Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

As far as I am aware, within the new structure we will try to avoid Buggins’s turn and go for the best people. Perhaps I may take more advice in detail and come up with an answer. The type of information that UKBA will handle and disclose will be persons stopped at ports and airports who are smuggling goods and legitimate travellers’ payment of customs duty at the red channel. UKBA officers may disclose certain interceptions to trading standards—for example, goods that may pose public health risks. Those sorts of things will be used as statistical data primarily, but personal customs information cannot be exchanged or used. I hope that that clarifies the point. We had reached Clause 16. As I said, where personal customs information has been disclosed, recipients may not further disclose that information unless they obtain the consent of a relevant official or do so in accordance with the limited and specific circumstances set out in the clause. For example, a designated customs official could disclose information to a police officer in relation to a matter of national security in accordance with the Clause 16 exceptions. The police officer could then lawfully further disclose the information to a third party, such as the security and intelligence agencies, provided that the disclosure was also made in accordance with one or more of the Clause 16 exceptions. The test in respect of personal customs revenue information is stricter still. Under Clause 17, before a person can disclose such personal information they must ensure not only that the disclosure is being made for one of the reasons prescribed in the Clause 16 exceptions but that it does not contravene a restriction imposed by the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Clause 18 creates a similar criminal offence to that of unlawful disclosure of personal customs information under the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 to cover the Home Office and the UK Border Agency. That means that a relevant official of the Home Office, the Secretary of State for the Home Department or any Minister of the Crown in that department or other person who discloses personal customs information in breach of Clause 15(1), Clause 15(2) or Clause 17 will commit a criminal offence.