Politicians tend to disagree with one another on a lot of issues – luckily, catching criminals is not one of them. That is why the Liberal Democrats will be voting with the Government on the decision to opt-in to Prum: an EU process which allows member states to quickly exchange DNA, fingerprint and vehicle information in order to identify and catch serious criminals and terrorists.
The last time this decision was put in front of Parliament during the Coalition the Liberal Democrats couldn’t agree to it. At that point there were still millions of innocent people on DNA databases and schoolchildren were having their fingerprints taken in schools. The Freedoms Act 2012 put a stop to this, and with the additional safeguards the Home Secretary is proposing we can support opting-in to Prum this time round.