My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister and to all noble Lords who have participated in this debate. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for supporting this amendment.
I have to make it clear to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that this amendment is not an attack on the Metropolitan Police. It operates in what some might find a very strange way but there are reasons the commissioner is distanced from the operational decisions made by his officers, although I will not go into them now. The police have always had the problem that when things go wrong they are held back from apologising by their own lawyers, for reasons which will be apparent to the lawyers in the Chamber.
On what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, I agree with my noble friends that these are drafting issues. I said that the reason for this amendment was to allow a debate. The wording is actually a copy and paste of the protections provided to the victims of sexual offences; no doubt many of the noble Lord’s criticisms could therefore be directed at the current legislation. I will not go over what he said as criticisms have been made by other noble Lords and I do not want to carry on in that vein.
I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, for saying that, in principle, he felt this was correct. It is interesting that he said that the unauthorised disclosure of information by police officers should be addressed, particularly in light of the fact that the Government want to put a stop to part two of the Leveson inquiry, which is supposed to look at the relationship between the police and the press. The Government seem determined not to allow it to go ahead so maybe we should sidestep it and include this issue in the amendment, which we will no doubt return to on Report.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, I gave an exact example of an exceptional circumstance where such an exemption might take place and I do not want to detain the Committee by repeating it. However, perhaps “in the interests of justice” might be a better phrase to use than “in the public interest”.