My Lords, there have been so few speakers this afternoon that anyone would think there might be a football match on tonight. However, I thank both noble Lords for their very constructive comments and questions. I have been furiously writing everything down and I hope I also have the answers but if I have not, I will follow them up in writing.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, asked whether this could allow for an agreement with the EU. Obviously, we are going through negotiations with the EU on Brexit, but it is absolutely possible that we could eventually make an agreement either with specific countries or with multiple states in the EU. That is almost certainly a possibility. He also quite sensibly asked whether this will affect the adequacy judgment in the context of Brexit. It is about getting data from outside the UK into the UK, but UK providers responding to requests under any agreement would need to comply with data protection law, which is of course aligned with EU standards, as we saw when we were going through the Data Protection Bill recently.
The noble Lord also asked how the Bill affects the evidence proposal published by the Commission. EU member states and wider international partners are considering this very question of cross-border access to electronic data. The European Commission has published proposals on this issue which we are currently considering. The UK’s opt-in applies to the regulation and the Government are committed to taking all opt-in decisions on a case-by-case basis, putting the national interest at the heart of the decision-making process. We are currently scrutinising the regulation, and we will make a decision on whether to participate in due course. The proposed evidence directive could be implemented before the end of the envisaged implementation period.
The noble Lord also asked whether contempt of court is enough if the CSP has no assets in the UK, which slightly goes to the point the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, made about seizing assets. Both are a possibility, but we anticipate working closely with overseas providers to create a high compliance environment. Given the general support for this, we hope that is the case. It is possible that some providers may have no UK assets, but those firms are unlikely to be within reach of any enforcement mechanism. We can always resort to MLA in the case of non-compliance.
The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, asked about what happens if you get more evidence than you asked for. The data received will be subject to the usual data protection laws and existing laws on data handling and retention. Law enforcement will be provided with guidance on how to handle data when using an overseas production order. I think he also asked about what happens if you need multiple different requests.