Serious Crime Bill [HL]

My Lords, I expressed my views on data matching and data mining at Second Reading, and the points that I made were pursued by my noble friends in Committee. I am distressed to see, and I hope that the people of Wales will note at this delicate time, that these provisions are being extended to Wales. Although the Government have significantly altered their stance on the scope of the orders, they nevertheless maintain their determination to cross-match people’s personal data from all sorts of areas in an attempt initially to detect crime and fraud, but with a power to extend the purposes for which the matching takes place to further areas. I appreciate that, possibly as a result of some of the comments that we have already made, those powers are to be limited by another amendment, to be moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, in its place. Those provisions are already incorporated in the Welsh provisions. However, the power amounts to a typical and serious intervention in the private lives of the people of Wales.