Police and Justice Bill

I do not know that I will necessarily be involving myself in helping anyone out of a hole; I am just going to try to respond to the points. The noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, obviously well understand the purpose of Clause 11 and so I am not going to recite it. The primary purpose, as both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord know, is for the supply of information to allow the police and other law enforcement agencies to identify attempts to utilise the personal details of those who have recently died to perpetrate fraud. This will help to combat impersonation of the deceased fraud, as it is commonly known, and to reduce the impact on the bereaved relatives of the recently deceased who have to deal with the consequences of the identity of their loved ones being stolen. As the noble Baroness acknowledged, deaths registration information is already in the public domain. More specifically, of course, any person can obtain a copy of an entry in a death register in the form of a certificate, provided that they can identify that entry and pay the statutory fee for that certificate. However, under current statutory provisions, information about all deaths is not available quickly enough to those organisations with an interest in the prevention and detection of impersonation of the deceased fraud, nor is it available in a format that would necessarily assist them for those purposes. This is important for this reason: identity crime is on the increase. CIFAS, the UK’s fraud prevention service, estimates that there were some 70,000 instances of impersonation of the deceased fraud in 2004, at a cost of some £300 million to the economy, and that at the current rate of growth we will see this reach perhaps 100,000 instances per year by 2007. Those are fairly horrifying and staggering statistics. This provision will help to reduce the existing levels of, and stem the predicted increase in, impersonation of the deceased fraud by allowing the Registrars General for England and Wales and Northern Ireland to supply death registration information to particular organisations as soon as it becomes available. It will also be supplied in a format that can be used effectively by the police and others to help to detect when an attempt is being made to steal or use the identity of a deceased person. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, knows well that the effect of the amendment would be to limit the scope of the provision so that the Registrars General could supply information only to the police, special police forces and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. The noble Baroness asked the important question, echoing the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, about to which other organisations we might want that information supplied. Clearly, other organisations will want to contribute to the fight against impersonation of the deceased fraud. Indeed, it is those very organisations that can probably have an even greater impact on the prevention of this type of fraud. Those organisations might include government departments or agencies or an organisation in the financial services industry—that is much more likely, I would have thought, given that there are apparently big opportunities in that sector—such as banks, building societies, insurance companies or credit reference agencies. Timely notification of a person’s death person can provide the means by which, for example, a marker can be made against that person’s record, his account, his mortgage or his insurance policy so as to reduce the risks of an improper transaction leading to fraud. The disclosure of that information does not raise any data protection issues, as the Data Protection Act 1998 applies only to the living. The Information Commissioner's Office has been consulted on the proposals and has raised no concerns. A detailed implementation strategy is being developed by the Registrars General. The plan is to have an application process that will establish, from all organisations that have requested to be supplied with information, how that information will be used, how it will be processed, where it will be stored and other relevant issues. When applying organisations have satisfied these requirements, information will be supplied only for use in connection with the prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of offences and for no other purpose. It is anticipated that successful applicants will be subject to a regime that will include a licence agreement and appropriate compliance arrangements. It is likely that any misuse of the information may lead to the supply of further information being suspended or ultimately withdrawn. In summary, the proposed compliance arrangements will provide assurance that information will not be supplied to inappropriate organisations and that misuse will be dealt with firmly. It is worth noting that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee did not in its report on the Bill pass comment on the order-making power that the noble Lord’s amendment would remove. We can take it from the committee’s silence that it did not view either the order-making power or the level of parliamentary scrutiny as objectionable. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that impersonation of the deceased fraud is a real problem that needs to be tackled in the most effective way. We believe that this clause provides an important step in the fight against this most pernicious and insidious of crimes. I hope that, having heard what I have said—including that we will ensure that a series of processes is put in place and that there will be a limit on the organisations that will have access to this information and a proper operable scheme—I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.