill. It seems no more rational or sensible to adopt a six-year period than to have a discretionary ability to increase for a further two years for a cause, as experience shows, but it is a matter of judgment about the better approach that one adopts. I say simply that the Government have the support of the committee itself in its report.