My Lords, I will briefly but wholeheartedly support the thrust of all the amendments in the group. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, as a former policeman, put it very well: if everyone tries to be the policeman society is the poorer, but effective policing is also harder to achieve. To crystallise it, let us say that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is the policeman and I am the teacher or youth worker. If I am under any kind of duty, or perceived to be, to hand over my notes on an automatic basis or on demand to him, there is a significant problem not just for education and youth work but for trust and confidence in civil society, and indeed for my ability to go to the noble Lord when I have a specific overriding concern about an individual young person or student.
I understand where this comes from—it comes with the best intentions, because Governments of all persuasions have gone increasingly down this road of big data for many decades. It is not a party-political point, because when you are in government you are told, quite rightly, that central government is indivisible and that there is one Secretary of State. That is a very important central government constitutional principle, yet even central government is supposed to hold data for specific purposes.
There is an obvious attraction to creating a purpose that overrides all others on a wholesale basis, especially when it is something as important as combating serious violence. However, if it trumps not just other government
purposes, such as tax collection or healthcare, but begins to trump local and professional confidential duties, we are really in trouble. As I said, with the best of intentions, this will undermine trust and confidence in a number of vital services and will, I believe, undermine the role of the police. When you are looking for a needle in a haystack, do not keep building an ever greater haystack.
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The joke is on me. I was once a government lawyer. I then become a civil rights campaigner and the director of Liberty. I fought big databases and compulsory ID cards. Now look at what I do: I walk around with my personal electronic tag, and I pay for the privilege. In recent days and weeks, we have all read about big tech and the way in which it designs its platforms and serves its profits while undermining not just personal privacy but principles against discrimination—in fact, all the principles of a decent, kind and civil society. I am not suggesting for a moment that the Government intend those outcomes, but having big data collected in one place for whatever good intention is inherently dangerous. It is not just dangerous to medicine, teaching, youth work and our trust in civil society and each other; it will undermine the fight against serious violence, and will undermine law and order and sensible policing.