Serious Crime Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is a little complicated when we have amendments tabled to the Minister’s main amendment. I do not want to confuse matters further but I should like to give an explanation about Amendment No. 100, to which the noble Baroness has referred. In advance of today, I gave notice to the Front Benches and to the Lord Speaker that I would not move Amendment No. 100. It was a procedural device to ensure that on Report the noble Baroness could open the debate on this group of amendments and have the opportunity to answer any questions. That did not mean that I had no faith in my amendment but I will immediately indicate that the objective achieved by the Government’s amendment fully meets my objections in Committee. As the Minister has remarked, the government amendment is broader than mine and is thereby even more welcome. I was trying to prevent a situation where individuals’ details could be data-matched or data-mined and used improperly in profiling individual characteristics. I am grateful to the Minister for tabling her amendments. The Minister referred to Amendment No.102. It picks up on a theme that I explored in Committee about the kind of patient data that will be data-matched or data-mined. In Committee, the Minister said: "““Patients’ data are not disclosable beyond the National Health Service””.—[Official Report, 26/3/07; col. 1537.]" I wondered how that was guaranteed in the Bill. Today, the Minister has given a helpful and full explanation of how information will be disclosable, not only in a voluntary, but also in an enforced statutory way, and will involve the National Health Service trusts. I have a further question on that. I have followed the Minister’s arguments today but it occurred to me during her explanation that National Health Service trusts do carry out work for the private sector. The private sector buys time in operating theatres and operations are carried out. There is a close liaison between the National Health Service trusts and the private sector whereby both clinical and demographic data might be built up as a result of that exchange. I wonder whether it is possible that information held in the private health sector may find its way through a gateway in the NHS trust into the demographic use of data-matching and data-mining in this Bill. That occurred to me only as the noble Baroness was speaking, so if she is able to respond today, that would be helpful. However, she may wish to write to me on that and we might be able to resolve that before Third Reading. I am trying not necessarily to prevent demographic profiling and use of information which may properly prevent or detect serious fraud but to ensure that there is none of the function creep, to which the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, rightly referred earlier, and that we do not allow the Bill to leave this place with an imperfect and incorrect understanding of what information might be properly matched and mined and which might not. We must ensure that the public have confidence in the process by which all this takes place. All of us will be aware of the daily scandals about patient data held on the NHS supercomputer. I was looking at the BBC website on Saturday and read that the Government had closed down the job application website for junior doctors amid fresh concerns of security lapses. This is an area in which we are talking about the National Health Trusts disclosing and using information. We need to be sure that it is secure and to know whether information held elsewhere may also find its way into that database.