Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)

My Lords, on Amendment 21, which is about the reliability of computer evidence, I am grateful to Sam Stein KC for his advice on this difficult issue. I am also extremely grateful to the Minister for meeting me and other signatories to this group, which is quite remarkable given her workload. Earlier today, we were discussing modern slavery: I think that she has fallen foul of it. She understood the urgency of dealing with the issue of the reliability of computer evidence and I came away from that meeting with the impression that she is determined to address it through the Criminal Procedure Rules rather than through the legislative process that we propose today. Maybe that is right, but I have three questions for her. First, will she agree to further meetings, perhaps involving Sam Stein KC, so that we can do our best to get these rules right, dealing not just with the issue of hearsay evidence but also with the issue of the admissibility of computer evidence? Secondly, in the meeting that she and I had, we discussed an issue that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, in Committee—namely, international comparisons. The Minister kindly sent me a letter today setting out some of those international comparisons, in which she said that it was clear that, in France, digital evidence must be shown to be reliable and unaltered; in Germany, systems must meet formal test protocols before their output can be relied on; in India, it is required that evidence must be authenticated through a strict statutory process; and so it goes on. In other words, they are much more restrictive on computer evidence than we are and their criminal processes have not ground to a halt.