Serious Crime Bill [HL]

The Minister asked what we intended to achieve by the amendmentsand posed a different set of scenarios, all of which envisaged that we were trying to destroy the underlying principles behind data matching and data mining. However, she ended up by appreciating exactly why we had tabled the amendments; that is, to expose some of the Committee’s concerns about the implications of extending data matching and data mining without necessarily having the proper level of scrutiny. Later we shall discuss what scrutiny mightbe appropriate. My noble friends have tabled amendments on that matter. I was grateful for support on these matters from the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Burnett, and my noble friend Lord Crickhowell. There is a concern that there may not be sufficient rigour involved in data sharing as a result of the provisions of the Bill. That is a continuing theme running throughout these debates. We need to be extremely careful how we extend the sharing of information. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, for referring to the experience in Germany where they have been extremely cautious in the way that they have extended data sharing and data mining. They associate it with matters of state concern. As he said, it takes place only where there is a persistent pattern of behaviour that is a real threat to the security of the state. As ever, my noble friend Lord Crickhowell brought us into the real world. I was intrigued when he referred to TV licensing and described how information technology was not at its most perfect in the way that it dealt with people suspected of fraud. His story resounded very strongly with me. A long-standing friend of mine whom I met at university some 40 years ago—