Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has brought us back to the question of what limitations there should be on the purposes for which information obtained under the new powers in Clauses 32 and 33 should be disclosed to foreign law enforcement agencies, how we can ensure in the Bill that none of these disclosures would lead to a breach of human rights, and whether the definition of ““foreign law enforcement agencies”” should be restricted so that only responsible agencies in countries that respect human rights would be included. When we looked at these problems in Grand Committee, the Minister argued that in deciding whether to disclose a particular item of information, the 44 chief police officers in England and Wales and Northern Ireland, plus the eight chief constables in Scotland, who should also be considered in this context, had the knowledge and expertise to assess whether it could result in a breach of human rights. I am sure that every one of those 52 chief officers would do his best to make an assessment of whether, as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, put it during the debate on this clause in Grand Committee,"““to disclose very sensitive information to any other foreign law enforcement agency””." But is it fair of Parliament to lay that responsibility on them without further guidance? The Minister said that:"““States with excellent democracies and very good track records are still asked, in the context of sharing information, whether their systems can be relied on to ensure that the information is used appropriately and stored effectively””.—[Official Report, 17/1/06; col. GC 221.]" If I may digress for a moment, there is no general framework for data protection in Pillar 3 of the European Union, but there are individual sets of rules and supervisory arrangements covering particular areas such as Europol and Eurojust, the customs information system, the Schengen information system and so on. Your Lordships’ European Union Committee recommended, in its report, After Madrid: The EU’s response to terrorism, that,"““enhanced information exchange in the EU, and the trend towards greater profiling of individuals, necessitate the establishment of a common EU framework of data protection for the Third Pillar””." That was nearly a year ago, and it would be useful to know whether any progress was made towards that framework during our presidency and, meanwhile, what data protection regime would cover disclosure under Clause 39 to any agency in another EU state. Would information acquired under Clauses 32 and 33 be covered by the draft framework decision tabled by the Swedish Government in June 2004, which would give police authorities of one member state access to information and intelligence held by authorities in other member states under conditions no stricter than those applicable at national level, and has any progress been made on the principle of ““equivalent access””? The fact that law enforcement agencies in EU member states exchange information only on the basis of agreements that safeguard data protection means that we could simplify the task imposed on police officers in deciding whether to transfer information under this clause. If one of the amendments were adopted, the Minister could give an undertaking that no order will be made in respect of any person mentioned, unless there is an agreement with the state under whose jurisdiction the person operates on data protection covering the information in question. There would be a list of the countries with which an agreement exists and the extent of the information that it covers. If the country is not on the list or the agreement does not cover information of the kind specified in Clauses 32 and 33, the chief officer would not have to consider whether, notwithstanding the existence of satisfactory data protection arrangements, there was any reason to suppose that an individual’s human rights could be at risk from the act of transferring the information. Obviously, we do not have data protection agreements with states that we discussed in Grand Committee, such as Burma and Zimbabwe, and it would be useful if the Minister could tell us what countries outside Europe we have agreements with that would permit transfers under Clause 39. If it is a fairly short list, as I suppose, and she confirms that chief officers would have to consider transfers only where the receiving country is on the list, the task of chief officers may not be quite as onerous as we feared.