Terrorism and Crime (EUC Report)

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity provided by this debate to discuss the two reports. I shall address the points that have been raised in a moment, but first I should like to acknowledge and commend the European Union Committee’s valuable and thorough work in its scrutiny of the European legislation and add my praise for the noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, and his work in leading that committee. The committee recognises in its report the value of data sharing in the fight against terrorism and serious crime and the benefits delivered both for the United Kingdom and for all the participating member states. The Government are in agreement with the committee on this issue. Criminals do not respect borders, so it is vital that we develop a cross-border capacity to respond to crime. This includes co-operation with our European counterparts as well as those in the United States in sharing data specific to countering terrorism and combating serious crime. The review that I carried out, which was reported in the Prime Minister’s Statement on security to Parliament on 25 July, also highlighted the importance of enhancing existing co-operation to share more information between police and immigration services and internationally across countries. The first line of defence against terrorism is overseas at other countries’ ports and airports, where people embark on journeys and where terrorist suspects can be identified and stopped before they board planes, ships and so on. The Government have already announced how the Home Secretary will enhance the existing e-borders programme to incorporate all passenger information to help to track and intercept terrorists and criminals. We also set out that, in the identification of potential terrorist suspects, there should be maximum co-operation internationally. Both the EU-US agreement on exchanging passenger name records data and the Prüm Council decision are important tools in the fight against terrorism and serious and organised crime. Wherever we take steps to enforce security, there must be proper safeguards in place to protect the individual. I will address the EU-US agreement and Prüm separately. I had hoped to speak for about 20 minutes; there are rather a lot of questions but I will try to keep to that. On the EU-US PNR, the Government welcome the fact that a long-term agreement has been reached on the transfer of passenger data to the United States. This agreement recognises the need to balance preventing and combating serious crime and terrorism with providing data protection safeguards for air passengers. The letter from the United States provides the EU with assurances on the way in which the US intends to protect personal data under the agreement. In return, the EU has confirmed that, on the basis of the assurances that it has received, it considers the level of protection of PNR data in the United States to be adequate. There is a mechanism—the periodic review—for the EU to reassure itself that the assurances are being adhered to. The noble Lord, Lord Wright, went into more detail about this letter. All I would add is that the letter provides the EU with assurances on how the US intends to protect personal data. The agreement is a legal instrument. Paragraph 1 refers to the assurances. The assurances from the US are contained in a statement about how it intends to apply its policies. You cannot really unpick the agreement and the letter; they are a package. The agreed package contains important commitments on how the US will handle PNR in respect of data protection. The EU-led negotiations on PNR set out in the report were valuable. A copy of the report was given to the Commission and to the United Kingdom’s permanent representation to the European Union, and it was discussed with them. The EU Commission was aware of all the points at the time of the negotiations, which I think was very helpful.