I thank the noble Lord for his brevity and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and other noble Lords for setting out the case for these amendments. The noble Baroness put forward Amendments 34 and 60 which seek to avoid possible conflicts with competing duties. As the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said, the arguments put forward in this debate are very similar to those discussed in relation to earlier amendments.
To engender an effective multiagency approach to preventing and reducing serious violence, we need all the relevant parts of the system taking equal responsibility and playing their part. The specified authorities for the serious violence duty, being the police, local authorities, probation, youth offending teams and fire and rescue authorities, clinical commissioning groups in England and local health boards in Wales, have been intentionally chosen because of the direct link between the work they already do and the need to prevent and reduce serious violence. Therefore, I do not feel it is necessary or correct to provide such authorities with the opportunity to be exempted from the serious violence duty, as we expect that it would complement the existing duties of such authorities rather than conflict with them.
I understand that there are wider concerns that this duty may breach other duties of the specified authorities, such as duties of confidence, the point most frequently mentioned, and I will come to address those shortly. However, I think that Amendment 34 would unhelpfully weaken the impact of the serious violence duty.
Similarly, in relation to Amendment 60 to Clause 14, we have intentionally required the initial collaboration between specified authorities and education, prison and youth custody authorities as part of the preparation of the local strategy in order to ascertain whether any such institution ought to be involved in the implementation of the strategy or, indeed, need not be involved, as the case may be. This is a crucial step in ensuring that the institutions which are affected by serious violence will be drawn into the work of the local partnership without placing unnecessary burdens on those which may not. Therefore, I do not think that such authorities should be able to opt out of this consultation, given that it would ultimately be in their interests to engage with the specified authorities at this stage in order to ascertain whether their future engagement in the strategy’s implementation will be required.
I understand Amendment 35 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, to be a probing amendment about the relationship between the serious violence duty and the work of crime and disorder partnerships. I agree that crime and disorder reduction partnerships can and do play a vital role in ensuring community safety and reducing violent crime locally, but I do not think that they are or should be the only partnership model responsible for doing so. Again, the draft guidance makes it very clear in that context. The geographical reach of such partnerships might mean that they are not the optimum partnership model in all areas, which is why we have intentionally built in flexibility to allow local areas to choose the most appropriate multiagency structure to deliver this duty. However, I recognise that they have a key contribution to make to local efforts. That is why, in addition to creating a new duty, we will be amending the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to include a requirement for crime and disorder reduction partnerships to have in place a strategy for preventing and reducing serious violence. Such a strategy would in any case meet the requirements of the serious violence duty if all relevant partners specified in the Bill are involved in its development and implementation.
The other amendments in this group bring us back to information-sharing. It might assist the Committee if I recap why we have included provision for the
disclosures of information. The serious violence duty proposes to permit authorities to share data, intelligence and knowledge in order to generate an evidence-based analysis of the problem in their local areas. In combining relevant data sets, the specified authorities, local policing bodies and educational, prison and youth custody authorities within an area will be able to create a shared evidence base, upon which they can develop an effective and targeted strategic response with bespoke local solutions. Each of the authorities specified in the legislation has a crucial role to play, and it is vital that authorities are able to share their data to determine what is causing serious violence in their local areas. For example, information-sharing can contribute to local efforts by allowing authorities to identify patterns and trends, geographical hotspots and the most vulnerable victims. This data should be regularly reviewed by authorities to determine the effectiveness of the interventions they put in place at a local level.
I shall explain what we mean by information-sharing in this context. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked a pertinent question. Clause 15 will create a new information-sharing gateway for specified authorities, local policing bodies and education, prison and youth custody authorities to disclose information to each other for the purposes of reducing and preventing serious violence. I must be clear that this clause will permit, but not mandate, authorities to disclose information to each other. It simply ensures that there is a legislative basis in place to enable information to be shared between all authorities exercising functions under Chapter 1 of Part 2. However, the clause ensures that any disclosures must be made in compliance with data protection legislation and cannot be made if certain prohibitions on disclosure set out in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 apply.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked for examples of data types that may be shared by partners. To be fair, he asked me that under a previous group as well and I completely forgot to answer him, so I hope to combine the two answers in one at this point. Examples include hospital data on knife injuries, the number of exclusions and truancies in local schools, police recorded crime, local crime data, emergency call data, anonymised prison data, areas of high social services interventions, and intelligence on threats such as county lines, including the activity of serious organised crime gangs in drugs markets. I hope the noble Lord finds that information helpful.
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Clause 9 provides a power for the Secretary of State to make regulations conferring powers on authorities subject to the serious violence duty to collaborate with other prescribed persons in a prescribed area to prevent and reduce serious violence. This may include organisations within the public, private or voluntary sectors, as well as regional or national bodies.
To support this collaboration, this clause also permits regulations to be made authorising the disclosure of information between authorities and external bodies for this purpose, so long as it would not contravene existing data protection legislation or be prohibited under the provisions of the Investigatory Powers Act.
As with Clause 15, this would be a permissive gateway, permitting but not requiring the sharing of information. If such disclosures are authorised, partners will need to ensure they have arrangements in place that clearly set out the processes and principles for sharing information and data.
It is crucial that specified authorities have the ability to draw valuable insights from both national agencies and local community-based organisations. Combining evidence from across the country with the voice of the community will help ensure that local areas are well equipped in their efforts to tackle serious violence. This goes back to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, about the strategy; why would this strategy be different from others?
It is not intended that these provisions will replace existing data-sharing agreements or protocols that are already established, including those under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Through these provisions, we are simply ensuring that all specified authorities, local policing bodies and education, prison and youth custody authorities are legally permitted to exchange relevant information to meet the requirements of the serious violence duty.
We expect all authorities subject to the duty to have agreements in place that clearly set out the processes and principles for sharing information and data. Such agreements may cover sharing information and data within existing local partnership structures and with external bodies, the purpose of sharing the data and what is to happen to the data at relevant points.
Clause 16 provides a power for a local policing body—that is, a police and crime commissioner, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and the Common Council of the City of London—to request information from a specified authority, educational authority, prison or youth custody authority to enable or assist the local policing body to exercise the functions conferred on them under Clause 13. These functions are to assist specified authorities and monitor the exercise of their functions in order to prevent and reduce serious violence. Where such a request is made, Clause 16 places a statutory requirement on the specified authority and the other authorities I just mentioned to comply, but disclosures are not required if they would contravene data protection legislation or prohibitions in specified parts of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.
The clause provides a number of safeguards in relation to the information that can be required. Local policing bodies must only request information related to the organisation the request is made to or a function of that organisation, except when functions are contracted out. The information supplied under Clause 16 must be used only by the local policing body that receives it to enable or assist that body to assist the relevant authorities or monitor the activity they undertake under the duty. The information received is not therefore to be used or disclosed onwards to any other bodies for other purposes. We expect that the ability to request such information will support them to ascertain whether the local strategy is having the intended effect on serious violence levels locally.
Furthermore, we do not envisage that it will be necessary for individual personal data to be routinely disclosed under this power or under Clause 15, as there are already existing mechanisms in place to permit this where necessary, such as via multiagency risk assessment conferences, or MARAC, and multiagency safeguarding hubs, or MASH. However, given that the purpose of the duty is to enable an effective response to serious violence in a local area, it may be necessary in some instances for targeted operational activity to take place. In such cases, the authorities will still need to consider and comply with relevant data protection legislation when sharing that personal data. Where personal data is subject to the UK GDPR, the data protection legislation sets out the principles, rights and obligations that apply to this processing of personal data, including exemptions from particular provisions which can apply in certain circumstances set out in Schedules 2 to 4 to the Data Protection Act 2018, including the prevention and detection of crime.
I wholeheartedly agree that any decision to disclose an individual’s personal data should not be taken lightly. While disclosure of information made under Clauses 15 or 16 or any regulations made under Clause 9 would not breach existing obligations of confidence, such disclosures must none the less abide by the requirements of data protection legislation and the provisions in the Investigatory Powers Act.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked me about the firewall and data protection, which I know was something we discussed during the passage of the Data Protection Bill. I know that the Government are examining this in response to the HMIC report, and I will be happy to update her on this in due course, if she is amenable.
I hope I have been able to provide some reassurances to the Committee about the nature and purpose of the information-sharing provisions in this part of the Bill and the safeguards in place. I have already indicated in response to previous amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that we will consider further the issue of patient information and, on that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, will be happy to withdraw her amendment and support Clauses 9, 14, 15 and 16 standing part of the Bill.