Serious Crime Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the government amendments. I shall speak to my Amendments Nos. 111, 113 and 114, to which the Minister has already responded. The government amendments go a long way towards meeting the objections that I raised in Committee on 27 March at cols. 1578 to 1588 of the Official Report. They reflected our lengthy debate on the central group of issues in Part 3. I was concerned about the open-ended powers to be given to the Secretary of State in Schedule 6 to extend the purposes for which data matching may take place. He could have used delegated legislation to add any purposes to the list in new Section 32G. At present, as the Minister said, data matching is limited to the prevention and detection of fraud. Top of my wish list was a measure that would confine the purposes to those already in the Bill and a measure requiring further purposes to be added by primary legislation. My objections to the list of examples of purposes for future consideration set out in new Section 32G(2) were objections of principle and practice. I was unhappy that if we accepted a subsection that gave a list of particular examples, we could today be fettering the House when it came to decide in future on its view of delegated legislation brought forward by the Government to add purposes already mentioned in primary legislation. It could have looked as though we had already indicated that those purposes listed in new Section 32G were acceptable and we might therefore have been free only to express a view if the Government brought forward a statutory instrument that referred to new purposes not listed in new Section 32G. I was concerned also that the list refers to ““crime”” rather than to ““serious crime””, which I would have much preferred. I shall return to that matter. The Minister has given some clear examples of where it would be dangerous to go down the line of referring just to serious crime. In Committee, my noble friend Lord Crickhowell spoke strongly against the use of the term ““in particular””. The Government's amendment makes it clear that the potential for expanding the list of purposes for which data matching may take place is now to be confined to those currently listed as examples, so the examples become a closed list. That is exactly what I would have hoped for; I welcome the amendment. The amendment gives the House the opportunity to decide now, while it is considering primary legislation, whether that list is appropriate. It prevents other matters being added by delegated legislation. The letter that noble Lords received from the Minister appeared to imply that the Government would not consider bringing forward by way of primary legislation any further purposes in the future. If that is the correct interpretation of her letter, it would be most welcome in the year or two for which Mr Brown takes over the helm. I would have preferred it if the new subsection had referred to ““serious crime”” rather than ““crime””. I accept all the arguments against that which the noble Baroness has adduced today. In addition, the Minister and I had a meeting between Committee and Report where we discussed the matter. She put forward the argument that if one were to have a reference to serious crime, one would need a schedule to the Bill to list the involved. That is not beyond the wit of man and woman, because the Government have two schedules to the Bill, Schedules 1 and 3, where they have tried to list crimes to be taken into account. We now know that that is a defective list and that they are going to change it, so perhaps I was right all along. However, the solution that the Government have achieved is as good as is possible within the context of Part 3, so I shall not move my amendments and will support the Government.