Dale Campbell-Savours: It’s time we identified a bigger role for DNA to combat crime

The criminal justice system, even under my own Government, was often felt to be completely out of control in the sense that, as far as many people on the street are concerned, the legal system simply does not work in the United Kingdom.

There is a total disconnect between the people who stand behind the Protection of Freedoms Bill on civil liberties and the wider public in the United Kingdom.

If you were to do an honest poll of people on the streets of Britain, not a poll simply of libertarian opinion, and ask them their view of DNA and its retention, particularly in the context of their lack of confidence in the criminal justice system, you would find overwhelming support for the retention of this material.

The Government has got the balance wrong. It has taken the libertarian position too far and, in the event that this becomes law, it is going to end up with a number of cases surfacing in the national media, particularly in the tabloids, that reveal that people had committed offences and had not been tracked down simply because DNA had not been retained as a result of this legislation.

I object very strongly because I believe that the Government is making a major mistake.

From a Conservative position, the Government would do well to look among their own supporters.

Among many of the Conservatives who I know and mix with, there is overwhelming support for DNA retention. Many Conservative supporters simply do not understand why the Government are going down this route.

I do not know whether they are being driven by the libertarian agenda that is being pushed by the Liberal Democrats in the coalition – they may well be – but if they are, they should take stock of what they are doing because they are making a mistake and they are upsetting their own supporters, who feel as strongly as I do.

The Minister (Lord Henley) will mix with people in the county of Cumbria, where he lives. If he discusses this with his colleagues there, he will find the same view: that we should retain this material as it is a way of safeguarding the future of the criminal justice system and making it more operationally effective. Finally, this is only one of a number of initiatives that the Government are taking in this Bill.

They are introducing what some believe to be a more liberal regime in the use of cameras and CCTV.

Again, the public support those cameras. I understand that the Government were involved in a consultation exercise earlier this year.

I have not seen the result of that consultation exercise, but what interests me is who was consulted.

Was it the people on the street, who have strong attitudes on these matters and who invariably fail to respond to consultations, or was it again this libertarian opinion, which worries me when it manages to secure changes in legislation in the form that we see today?

Finally, let me just say where I stand on DNA. I believe that there should be a national DNA bank, established initially on a voluntary basis, whereby we no longer stigmatise the retention of DNA.

I believe that millions of people would provide their DNA if only to prove that this is the route we should be going down.

Only at the end of a process of introducing voluntary DNA will we be prepared at some stage in the future to take the necessary initiative to store all people’s DNA compulsorily, but let us start with a voluntary basis.

There might be some entrepreneur who is prepared to fund that kind of approach to the retention of DNA, but it is only by taking away the stigma that we release ourselves from the arguments that have led to this legislative change that we are confronted with today.

• Dale Campbell-Savours is a peer and former Labour MP. This is an edited version of a speech that he delivered in the House of Lords on the Protection of Freedoms Bill.