Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

Briefly, I support my noble friend who has done us a great service by raising this issue. Before he introduced his Bill in December last year, I had come across Mr Snook’s book, Crossing the Threshold, which is a chilling read, in the sense that not only are the actions described there very wide-ranging, but they are difficult to regulate and define. I do not want to repeat what my noble friend said, other than to express general support for his approach and to draw the Government’s attention to his Amendments Nos. 103H and 103J on the issue of information gateways. This will have some relevance to the operation of the LBRO, because Acts are being passed with increasing numbers of powers that permit the passing on of information, often of a highly confidential and personal nature, from one government department to another. That is not right. The Government’s response to date has primarily been along the lines of, ““If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear””. That has been the oldest argument for every bit of illiberal and restrictive legislation since time immemorial. In a lot of cases, though, having been gathered by one government department on certain grounds, information is passed to another government department without the person it concerns knowing what is going on. We came across this issue in the Companies Bill, now the Companies Act. That now permits the Takeover Panel to pass information to overseas bodies carrying out similar tasks. There is no restriction on what they do with that information after they have got it. I hope that when the Minister replies to my noble friend, he will address this issue of information that the LBRO may pick up, which may be important to a business, and ensure that it cannot be passed on and, most importantly, that it is treated in proper confidence. I am not sure that that is tackled anywhere in the Bill, but it is an important subset of the points made by my noble friend. I thoroughly support his strategic point.