UK Borders Bill

I rise because I have Amendments Nos. 24 and 25 grouped with Amendment No. 23. As has become apparent from our previous debates, we are very concerned about the wide powers that regulations will give Ministers to permit the use of information for specified purposes that are not directly related to immigration. I can be brief; although not quite as brief as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who was exemplary in these matters, but I will try. First, I will jump to Amendment No. 25. It tried to elicit from the Government very much what they have put in government Amendment No. 23A. We were trying to find a list of the purposes for which it would be proper for information to be used. The Government’s list is at variance with ours. However, I shall consider further between now and Report whether it satisfies us. As with the amendment that we dealt with earlier, the fact that we had only 24 hours’ notice of it means that my honourable friends have not been able to consider it properly. However, it looks as though it goes a long way towards satisfying us. Our intention with Amendment No. 24 was to try to prevent fishing expeditions. As has been seen today, the Government are collating more and more personal data across all departments. This is just one part of that exercise. We have already seen in the Serious Crime Bill that the Government are embarking on a very wide piece of work on data matching and data mining. In Amendment No. 24, we are trying to limit the use of the powers in this Bill to circumstances that are already enshrined in legislation and, therefore, in some form or another have already been debated and acceded to by Parliament. So, again, we are trying to look at the range of government powers to see whether they are adequate.