My Lords, we have one amendment in this group, and I will speak to it. It affects what appears to be a lacuna—if that is not too technical a term for Hansard—in relation to the storage and retention of data collected by local police forces under the automatic number plate recognition system. Each local police force has an ANPR system. There are thousands of cameras, which we are all too aware of. Anyone who drives past one and has a picture of their number plate taken has a momentary shudder in case they are doing something wrong. When you add them all together, it is one of the biggest surveillance systems in the world—probably the world’s biggest non-military system—and it is growing every day. At the moment, there are probably about 1 billion shots of people cars in circulation. It is of course personal data, as it tracks people’s journeys, or can be read to do so.
There are two problems. First, the ANPR system has grown and grown but does not have proper governance or structure. Attention needs to be paid to that. This is not the Bill for that, but the noble Baroness might wish to take that point back with her. Secondly, an FOI request revealed in 2015 that the police had no systematic retention or disposal policy; they simply just kept the data because it might come in useful at some time. I do not think that works under the Data Protection Act 1998 and does not seem appropriate, given the way the Bill is framed.
In case there is any doubt whether those systems fall within the scope of the Act or whether there should be a change of policy, we have tabled the amendment to probe what is going on. There has been a recent change—I hope that the noble Baroness will update us about it—and several billion deletions, but there is still a question about the appropriate retention system. Our amendment is an attempt to move forward on that issue.
The problem is that the ANPR is not covered anywhere in statute. Despite the fact that it is very large, it is simply run. The Home Office does not see it as an espionage system—that is fair enough—so it is not covered in the Investigatory Powers Act. There is a case, however, for using the Bill to get this issue back into scope. The proposal here is simple. These particular words need not be used, but I hope the noble Baroness will accept that something should be done. We propose that the approach should be in accordance with the arrangements currently adopted in surveillance systems elsewhere.
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