My Lords, I acknowledge the need for many of these government amendments, which clarify technical and procedural points. They do not go to the heart of the objections to the Bill that have been articulated tonight.
Some amendments, such as Amendments 6 and 7, are very minor. They provide for the provision of annual work plans, six-monthly reporting and things like that. It seems slightly heavy that you have to produce those as a matter of good governance—the auditors will require that. There is a requirement to provide annual reports and things like that, but, as regards putting that in statute, I do not object to it, but it is kind of heavy-handed. It goes again to the suspicion that the Secretary of State wants to be very involved in the work plans, how they are doing it and how they intend to distribute the resources that are available to them within the commission. I simply draw that to the Minister’s attention.
I am not sure about the meaning of Amendment 35. I know it is not the Minister’s amendment, but can he say whether it is possible that it may have the effect of limiting the application of some of the provisions of the Bill and some of the amendments that we have discussed and will discuss? There are powers other than those commonly known as police powers which may apply. I do not expect the Minister to answer that tonight, but will just leave the thought with him.
It seems that Amendment 41 may limit the ability of the commissioner to be flexible in the use of his staff. Obviously, the commissioner will be making decisions about which staff are required to have police powers and which are not. Those who have police powers will be able to do things such as arresting, searching and seizing, et cetera, while those who do not will not, but they can accompany and assist. I am not sure—perhaps the Minister can clarify this at a later time—whether an officer can have a limited subset of police powers, as provided for in the legislation, and I am not sure what that would add. So Amendment 41 may in fact not be particularly helpful in ensuring the most economic and effective use of the resources available to the commissioner.
The Minister referred to my reservations about Amendment 183. That refers to the removal of the provision making the ICRIR a relevant authority under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016—which goes to the question that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, has just asked. As I understand it, as drafted, the Bill gave the commission the right to require the delivery of data. Information may or may not have been requested by a previous investigation. If it was requested, it should be available in the files of that previous investigation. However, we know that, in many cases, data which may have been available was not requested by previous investigations for a variety of reasons, and therefore it will not be available to the commission unless the commission has the power to ask for it. The suggestion has been made—I thank the Minister for the discussions we had about this—that the holder of the data could voluntarily surrender it. That may or may not be correct, but my question is: this is actually a tool in the toolkit of a standard investigation, so why take it away?