Identity Documents Bill

My Lords, Amendment 17 is grouped with Amendment 18. Again, these are probing amendments and I hope that my questions will not cause too many anxieties. I know that there is an answer to the first one, which is to ask the Minister to explain the desirability of including a qualifying reference agency as one of the bodies in Clause 10(3). I have heard the reason informally but I think that it should be on the record. Amendment 18 deals with the provision which allows the Secretary of State to retain information—in other words, not to have to comply with subsections (8) and (9) where he thinks that it is desirable to prevent or detect crime, or apprehend or prosecute offenders. Again, I should be grateful to hear a little more about, and to get on the record, the Government’s thinking on this. It is clear from the debates in the House, particularly before the last election, that there is growing concern about provisions which allow the Secretary of State to take this sort of executive action, which one might think would require either an order or some judicial input. In debates in which I have taken part with regard to RIPA and parallel matters, noble Lords have suggested that magistrates should play a role because they can always grant applications when there is an urgency or a particular necessity, and that would provide some control over the Executive in a way that certainly colleagues across all sides of the House have thought would be proper in those situations. It seems that there should be justification for Clause 10. I beg to move.