Commenting as the Scottish Government launches a consultation on police powers to retain DNA and fingerprint evidence, Liberal Democrat Justice spokesperson Robert Brown MSP said:

“Scotland has a chance to stand out from the rest of the UK by resisting the erosion of our fundamental liberties. It is encouraging that this consultation does not propose the blanket retention of DNA samples.

“The Government has to be extremely careful about how it goes about defining 'serious violent or sexual offences', where it might be legitimate to retain children’s DNA for a period. For instance it would be entirely inappropriate to retain DNA from a fifteen year old boyfriend and girlfriend who were engaged in a physical relationship, which is classed as a sexual offence because they are under 16.”