Serious Crime Bill [HL]

As we come to the close of the Committee stage—not quite yet, but we are getting there—it is about time that I put on record my gratitude to the Minister of State and her noble friend for the full, detailed and courteous way in which they have handled these matters. That is one of the joys of this place, when one debates such matters. This is a serious Bill for serious crime—I apologise for the cliché, but it is an important Bill, and I understand what the Government are getting at. It is our job to try to redress the balance between the state and the private individual. Having said that, proceedings in this place seem so much more constructive, and there is an element of give and take that has been for some years rather absent in another place. My name and that of my noble friend Lord Dholakia are attached to Amendment No. 115, which has already been covered extremely competently by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and on which we have had discussions and briefings from Liberty. It would require Parliament to pass primary legislation to add further purposes for which data-matching or mining may be undertaken. As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, the reasons for such provision have been demonstrated. At present, the only purposes for which data-matching may be conducted are the prevention and detection of fraud. The Bill would, however, also confer a power on the Secretary of State to extend the purposes for which data-mining may be conducted. It also provides a non-exhaustive list of additional purposes including, "““the prevention and detection of crime … the apprehension and prosecution of offenders … the recovery of debt owing to public bodies””." Data-mining may help to detect fraud and may also have benefits in relation to those other purposes. Nevertheless, as we have discussed and I have mentioned, it is far from clear that those benefits are sufficient to justify the sweeping invasions of privacy that indiscriminate data-sharing and data-mining inevitably involve. Given the serious privacy implications, it is important that Parliament retain strong powers to control the purposes for which data mining may be conducted. The Bill provides that any order to extend the purposes for which data-mining may be conducted would have to be approved by a resolution of both Houses of Parliament. We do not consider that sufficient in this context because of the limited time that is usually allowed to debate draft orders and particularly because Parliament would not be able to amend such an order. The Government could, for example, propose that the following extra purposes be added: first, detection of serious crime; secondly, preventing terrorism; and, thirdly, identifying people who might be interested in taking part in a No. 10 policy forum. Parliament may agree that purposes one and two justify the invasion of privacy and that data-mining is correct in those circumstances but that purpose three does not. However, Parliament would not be able to delete purpose three and would have to vote for all or nothing. That is perhaps rather an extreme example in my notes but it brings home the point made so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. I hope that the Minister will respond to the compelling points that we have raised.