Mary Cunneen, associate director of Liberty, says:

"The Police & Criminal Justice Bill may have no single measure that makes the public's blood run cold. But taken altogether, its myriad sly attacks on basic, hard-won freedoms heralds the most serious erosion of rights within the criminal justice system for many years.

"Storing the fingerprints and DNA samples of innocent 'ex-suspects' on the police's database of criminals goes against the basic idea of innocent until proven guilty and is a disproportionate infringement on an individual's right to privacy. Child curfew orders prevent parents from deciding whether to let their children out at night. They have never been used for under-10s - presumably because local authorities have realised that they're unnecessary. So now they are being extended from up to age 10 to 16 year olds.

"Using fixed penalties to avoid the the bother of a low-level disorder conviction again mixes civil and criminal law - convenient but not necessarily just.

"Reviews of detention in police stations- a fundamental protection to ensure that people are not detained for longer than necessary, and are detained in decent conditions - are to be carried out by lower ranking officers and by video. More worrying still, future changes to the rules governing detention may be made without being considered by Parliament.

"Many of the reforms are justified as plugging loopholes, or 'convenient'. But the significant incursions they make into our rights are not".