Serious Crime Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall be brief. I expected the Minister to comment on the report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Paragraph 1.37 of its 12th report refers to information sharing and expresses concern that, "““the power of public authorities to share information with anti-fraud organisations is drafted in terms too general to satisfy the requirement in Article 8 ECHR that interferences with the right to respect for private life be sufficiently foreseeable””." The report continues: "““In order to make the effect of the new power more foreseeable, and therefore more legally certain, and to make it less likely that the power to share information will be exercised disproportionately, we recommend that the Bill be amended””." It makes a number of suggestions, including, "““to limit the width of the power, for example by specifying the kind of information which may be disclosed … to introduce additional safeguards on the face of the Bill””." Overall, the Joint Committee says, "““In our view this amounts to an inappropriate delegation of discretion to anti-fraud organisations to decide to whom they will disclose sensitive personal data””." This matter was raised last week when the report was published. Has the Home Office made a response to the Joint Committee’s report?