Baroness Kidron (CB)

My Lords, I support Amendment 61, to which I have added my name, and associate myself with the noble Baroness’s words on Amendment 62. I was sitting here thinking that if I was guilty of the total creative expression that I have consumed, I would have to be locked up for life. It was moving to hear how one small fraction of the population is being discriminated against on this count, so I add my support on that issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble Lords, Lord Beamish and Lord Arbuthnot, have laid out the case comprehensively and persuasively. There is indeed a great deal of history to it. I thought it might be useful for me to concentrate on the justification of successive Governments for resisting it. This centres primarily around the idea that computers now permeate every aspect of life and that altering the presumption in law, in the words of the former Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, would bring into scope “evidence presented in every type of court proceeding and would have a detrimental effect on the courts and prosecution—potentially leading to unnecessary delays”.—[Official Report, 18/12/24; col. GC 160.] It is important to hear that, because it was almost identical to the words spoken by the previous Minister, the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, who said: “Almost all criminal cases rely on computer evidence to some extent, so any change to the burden of proof would or could impede the work of the Crown Prosecution Service and other prosecutors”,—[Official Report, 24/4/24; col. GC 580.] leading to great delays. In other words, they had exactly the same rebuttal to a suggestion that we made, as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, explained, in not one but two previous Bills. My worry is that the argument appears to be that computer evidence is so pervasive that we cannot change the law. But the reverse must also be true: if it is going to be so pervasive, how can we allow it to remain above the law?