For all the talk of Cameron and his grasp of detail the fact remains that Miliband may, as Swot of the Lower Fourth, have the nuts and bolts but he’s wrong – hopelessly, utterly wrong – on policy. To recap, today he asked the Prime Minister:
“Around 5,000 people each year are arrested on suspicion of rape and not charged … in certain cases these individuals have gone on to commit further offences and be convicted as a result of the DNA being held on the national database, but his proposal is that for those arrested and not charged the DNA would be disposed of straight away.
“I ask him again, why is it right to discard the DNA of those arrested but not charged with rape?”
Because, my dear boy, it is wrong for the state to treat the innocent as though they were guilty and wrong too for the state to claim a right to hold everyone’s DNA on the off-chance it might some day be helpful in solving some as yet uncomitted crime. And it is wrong because it changes, in ways seemingly small but nevertheless fundamental, the relationship between the individual and the state.
This remains true even when those concerned may be thought objectionable people or been suspected of even heinous crimes. They retain rights and a mere suspicion they may be a wrong ‘un is not nearly enough to remove those rights from them.
It seems sadly typical that of all the malignant aspects of the criminal justice system, Mr Miliband should object to one of this government’s benign policies. More than benign; right too. For all that he may know the details, Miliband’s attempt at a gotcha question revealed rather more about him and his party than it did about the Prime Minister and his.
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