David Davis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 13 Mar 2025 · Post Office Horizon: Compensation · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that answer. He and I will agree that the Post Office Horizon scandal is one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in modern times, but the problems with the Post Office and its injustice extend far beyond that. Some 21 cases relating to the precursor system, Capture, which bear the same hallmarks as those in the Horizon scandal, have been referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. I am afraid that the CCRC is famous for taking years to come to obvious decisions, so can the Minister tell me that it will deal with this in months? If not, will his Department intervene directly?

• 13 Mar 2025 · Post Office Horizon: Compensation · Hansard source

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  11. What steps he is taking to ensure that compensation is paid to people impacted by the Post Office Horizon scandal in a timely manner.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q11. Four weeks ago, the Northern Ireland coroner accused British soldiers of unlawful killing after they engaged with IRA would-be murderers. After careful reading, as far as I can see, that judgment was based on no evidence whatsoever. More than 100 special forces soldiers have been summoned before those inquiries; not one IRA leader has been summoned in the same way. Soldiers who serve our country with honour, heroism and skill are being punished in their declining years for doing nothing but carrying out their patriotic duty in the face of enormous risks. Given how the Prime Minister opened his comments, with which I associate myself, does he not think that he and his Government have a duty to protect those soldiers from such partisan parodies of justice in their declining years?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Iranian State Threats · Hansard source

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  I know I bore the Minister incessantly with my repetitive calls for the proscription of the IRGC, so I welcome what he has to say today, particularly about the independent adviser’s review, which I hope will be rapidly available for him to take action. May I pick up the issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) about the need for a whole of Government response? That does not mean just the Foreign Office as well as the Home Office; it is wider than that. I could give the Minister a single example or a number of examples. Successive British Governments have stood aside while British universities have done military research in conjunction with Iranian researchers on battlefield armour, range-finding lasers, drones and fighter jets. Will he ensure that the whole of Whitehall brings the focus to this that is required?

• 11 Feb 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for taking this statement personally. I know that he did not have to, so I thank him for that. The Government gave notice at the election that they intended to remove the element of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 that protects soldiers and police who served during the troubles from prosecution. Last week’s frankly speculative judgment from the Northern Ireland coroner into the Clonoe shootings now exposes a number of soldiers to potential prosecution. These are men who served their country with honour, heroism and skill, sometimes in the face of the most incredible danger. They are now mostly in their 60s and 70s and no doubt hoping for a well-earned peaceful retirement. In his statement in December, the Secretary of State of spoke of “recognising the dedicated service of the vast majority of police officers, members of the armed forces and the security services who did so much to keep the people of Northern Ireland safe during the troubles.” [ Official Report , 4 December 2024; Vol. 758, c. 419.] So precisely what are the Government going to do to stop the vengeful pursuit of decent patriotic people? If the Government leave them open to persecution, it will frankly be shameful and serve only to further the IRA’s attempt to rewrite the history of Northern Ireland.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Clonoe Inquest · Hansard source

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  (Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to make a statement on the coroner’s ruling in the Clonoe inquest.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Sir Edward. Could you give us guidance? I thought—perhaps wrongly, because of my inexperience—that somebody representing petitioners in the Chamber had to make the argument for them and believe in what they are asking for. We have had absolutely the opposite today; the petitioners have had no service in this debate up until now.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  If we take it that the Government are trying to address the large tax avoiders—the Dysons and the billionaires who invest to avoid tax—and that they want to protect real farmers, it is perfectly possible for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to do so. Farmers are not on pay-as-you-earn; they all make submissions, every year, on the amount of time, work and effort they put in, and the money they make from farming. Would it not be possible to give an unlimited exemption to people who are real farmers, based on their HMRC submissions?

• 10 Feb 2025 · Armed Forces Recruitment · Hansard source

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  Soldiers will be leaving the Army, rather than being recruited, if we continue to allow the persecution of soldiers who served in Northern Ireland. Last week’s coroner’s report into the Clonoe and Coalisland shootings was 51 pages of facts and eight pages of naïve speculation, which led right into the IRA’s attempt to rewrite the history of Northern Ireland. Without the Northern Ireland legacy legislation, how will the Secretary of State prevent that, because if he fails, what should be a process of peace and reconciliation will turn into a vindictive, vengeful pursuit of men whose only sin was to serve their country with honour, heroism and skill, and in the most terrifying conditions? If we cannot prevent that, all the recruiting efforts will fail.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Can the Secretary of State explain to the House in what circumstances the police and the Crown Prosecution Service are allowed to deny access to evidence, after a trial has concluded, to a defence lawyer who is seeking to appeal, as has happened in the Lucy Letby case and, I believe, in others?

• 23 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Quite properly, this week the Government have been talking about applying AI to improve efficiency and effectiveness across Whitehall. When a human civil servant—let us say at His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs or the DWP—makes a mistake and is challenged, they can explain their logic and how they came to the decision. We know that the courts always believe that computers are best and give the right answer, but AI makes mistakes—sometimes huge ones. Because of the way it is programmed, it cannot explain how it got to the decision. How will the Government ensure that the appeal process continues to work and we do not have a high-tech version of the Post Office scandal?

• 23 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Southport Attack · Hansard source

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  I hope the Home Secretary will not take it as a discourtesy if I say to her that it should be the Prime Minister making this statement here today. This morning, he said on television that singleton terrorist attacks are a very new occurrence; they are not. They have been going on for nearly a decade. There have been many in London, including one in the yard of this House of Commons, and one that killed Sir David Amess, our colleague. In that attack on Sir David Amess, the police declared it a terrorist incident the same day. Without three Prevent references, without ricin, and without an al-Qaeda manual, they declared it a terrorist event the same day. So we all wonder why this was not the case here when there was such evidence. This is a clear mistake, is it not?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Trial of Lucy Letby · Hansard source

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  There is a case in justice for a retrial in my view, but there is a problem—I would say it is a technical problem. One of the problems we face is that much of the evidence was available at the time. What I have described is an expert analysis of the case notes that were there at the time, but it was simply not presented to the jury. That means that the Court of Appeal can dismiss it, basically saying that the defence should have presented it at the initial trial. It is in essence saying, “If your defence team weren’t good enough to present this evidence, hard luck, you stay banged up for life.” That may be judicially convenient, but it is not justice. This has been a historic problem in Britain, delaying the resolution of a number of miscarriage of justice cases. Secondly, the so-called expert evidence in this case largely amounted to putting together theories suiting the prosecution case, from the bogus statistical arguments through to the wrong diagnoses I have just detailed. Again, this problem is not new. In 2011 the Law Commission made a number of recommendations precisely on the handling of expert evidence. There is even a section in it entitled, “Inferring murder from unexplained infant deaths.” Those recommendations have not made it into law nearly 15 years later, and it is past time that was put right. Perhaps most worrying of all in this case is that it is just the latest example, more than a decade after the Mid Staffs scandal, of the national health service’s inability to analyse its own failings. This matters because until we learn these lessons, there will continue to be unnecessary deaths in hospitals up and down the country. My central argument today, which comes back to what my right hon. Friend asked me, is about what to do about a trial which, in my view, is a clear miscarriage of justice by a judicial system that could not manage admittedly difficult statistical and medical scientific evidence. The only body available to correct this today is the Criminal Cases Review Commission. In my view, it should look at all the new diagnoses when they come out, and if necessary consult the leading neonatal and statistical authorities in the land—the most expert people, who are much more equipped to give proper assessment than the experts who were employed by the police at the time. As a result, in my view it should order a retrial, and it should do it quickly. This is significant because the CCRC has recently been criticised—Members may have read about it in the Andrew Malkinson case, where there was effectively a 17-year delay in releasing him from prison. DNA evidence proving him innocent of the rape he was convicted of was known four years after his conviction, yet it took a further 13 years to correct it. That cannot happen again. We cannot repeat that. If, as I believe it will, a retrial clears Lucy Letby, she should be released in her thirties, not in her fifties.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Trial of Lucy Letby · Hansard source

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  I am not in the habit of issuing trigger warnings, but I must warn the House that this speech will cover deeply distressing events. I will discuss infant deaths, failures in care and allegations of a grave miscarriage of justice. Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven more. She received multiple concurrent full-life sentences. The case horrified the nation. It seemed clear: a nurse had turned into a serial killer. I initially accepted the tabloid characterisation of Letby as an evil monster, but then I was approached by many experts, including leading statisticians, neonatal specialists, forensic scientists, legal experts, and those who had served at the Chester hospital and are afraid to come forward. The experts included a past president of the Royal Statistical Society and a past president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health—people who were more knowledgeable than the purported experts whose evidence convicted Lucy Letby. They were all concerned by what they perceived as the false analyses and diagnoses used to persuade a lay jury to convict Letby. Sadly, none of us is a stranger to miscarriages of justice; there have simply been too many. The Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and the Stockwell Six are the famous ones, but the Exeter University miscarriage database lists nearly 500 people who have been wrongfully imprisoned. Astonishingly, wrong forensic evidence is responsible for 81 cases leading to over 500 years of unjust imprisonment. Many of those cases involve caregivers convicted by medical expert testimony asserting deliberate harm where causes of death were in fact natural. Those people were all exonerated, but those who doubted their guilt were initially met with the same fierce public pushback that now faces those who question Letby’s guilt. So what has happened here? The Countess of Chester hospital neonatal unit suffered a sharp increase in deaths, from a typical two to four a year to 17 in one 13-month period. When hospital senior management became aware of the elevated mortality in June 2016, they were alarmed and commissioned some investigations. The most notable was carried out in November 2016 by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, whose report noted many failings on the unit, all of which—at least in part, if not in total—could have been the cause of the deaths. The report highlighted inadequate staffing levels, delayed escalation of concerns to tertiary units and “disconnection between the neonatal leadership and the trust’s government and risk management processes.” In essence, because of a mixture of inadequate resources and poor medical management, the hospital was not capable of keeping those very fragile babies alive. That fact was recognised by the hospital when the neonatal unit was downgraded in July 2016 and stopped taking babies of less than 32 weeks’ gestation. The report, offering completely different reasons for the deaths, was never shown to the jury. Some consultants had attempted to blame Letby for the deaths. A redacted section of the report states: “The consultants explained that their allegation was based on Nurse L being on shift on each occasion an infant died (although not necessarily caring for the infant) combined with ‘gut feeling’. There was no other evidence or history to link Nurse L to the deaths, and her colleagues had expressed no concerns about her practice.”

• 8 Jan 2025 · Trial of Lucy Letby · Hansard source

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  No, I am afraid I will not—I am short of time. Again, that section of the report was never shown to the jury. Those consultants then persuaded management to call the police in April 2017. There was no hard evidence against Letby. Nobody saw her do anything untoward. The doctors’ “gut feeling” was based on a coincidence: she was on shift for a number of the deaths, but—and this is important—far from all of them. The case was built on a poor understanding of probabilities that was to translate later into an influential but spectacularly flawed piece of evidence. Around that time, the hospital was struggling with another problem—and possibly a more sensible explanation for this sudden increase in deaths. Leaked reports show that the hospital, and specifically the neonatal unit, battled a Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection for months. That antibiotic-resistant bug posed a serious risk to the babies. The child mortality rate for Pseudomonas aeruginosa ranges from 14.5% to 50%, and stands at over 55% for infants of extremely low birth weight, such as those in this case. It is hard to see how we can eliminate that as the cause of death or collapse for at least some of those babies. Again, the jury never knew about that contamination. From the start of the case, Cheshire police picked up on the doctors’ statistical arguments supposedly pointing to Letby. In April 2018, an officer on the investigation approached a leading statistician, Professor Jane Hutton, and asked her to put a figure on the likelihood of a nurse being on duty “during all the deaths/collapses” in the unit. Of course, that is a false proposition, as Letby was not on duty for anything like all the deaths—as we will see later—but that was glossed over at the trial. Notwithstanding that, Professor Hutton informed the police that any proper statistical inquiry should not concentrate on one staff member from the outset. Instead, it would require full, proper research into all possible explanations for any increase in babies collapsing, including their medical conditions and prematurity, as well as the broader performance of the unit. One would think that would be common sense. Cheshire police then signed a consultancy agreement with Professor Hutton, but in 2021, after Letby had been charged, the police wrote an email to Professor Hutton, stating: “We have had a further meeting this afternoon where we have informed the prosecutors that we were looking at the validity of statistical evidence again in the case… The prosecutor…has instructed us not to pursue this avenue any further at present.” This appears to be in direct contravention of part 3.3 of the code for Crown prosecutors, which states: “Prosecutors cannot direct the police or other investigators.” Again, the jury was never informed of Professor Hutton’s explicit advice to the police that their statistical approach was flawed. This matters enormously, because the most powerfully influential piece of evidence in the case was the prosecution King’s counsel showing a table with Letby listed as the only nurse on duty for all of the alleged murders and inflicted injuries. Professor Hutton, who has reviewed the case extensively, believes that deeply flawed statistical evidence was used, and has said that the statistical errors are “similar to those…in the Sally Clark case but worse.” Sally Clark was convicted and then acquitted of the murder of her two sons based on flawed statistical evidence. In May 2017, Dewi Evans, a retired doctor who runs a business that provides highly paid medical “expert evidence” in court cases, approached the National Crime Agency to volunteer his services. Evans’s opinion that Letby injected air either into the babies’ veins, causing air embolism, or down the nasogastric tube into the stomach, stopping the babies’ breathing, was one of the foundations—indeed, probably the major foundation—of the prosecution case. This supposed evidence is hugely controversial. Three months into the murder trial, Letby’s defence team applied for evidence from Dewi Evans to be excluded due to an adverse judgment from a judge in a previous case, who said that a report by Dr Evans was “worthless” and “makes no effort to provide a balanced opinion”. In an extraordinary and—as far as I can see—unprecedented intervention, that very judge, Lord Justice Jackson, actually wrote to the trial judge with his judgment on Dr Evans attached, clearly indicating how unsuitable Evans was as an expert witness. Evans’s assertion of murder by air embolism was entirely based on a research paper from 1989, and its relevance in these cases has been robustly challenged by the actual author of that paper. Evans changed his opinion on several key issues during the trial, and is now accused by Letby’s lawyer of changing his opinion again since the end of the appeal process. Evans disputes this, but if Members are interested, I suggest that they compare his evidence recorded in the trial transcript of 1 November 2022 with his signed statement to Channel 5 on 3 August 2024 and decide for themselves. It is also the case that Evans has submitted a new report to the police. What is extraordinary, however, is that the Crown Prosecution Service has refused to provide a copy of that report to Letby’s current defence counsel. Questions have also been raised about the second expert witness for the prosecution, Dr Sandie Bohin. Eight families are currently filing formal complaints against her over their children’s care, which are being considered by the General Medical Council. That brings us to the actual cases and causes of the deaths. Two expert neonatologists—consultant working neonatologists—are working through the cases to establish the actual causes of the babies’ deterioration and deaths. They are doing so thoroughly, so this is taking time. So far, they have completed two detailed case reviews for babies O and C. There are five more that will be completed in the near future. In the case of Baby O, the prosecution claimed the baby was attacked with blunt trauma to the liver and had air injected into the nasogastric tube. The case notes tell a different story, showing how the doctors used excessive ventilation pressure during resuscitation, which overinflated the baby’s lungs and prevented blood from flowing back to the lungs. This caused the baby to desaturate his blood oxygen level repeatedly. The medical team responded by increasing the pressures even more, initiating a downward spiral in the baby’s condition. The overinflation of the baby’s lungs forced the diaphragm downwards, pushing the liver into the baby’s abdominal cavity. The consultant in charge took a decision to insert a needle into the abdomen to release what they thought was gas pressure in the abdomen. However, this was wrongly inserted into the right side of the baby’s abdomen. As a result of this error, the needle penetrated the liver, causing serious internal bleeding. This was undoubtedly a significant contributory factor in the baby’s death, if not the outright cause. The report states that the “deterioration was predictable, and his death was avoidable and resulted from suboptimal care.” The author of that sub-optimal care, the doctor who inserted the needle into the liver, was one of the principal accusers of Lucy Letby at the trial. This directly contradicts the prosecution’s portrayal of events. The trauma to the liver was caused by a serious error by one of the consultants who led the accusations against Letby. The experts also stated that there was no air in the gut in excess of what would be expected for a baby in these circumstances. None of this was made clear to the jury. The prosecution’s evidence was again predicated on Dewi Evans’s diagnosis, which in this specific case alone changed multiple times. In the case of Baby C, the prosecution claimed this was a healthy baby killed by air being injected into his stomach. The case notes for Baby C demonstrate that this baby was actually profoundly unwell before birth. The baby suffered from severe foetal growth restriction. This meant the baby had to be delivered by caesarean section at an extraordinarily low birth weight, even for that gestation, of 800 grams or about 1.75 lb. Within an hour of birth, he developed respiratory distress. To treat the respiratory problems, they tried to deliver surfactant, a mixture that helps babies’ lungs to expand better—open up—down an endotracheal tube. The case notes, however, show that the doctor pushed the tube too far in, pushing it into one lung, meaning that the other lung was left collapsed. In the days after the baby’s birth, he showed several signs of abdominal obstruction, including the vomiting of bile, and he never opened his bowels since birth, which the doctor in charge did not recognise or diagnose. The report concludes by stating that this baby died of natural causes compounded by sub-optimal medical care. This again directly contradicts the prosecution’s narrative of deliberate harm. Dewi Evans’s diagnosis claimed the baby had air injected into the stomach, so he could no longer breathe. This was predicated on an X-ray showing an unusual amount of air on the stomach. It has become clear that Letby was not even at the hospital when the X-ray was taken, nor had she been at any point till then since Baby C’s birth two days earlier. While the baby died from natural causes, there is evidence of sub-optimal care, including “the administration of surfactant and the lack of recognition and appropriate management of signs of abdominal obstruction”. Again, the doctor responsible for these errors was another one of those who made accusations against Lucy Letby and, again, none of this was made clear to the jury. There is a great deal of evidence demonstrating that there are much more likely alternative causes of these tragic deaths than those put up by the prosecuting team. The most likely is that the hospital’s neonatal unit was not up to caring for these fragile children, in terms of either resource or skill, and this shortcoming might have been compounded by other factors such as the Pseudomonas infection.

• 7 Jan 2025 · NHS Waiting Times · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State knows that I wrote to him before Christmas about the planned ward closures and degradation of services at Goole and district general hospital. Doing so will take beds, facilities and employees away from the national health service, which will do nothing but undermine his real attempts to reduce waiting lists and all the plans he announced yesterday. Will he look at the trust-level decision systems that lead to such catastrophic decisions that will undermine every aspect of NHS strategy and all that he is trying to do?

• 29 Nov 2024 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will try to keep it brief and stick with procedure. The decision we are taking today must be, for most Members, one of the most painful decisions. It certainly is for me. I am someone who has changed his position. I am a believer in the sanctity of life, but I am also an antagonist to torture and misery at the end of life. Accordingly, I intend to vote for the Bill on Second Reading. I say to those who have made procedural comments that Second Reading is a point of principle, not a point of conclusion. I have changed my position because since the scandal of Dr Shipman and the murders he carried out, the behaviour of the health service has changed. I have witnessed, with constituents in particular, any number of people who have died slowly and in agony beyond the reach of palliative care—the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) made the point brilliantly—so that no matter how well we do it, we cannot fix that problem. Secondly, I am going to disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse): it is not insulting to critique what others who have tried this have done. The countries that have tried this provide a wide range of examples and outcomes. If on Third Reading I think that the outcome we are heading towards is Belgium, I will vote against; and if the outcome is Canada, I will probably vote against. If it is Australia, I will vote in favour. That is what the next stage of this process is about. I say to both the Bill’s sponsors that it has a number of areas that they know I think they have to put right—about a dozen, in truth.

• 29 Nov 2024 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am afraid not, as I have only five minutes. I will pick one of those areas, as it is technical and awkward. Clause 4(2) appears to give doctors the right to initiate the process. But after the “Do not resuscitate” scandal during the covid crisis, I do not want that at any price—I do not want the state initiating this process. That is critical for me. I am really making the point that the decision on Second Reading is about principle, not outcome. The hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) has said that she will work hard to make the Committee work. I am sure she will, and she may succeed. But I say this to the Government. I understand perfectly well that they are trying to maintain a route of strict neutrality, but there is a distinction between neutrality and responsibility. They need to focus on responsibility. This Bill is more important than most of the Bills in their manifesto; I am not trying to be rude. Is the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) here? He got mobbed over breakfast by people talking about this. More people in the Dog and Duck care about this than they do about most other things that we are doing, so it deserves four days on Report in Government time over the course of several weeks. We do not need a royal commission. The House can do this, but it needs to be given the option. I say to the Government that the path of responsibility is to give us the time to get this right. If we get it right, it will be one of the things that we can be proudest of in the coming years. I reiterate that I want the Bill to succeed. It is more important than most Bills that we handle. It cannot be dealt with in five hours here and a few hours in Committee. I will vote for it today, but I want the Government to help me be able to vote for a good Bill at the end.

• 25 Nov 2024 · Speaker’s Statement · Hansard source

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  Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. When I first arrived in the House, it was common in the Conservative party—the Thatcherite Conservative party, I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh)—to view John Prescott as public enemy No. 1. It was an act that he loved playing into, in public at least. That being said, outside the studio or the Chamber, he was friendly and helpful, certainly to me. Indeed, he was almost the best possible constituency neighbour one could want. John Prescott was quintessentially a working-class hero—an identity that I suspect the current Deputy Prime Minister also adopts. Of course, he was a brilliant constituency ally and a forceful defender of the interests of the people of Hull, with the emphasis on force. However, he was also a necessary champion of the new Labour party. The Prime Minister referred implicitly to the fact that John Prescott delivered one man, one vote. We should remember that it was an act of huge courage for him to take on his own union allies, I think at about one hour’s notice, and persuade them to support the neophyte Tony Blair. Frankly, despite the snobbery of the London establishment about John Prescott’s education, it was a very unwise person who underestimated his intellect. He was a formidable and brilliant innovator on—I am looking at the Environment Secretary—the environment, on Europe, on devolution and on a whole range of things. He was what we would all hope to be: not a creature of history, but a changer of history. For that, we should always admire him. To put to one side all those grand things, he was also greatly, greatly loved by his family. On that basis, I offer my condolences to Pauline and the rest of the family.

• 25 Nov 2024 · Israel-Gaza Conflict: Arrest Warrants · Hansard source

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  The Minister may be aware that I have fought the corner for international courts time and again in this House. I view upholding the authority of those courts and their reputation as very important. The difficulty here is not just that Israel is a democracy, but that it has an internal, independent judiciary, which puts a limit on what any Government can do in Israel. That is why equating—or appearing to equate—Netanyahu with all the other monsters that the International Criminal Court has quite properly prosecuted risks bringing the court into disrepute.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T3. Last year, nearly 50 British universities were identified as having research ties with what are deemed very high-risk Chinese institutions. Subsequently, the intelligence services briefed 24 universities on resisting the infiltration attempts of foreign agencies, but the Intelligence and Security Committee report states that it is “highly likely” that joint UK-China research projects are used for military purposes. What is the Department doing to protect our research and our security?

• 13 Nov 2024 · Facial Recognition: Police Use · Hansard source

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  On precisely that point, some police forces in the UK take the view that GDPR has reach in this area. Does my right hon. Friend have a view on that?

• 13 Nov 2024 · Facial Recognition: Police Use · Hansard source

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  I am very much on the hon. Lady’s side of that argument, partly because we are a country where it is not normal to stop people and ask for their identity cards, which is why we have had a few battles over that in the past. Also, the technology is prone to slippage. Way back when—probably when the hon. Lady was still at school—we introduced automatic number plate recognition to monitor IRA terrorists coming from Liverpool to London. That was its exact purpose, but thereafter it got used for a dozen other things, without any legislative change or any approval by Parliament.

• 13 Nov 2024 · Facial Recognition: Police Use · Hansard source

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  I agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson), but it goes deeper than that. There are at least three conditions that ought to apply, and I would be interested to hear from my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) whether Essex met them. First, these things always ought to be under judicial oversight; it should not simply be a police decision. Secondly, as he said, only the records of presumed guilty or actively sought people should be kept and, thirdly, that innocent people’s records should be destroyed straightaway. That should not be left to a guideline; it should be under legislative control and properly treated in that way.