UK Parliament / Open data

Crime and Courts Act 2013 (Commencement No. 18) Order 2018

I thank both noble Lords for their comments, and I hope to be able to address as many of the points raised as possible. First, clearly I shall have to take on the chin that criticism of what went on previously with this project. I do not have the information about what steps were taken, and why the failures occurred, in front of me, but I will write to the noble Lord and set out properly what happened previously and how we will address these issues in future.

I now turn to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. When I opened the debate, I tried to explain that this order provides an extension of provisions that already exist. There are other classes of subjects that can already be location monitored on a stand-alone basis. One of the reasons for not hanging around and waiting until the evidence, as he called it, is published, is that the report is not for stand-alone location monitoring on its own. It covers all sorts of different location monitoring, so it is more of an ongoing step, for all sorts of electronic monitoring, much of which is already covered by legislation.

The noble Lord took us back 12 years, to 2004 to 2006, and to what people said then. During the passage of the Crime and Courts Act, there was a significant debate about the civil liberties elements of the tagging, but technology has moved on significantly since then, and we are dealing with a very different beast from what was then being reported on.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

794 c315 

Session

2017-19

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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