Senior Tory calls for greater transparency over MPs' expenses.

David Davis MP, Shadow Home Secretary

ANDREW MARR: Now, as we've been talking about the debate raging over DNA samples why, I wonder, must debates always rage? Anyway, this one is at least hot to the touch.

Fingerprinting was discovered more than a century ago but DNA profiling's been around only for a few years now.

It is proving very effective though and it's enabling police to solve crimes that previously defeated them, but at what price?

Government ministers and newspaper editorials are warning that putting all adults on a universal database goes too far. Well I'm joined now by David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary.

DAVID DAVIS: Forgive my opening smile, I just think it comes to something when John Mortimer and I agree about Brown's Britain. But go on.

ANDREW MARR: Well there we go, absolutely, absolutely. And I trust that you also start the day with a swig of champagne?

DAVID DAVIS: Smoke and champagne, absolutely.

ANDREW MARR: Yeah, good, good. Let's turn to these two cases, because what struck me about them was that both of these dreadful men were caught because of their DNA, and the police had their DNA for relatively trivial reasons - an 80 quid theft and a bar brawl. Now, does that not make the case that actually a DNA database has become essential, and that as many samples of DNA as possible should be on it?

DAVID DAVIS: Well no it doesn't. I mean the first thing to say about this small crime-big crime relationship is it's very common. That nearly everybody who breaks the law breaks the law in many ways. To give you a sort of silly example, when the police do checks on vehicle licensing and insurance they invariably sweep up a lot of people who are much more serious criminals than those two, albeit important things. And so the same thing applies with DNA.

Now, the other side of it is this - do you want to turn Britain into a nation of suspects? I mean we have always had this presumption in our law that the basis of our freedom is that we don't presume somebody is guilty until they're proven guilty. And what this would do is in effect change the relationship between this proposal of having everybody on DNA database, change the relationship between the ordinary citizen and the state, the government.

ANDREW MARR: I understand that. It is clearly a very, very difficult debate. What I'm wondering is whether these cases and cases like them, there's quite a few now building up, don't make you think yeah, but on the other hand what about those women who would not have been, you know, who would have been at risk if they hadn't been caught? What about the other side of it, what about the victims? Isn't this something that in the end works?

DAVID DAVIS: Oh yes, I mean this argument spreads all over the place in terms of how our police work and so on. But the simple truth is that fingerprinting, as you said, has been around for a long time.

There's never ever been a call for a universal fingerprint database, the same arguments exactly apply, that you know you are in effect criminalising the entire population.

And the simple point is that there are ways of improving the database. At the moment we have the biggest DNA database in the world - 4 million plus, 4.2 million. Of those about a million people are not convicted or cautioned of anything.

ANDREW MARR: If the European Court gets its way they will be removed, they will be removed from the national database.

DAVID DAVIS: Yes, and I'd be willing to bet that actually...

ANDREW MARR: Would you approve of that?

DAVID DAVIS: Well, let's see the court outcome, but I'd be willing to bet that actually that change will not change materially the number of people convicted because the likelihood is that a massive, a massive thrust of DNA database effectiveness is through people who are convicted already, as was the case in both of these cases we've had in this week.

ANDREW MARR: But we both know that the police pick up people who have committed offences, and then fail to get them convicted, or fail to be able to prove that they committed a crime, that happens all the time.

DAVID DAVIS: Of course it happens.

ANDREW MARR: Sp some of those people will go on to commit worse crimes, so is it not right for them...

DAVID DAVIS: So you're going to put everybody on the database?

ANDREW MARR: No, I'm asking you about people stopped by the police.

DAVID DAVIS. There are better ways. I mean let me give you a couple of examples.

ANDREW MARR: So you would be against...

DAVID DAVIS: I'm broadly against having innocent people's database held by the state. For a number of reasons, not just that it an identifier, I mean after all, DNA is an incredibly intrusive thing, it tells people lots about you, it tells people who your mother and father are, for a start.

And all sorts of other aspects about your health and nature. But let's come back to this issue, there are ways of improving the database. A little while ago we asked the government how many people in prison, after these laws that allowed it had been passed, how many people in prison are not on the DNA database? It turned out there were over 5,000 people currently in prison who are not on the database. Now they fixed that, or at least they fixed it for 4,000 of them. But what about past criminals, what about that.

Now we have never had a debate in parliament to say what's a way of making this database more effective but with the minimum intrusion on the liberties of the ordinary British citizen? So that's, that's on half of it. The other half you've got to bear in mind is that there's a whole other aspect of this about the handling of the data. Only last week we hard about 4,000 DNA samples being sent to this country of known criminals in Holland, serious criminals, people with very serious backgrounds.

And what happened? They lost that for a year, you know, and I think the public at large want to see the government taking a much more careful and serious attitude to data handling before it sees any extension of the database. Same is true with one of the cases we've just had, I mean I think it was Mr. Dixie, who came from Australia, who'd been Australia for several years, and there wasn't a transfer of information about him, not just DNA, criminal information.

ANDREW MARR: So you're not against a bigger DNA database, but you're against a bigger DNA database that includes innocent people?

DAVID DAVIS: Yes, absolutely.

ANDREW MARR: Right, OK. Let's move on to another thing. Shami Chakrabati was talking about this, the 42 days issue, where the government seems to be in some trouble. Your latest guess, are they going to be defeated in the House of Commons?

DAVID DAVIS: Well it's always hard to know because the whips, the government whips office is a very effective operation for changing people's voting intentions. But the simple truth is that if it comes down to the argument then they'll lose. I mean, Shami put it actually rather well, she said this is a policy of which nobody is proud. And when I talk to Labour backbenchers and frontbenchers actually, none of them are proud of this policy. They see it as raw politics, they don't see it as a way of improving security.

Many of them now as well, see it as actually a policy which will actively antagonise the Muslim community. Now, think of the biggest single problem that faces, that two biggest single problems that face our intelligence and security agencies, including the police. One is the rate of radicalisation, you know, we heard only, what, earlier last year, the head of MI5 saying 2,000 people who are a threat, and the other is the inability to get intelligence from those communities.

ANDREW MARR: And this harms both of them, in your view?

DAVID DAVIS: This makes both of those materially worse, really really materially worse.

ANDREW MARR: OK, let's move on to another thing that's across a lot of papers today which is the drinking culture. Not just the middle class drinking culture but particularly the aggressive street violence of boozed-up kids. Huge amount of debate but what can actually be done about it?

DAVID DAVIS: Well the first thing to recognise is what's gone wrong, I mean, the 24-hour drinking proposals, we said they should pilot, they didn't. We've now got 40%-50% increase in related crime. We've got in the middle of the night police being diverted, we've got hospitals getting young kids...

ANDREW MARR: Some statistics are down actually. I mean when it comes to drink-driving and alcohol-fuelled incidents of that kind. They're down a bit.

DAVID DAVIS: Last year a million people suffered drunken, drink-related violent crime. I mean that's not down. That's a very, very serious question.

ANDREW MARR: So what would you do about it?

DAVID DAVIS: Well there are a number of things. We've got to do something about the fact that people can drink, or youngsters in particular can drink eight pints of high strength lager for less than a fiver. That can't be right.

ANDREW MARR: So you'd raise, you think the Chancellor should raise the price of alcohol?

DAVID DAVIS: I don't think we'd jump right into that particular solution. First problem, well let me answer the question. The first problem is that we are told by Tesco and others that they can't do anything about it because of competition law. Well if that's true we should be looking at that.

It's a perfectly sensible thing to look at. What we've got at the moment is that companies behaving without social responsibility in this area work because of the law, that's ridiculous. So there's an area there. We've got to look very hard at this 24-hour drinking regime. If at the very least, at very least we should give power back to locals to decide.

If you live more than 200 yards from a pub and you want to complain about the licensing, or for that matter an off licence, and you want to complain about it, you actually, typically your evidence is take out of consideration. There are whole series of areas where we need to radically revise...

ANDREW MARR: The price of drinking is part of it?

DAVID DAVIS: Of course it is.

ANDREW MARR: And if the Chancellor raised the price of booze that's something that would be a good thing.

DAVID DAVIS: Well it's not, with respect, it's not just a question for the Chancellor. You've now picked the bluntest instrument possible.

ANDREW MARR: It's a big instrument.

DAVID DAVIS: Tax across the board to everybody, people who drink responsibly and people who drink irresponsibly. What I'm saying is at the moment you've got, what appear to be, regimes, commercial regimes which effectively a 22p a can put very high-strength in the hands of young people. Now that, that is, that's a very narrow but very, very important problem. And it may be that the better way of dealing with it is not tax but maybe something else.

ANDREW MARR: All right, last question, very straightforward, is the Speaker in trouble?

DAVID DAVIS: Well clearly he's got problems. I mean I don't want to comment on an individual case frankly, I mean I wouldn't on anybody else for that matter either. I mean the House of Commons has got a problem.

The House of Commons needs to be much more transparent about these things which is why we've made, and David's made a proposal, it's more than a proposal, it's actually a promise, that we will put all of the frontbench and we'll encourage all of the backbench to put all of their expenses in the public domain...

ANDREW MARR: But you're not going to say it's time for Michael Martin to resign?

DAVID DAVIS: Actually that's not something for a frontbencher of either side to do. I mean it's a House of Commons matter, it's not for the frontbench, absolutely the wrong thing. And anyway, as Shadow Home Secretary I do try to commenting on individual cases.

ANDREW MARR: All right, David Davis, thank you very much indeed for joining us.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

Your comments

Disclaimer: The BBC may edit your comments and cannot guarantee that all emails will be published.