Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

We have tabled Amendment No. 148A in this group. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, I appreciate that the House is filling up and many would prefer to discuss blasphemy. However, I should first say a few words about data protection and, as the noble Baroness mentioned, data retention. The Government are in a mess in this regard. Therefore, I shall very much welcome hearing the Minister’s comments on the amendment. I understood that the Government wanted to remove this clause in the interests of speeding up the Bill’s passage. They have now said that they will retain it, but I understand that if they cannot reach agreement with all parties concerned it may be withdrawn at a later stage. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that. In the mean time, we think it is important that the Government consider not only the Liberal amendment but our own amendment which concerns knowingly or recklessly causing the loss of personal data. The Government know a great deal about that. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, rightly referred to the recent loss of child benefit data from HMRC, which affected some 26 million people. Only today we read in a newspaper article that, according to written ministerial Answers in another place, something of the order of 1,000 laptops have been lost or stolen from government offices over the past few years and that figure does not even include those that have been lost from the Home Office, the Foreign Office, the Department for Transport or the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. No doubt many more have been lost about which the Government will let us know in due course. But that is an aside to the issue before us at the moment which relates to the unlawful loss of data. Our amendment refers to recklessly or knowingly losing data on the part of a Crown servant or a person acting in pursuance of a government contract. That is something we think the Government ought to address. At this stage, it is best for me to await the Government’s response so that they can clarify the issue and let us know their thinking on this. We may want to pursue this matter further on Report, as I am sure will the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. I make it clear that, as the noble Baroness put it, we are generally in favour of Clause 129 being included in the Bill. However, we may want to see the introduction of certain safeguards; for example, a public interest defence. But no doubt the Minister will address that.