Protection of Freedoms Bill

My Lords, this is an area which I have been thinking and worrying about because of the practicalities of it all. The part about children and schools is a well meaning and well intentioned effort to introduce legislation to make sure that children’s privacy is not breached and that no information is kept on them which could make things difficult for them in later life. It is very important that we should not do that. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said, we could try to make sure that the biometric information that is used for administrative purposes is not kept to evidential standards. In other words, the information could not be used in courts; it could not be linked up with the police computer; it could not be linked up elsewhere. That could be done simply by making sure that it is kept to a standard which is good enough to identify people for administrative purposes in populations of a few thousand, but once you raise it up to a national scale it does not work. For instance, under EU directives there have to be 13 matching points for a fingerprint to be admissible in evidence in court—that is, 13 out of 18. If only 10 or 11 were kept, which is probably quite sufficient for the school’s purposes, the information could never be linked with the main national databases. That might well be a way round it. That is contained within this group of amendments. We need to have schools running efficiently. Having a system in which everyone has to opt in in writing is lunacy. Parental permission should be dealt with by adopting one of the amendments that deals with that. The consent should come from either parent. It is only an opt-out, not an opt-in. All that is quite correct. I do not know what happens to foreign students with the UKBA requirements that they prove what they did when and where they attended. We may find that we will need biometric information for that, so it would be quite good to be able to cover all those situations. It may be that that applies only to older students. I do not know enough about it. Amendment 89 takes out Clause 26(4), which I think is very important. Otherwise, a disruptive child or set of children could cause chaos by just opting out suddenly and unilaterally and requiring things to be removed. If someone opts out at some point in the middle of term, what is that going to do to the administration systems? Is it practical? We have to look at when people can do this. You cannot have people moving in and out of the system willy-nilly. I like all the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, apart from the pre-emption issues. Reasonableness has to come into all this. Sometimes it is difficult to remove things. Amendment 95, which removes the need for consent to be given in writing, is sensible. In this modern age when we are trying to go electronic, why should stuff have to be in writing? If you are going to allow people to opt out, why not have an opt-out thing on a website so that they can click on it or do something? Perhaps they can send e-mails. There are other ways of doing things electronically, and with adult illiteracy rates running at whatever they are—10 per cent—I do not think we should insist on writing. Some parents might have a problem. We should look at issues like that, and these amendments deal with them and should be looked at. Amendment 97 deals with the age of adulthood. Are we adults at 16 or 18? One minute we want to give people the vote at 16, but the next thing we say is that they have to be 18 if they are not to be considered as children. I do not like the two amendments that require consultation or going out and explaining things to people every year, which I think will be an unnecessary cost. I do not think it will get us any further. Although I think that Amendment 91 is very well meaning in thinking that we should explain everything to parents and children every year, it is hard enough to get the law understood. If we are going to interpret the law correctly, if we rewrite it, is that not going to cause problems? I do not know. Perhaps we should write clearer laws, and then they could read the law and not have a problem.