Serious Crime Bill [HL]

That was a very useful discussion, and I want to let the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, know that I have quite a lot of sympathy with the purpose behind this amendment. That said, I am not in a position to accept it, but I will make some comments that he may find offer him some comfort. Noble Lords have spoken about the need for an audit, for transparency and for accurate record-keeping. All those things are right. Having listened to what noble Lords were saying, I was thinking back to when we put in place legislation on football disorder and created football banning orders. That created a situation where there needed to be careful records kept of those who were subject to particular restrictions on their movement. The important thing there was to have accuracy in recording so that careful preventive measures could be taken, particularly at points of departure from the UK. This amendment would place an obligation on the Home Secretary to maintain a register in relation to these orders and make it open to public inspection. I will come back to the points just made by the right reverend Prelate, because they are important. I can say that we are currently setting up a working group to look at the practical implications of implementing the orders to examine the issues the noble Lord,Lord Lucas, has raised in this debate. Through its practitioner representatives, which will include the judiciary, the group will discuss the best way to ensure that these orders are used in the most effective and co-ordinated way possible between law enforcement, the applicant authorities and the courts. That set of discussions will need to include a careful look at systems that will be necessary in terms of recording and monitoring the use of the orders. My guess is that there will have to be a register of sorts kept for those purposes. It would be wrong to use this amendment to pre-empt the discussions of those with expertise in this field. The amendment accepts a particular system for recording the orders, and it would not be right to specify that in advance of the practitioners having the intelligent discussions they need to in order to make the system workable. The noble Lord sets out in his amendment that a register should be open to the public, and there are a number of objections to that in principle, not least because a blanket disclosure of the personal details of those subject to an order would not be compatible in any event with the European Convention on Human Rights. Perhaps on another day the noble and learned Lords, Lord Lyell of Markyate or Lord Mayhew of Twysden, might argue that point, and I would be honour bound to accept it. Any interference of the sort suggested by the amendment with the right to a private and family life under Article 8 would need to be in accordance with the law, in pursuit of a legitimate aim and necessary to a democracy such as ours. It would be impossible to argue that we had given due consideration to whether disclosure in a specific case has met that Article 8 test if we were making blanket disclosures on a publicly accessible register. I understand the point the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is making. There are to be some intense practitioner discussions on this. The likelihood is that there will have to be a proper process put in place to carry out auditing and monitoring and to ensure that there is transparency in record-keeping and so on, but we could not accept the amendment in any event because of the ECHR considerations. Perhaps that will not satisfy the noble Lord, but the approach he is suggesting we adopt is flawed, even though we will clearly have to have proper record-keeping and monitoring to make this process effective and seen to be so.