One of the least edifying dimensions of Labour's thirteen years of power was watching successive Home Secretaries attempting to prove that they could be as mindlessly macho as any Tory who had held the post.
When forced to choose between a defence of civil liberties and the sacrifice of hard-fought freedoms at the altar of tabloid prejudice, they opted for the latter with unsavoury eagerness. One Home Secretary after another sought to undermine those who opposed their authoritarian measures by suggesting that being guided by long-held principles is naïve. In the real world, they contended, governments have to take grown-up decisions... and grown-up decisions are difficult. Like over-bearing parents convinced of their own infallibility, each of these Home Secretaries told us that they were stripping us of our civil liberties for our own good. If we only knew what they knew then we'd understand but, of course, they couldn't reveal the details without compromising the intelligence services. They constantly used this morally bankrupt formulation to make the argument that it's irresponsible of us to defend our freedom.
Why did they do this? According to the apologists, it's because it's the only way a left-wing government can avoid accusations of weakness. They believe that law and order is an issue 'owned' by the right and a Labour government has to act tough to win the trust of a sceptical public. But the credentials of those who level this argument are seldom questioned. Who gave a coterie of tabloid journalists the right to suggest that their prejudices represent public opinion? Why aren't politicians of the left courageous enough to challenge this orthodoxy? Why are they so convinced they can't win the argument?
Okay, so that's how they behave when they govern but it's different in opposition, isn't it? Opposition provides you with an opportunity to declare your true principles and stand up for them? Not if the wind is blowing in the other direction, it doesn't.
At Prime Minister's Questions today, Ed Miliband challenged David Cameron over a proposal to discard the DNA of men who are arrested for rape but not charged. Miliband claimed that evidence from this database had been used to secure convictions for crimes committed after the arrest and release of some of these suspect. He then quoted Angie Conway from Rape Crisis who has said that deciding whether or not this data should be retained is a “no-brainer”.
Both Miliband and Conway are wrong to describe it as a no-brainer. It's a complicated issue and very much a 'brainer'.
Let's examine what Ed Miliband said today.
The individuals he's talking about haven't even faced a criminal trial because he referred specifically to men who have been accused but not charged (presumably because of a lack of evidence). That should be that. The rule of law cannot be suspended simply because someone has been accused of one of the more serious crimes on the statute book... the presumption of innocence ought to be sacrosanct.
So you'd need a pretty compelling argument to justify a violation of this fundamental right. It sounded as though Ed Miliband's had one when he sternly pointed out that the DNA evidence provided by the database had been used to convict such men for crimes that they committed subsequently. If retaining this DNA leads to the imprisonment of rapists then it still wouldn't be a no-brainer but it would make it good deal harder to suggest the relevant samples should be deleted from the database.
But, in any case, that's not what Ed Miliband said. All he revealed was that some of these men had been convicted of subsequent crimes. He didn't say whether these subsequent crimes were sexual in nature or even whether they were serious. He left fellow MPs and the public to draw their own inferences and deliberately allowed an impression to be formed that these men were subsequently arrested for rape.
In fact, the example he cites actually highlights one of the dangers of allowing DNA evidence to be retained in this fashion. It has to do with what the military calls 'mission creep'. We hand the police a specific power under the proviso that it's only to be used in very specific circumstances... legislators might even give the law that provides these powers a name that hints at its theoretical limits, such as the Terrorism Act 2000. But the police are under enormous pressure to control potentially volatile situations and they are rather canny at exploiting the tools at their disposal. Environmental protesters at Heathrow Airport in 2007 were threatened with powers deriving from the Terrorism Act even though it was obvious that they were not terrorists. And participants at many other peaceful protests have found themselves faced with the possibility of arrest under the terms of this versatile legislation.
It's fair to assume that a universal DNA database would be similarly abused by the police. Professor Alec Jeffreys who is widely regarded as the father of genetic fingerprinting is among those who oppose the use of DNA to identify a suspect. He points out that DNA evidence is excellent if you already have other evidence because the odds of the perpetrator's DNA matching that of the suspect are extremely long. But the same evidence used as part of 'a fishing expedition' dramatically changes the maths and the chances of a miscarriage of justice increases massively. That's why Jeffreys believes that only the DNA of convicted criminals should be retained.
These arguments are complicated and require a proper understanding of genetic fingerprinting; statistical analysis and the rule of law. Anyone who thinks this issue is a 'no brainer' is offering a woefully simplistic consideration of what's at stake.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Miliband's decision to attack the Government on this issue was based on the embarrassment provoked by Ken Clarke's mishandling of a live interview on a proposed change to sentencing. The media generated outrage provided an opportunity for Miliband to suggest that cost-cutting measures were a greater priority than the safety of the public and there was a great deal of sanctimony on display because Clarke was wrongly thought to have been flippant about rape.
Clearly, the Labour leader has warmed to this theme. Today's attack was a transparent attempt to open a new front to draw further attention to the idea that the current Government is soft on rapists. It was as cynical a piece of political opportunism as you're ever likely to see. It submerged a complex debate beneath a pile of exploitative and misleading nonsense and demonstrated that we're further than ever from having a principled party of the left who liberals can support at election time.
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