Protection of Freedoms Bill

I thank the hon. Lady for being brief. I am sure she will remember that in Committee we apologised for the lack of time in briefing her about the joining of the two services. I hope that we made up for that somewhat by offering a special briefing to run through the details. The joining of the Independent Safeguarding Authority and the Criminal Records Bureau has been welcomed on all sides as the right way to go, and I am glad that we have all come to that conclusion. As for the IT costs, this was a value-for-money decision. The IT spend estimate is £200 million over five years, which will be funded by fees. We would have had to replace the existing IT regardless of the establishment of the DBS. This has been arranged to time with when the contract would have come to an end. As the hon. Lady says, CRB checks have improved beyond recognition. As the Minister who receives the correspondence on this issue, I can say that my correspondence tray used to be full of complaints about the time people's CRB checks had taken. That flow is now reduced to a small trickle. Question put and agreed to. New clause 12 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.