Government drops DNA retention powers from police Bill
During the House of Lords Committee Stage of the Policing and Crime Bill this week (20th October) the government announced that they have dropped controversial DNA retention powers from the bill, introduced following a European Court of Human Rights ruling in December 2008.
The bill had contained an enabling power allowing the Home Secretary to make regulations for the retention and destruction of DNA thus passing new guidelines without proper parliamentary debate. Government Minister Lord Brett said: "As soon as parliamentary time allows, we will bring forward appropriate measures which will place the detail of the retention periods in primary legislation, allowing full debate and scrutiny of the issue in both Houses".
But Baroness Neville-Jones was not impressed, she said: "The Minister justifies the production of a framework Bill on the ground that speed is needed. It is difficult to talk about speed when the [Marper] judgment was in December last year. The Government could have proceeded more speedily than they have. Given the Government's attitude to some of the legislation, they should have known that others would not be happy with them introducing a framework Bill and that there would have been a very lengthy debate and an attempt to amend. I can see why the Government have withdrawn the proposal".
Meanwhile ....ID card polls show support lower than ever.
That may be after what happened this Summer.
ID cards and the worst of public sector IT failures government plans to store ID card biometrics data on a controversial system used by thousands of public workers might be scrapped. The Home Office has confirmed it is reconsidering plans to use the Customer Information System system to store biometric data for the ID card scheme.
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