My Lords, I thank all those noble Lords who have taken part on this group. The key issue which we need the Minister to take away is that there is more to be done in this area. We are grateful to her and her Bill team for their engagement with us and for the extra protections which the Government brought forward in Committee. I particularly pay tribute to the Victims’ Commissioner and her office for their leadership on these protections and the changes for victims which we need.
My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, both raised crucial issues, particularly about the need for strict necessity and the importance of making sure that victims—who may be going through this process at a point of shock or extreme vulnerability—genuinely understand their rights.
Amendment 52A in the name of my noble friend Lord Rosser returns to the issue of material held by third parties. It applies to material such as a victim’s school report or mental health records. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for their support on this issue in Committee.
The Government have accepted on the face of the Bill that extra protections are needed for victims where data are extracted from their phones. The next step is that the exact same protections must also apply where a victim’s privacy is being raided in any other area of their life.
These changes are being championed by the Victims’ Commissioner, with the support of the National Police Chiefs’ Council. They are vital for victims, for culture change and for the system as a whole. We need to get it right to give victims confidence, to stop unnecessary requests for information and to reduce the huge delays in investigations. I know the Minister recognises this issue. Will she commit to take it away and consult on the issue of third-party material with a view to bringing in protections?
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Finally, I have to make the point that, in this Bill, the Government have recognised the need for statutory changes. Non-statutory options will not be enough on
third-party material, just as they have not been enough to prevent what is known as a digital strip search, a point made by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. Non-legislative options, such as a data processing notice, can be ignored by police forces. There is also evidence of their being used inappropriately—for example, a victim being asked to sign an incomplete document, or police officers not having any idea that the documents exist in the first place. In this Bill, we have taken a step forward to recognising this as the serious issue it is, and I hope that the Minister will commit to take it away and look at it further, with the aim of bringing forward legislative options for third-party material in the victims Bill. The Minister can be assured that we will return to this issue in the victims Bill to ensure further progress.
I shall pick up on a few points made by noble Lords in this very interesting debate. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in his usefully practical response to the issues raised in these amendments, made a very interesting point. Of course, there must be balance here, and there is a duty of disclosure to the police and the CPS, so that they can make an informed decision on prosecutions, if they are appropriate. I have to say that, in recent years, when we have seen the lack of disclosure to the CPS and cases collapsing, none of my friends who are magistrates was surprised at the lack of disclosure in certain very sensitive cases.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, made an interesting point—in fact, a lot of noble Lords made interesting points; I thought I had read a lot about this, and yet a number of new points were made—about the amount of information saved and stored versus the significance of the information. It is very difficult to judge the balance between quantity and quality—in fact, it is almost impossible to judge because of the sheer volume of data that is stored on people’s phones.
I thought the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds also made an interesting point about consulting young people. We are all in the same position of struggling to keep up with the advance of technology. Young people may indeed be the best people to consult, and I wonder whether the noble Baroness will do that.
The final point made in the introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, was an intriguing suggestion: that the person handing over the data should be able to see what is being downloaded. I presume he means that, as more and more of our data is stored not on our phones but on the cloud, you can actually see people accessing your data, if you give them permission, as they are taking it. This is indeed a novel suggestion—I had not thought of it—and it is true that we are all being encouraged to store more and more of our data on the cloud, rather than on devices themselves. I look forward to the noble Baroness’s response.