Lord Sandhurst (Con)

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and her eminent supporters for bringing forward these amendments, and to all noble Lords for their contributions in respect of Amendments 61 and 62. I think I can deal with Amendment 61 quite shortly. We have had powerful and compelling speeches on the amendment from its proposers. It seeks to remove a presumption that a computer and software system on which a prosecution relies is working and reliable. We all know what has prompted this: the terrible Post Office scandal. It is absolutely plain that prosecutors must no longer be able to rely on the systems being necessarily in working order as evidence for the purpose of criminal cases. The Government have had long enough now—and officials even longer than this Government—to look at this problem. If they have not, they have been prodded with a sharp stick by these amendments, and I am confident that, prodded with that sharp stick, they will come up with a solution. They will have to do so by Report, because otherwise I think this amendment will be carried then. I need not say any more. Amendment 62 proposes a new clause to prevent an overreliance on a person’s musical taste as probative of criminal proclivity or intent. On this side we agree that a person’s creative or artistic taste should not result in them being treated prejudicially by the judicial system. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, the noble Baronesses, Lady Lawrence of Clarendon and Lady Chakrabarti, and others in support of this amendment. We have some reservations about this amendment as it is currently drafted. We accept the good intentions behind it. We understand the danger it is designed to meet, namely that people are treated prejudicially for their creative and artistic tastes, and it is undoubtedly the case that those from particular backgrounds are vulnerable to this and may in effect suffer, or risk suffering, mistreatment in our courts. Against that, we fear also that the amendment might create other difficulties, creating genre-specific shields for certain evidence and thereby treating some expressions differently from others—in other words, shifting the balance too far and creating another class that is not protected. While we are sympathetic to this amendment, for those reasons we cannot support it.