My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 72. These amendments take us back to freedom of information. At the previous stage, I sought to include the National Crime Agency in the freedom of information regime, fully acknowledging that the exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 would quite often have to be called into play. At that time, the Minister acknowledged that exemptions would apply, but reminded me—or reminded the House, as I was aware of it—that SOCA and CEOP are not within the FOI arrangements. The NCA is about more than the constituent bodies. It is more than the sum of its parts, one might say. Police forces are within the freedom of information scheme, and it seems to me that the NCA will need to consider many of the issues considered by police forces, such as recruitment policies and budgets. Those issues can very often be dealt with in public and be subject to freedom of information requests, with answers being given without jeopardising national security.
The Minister was concerned that the operational effectiveness of the NCA would be endangered and said that the confidence of the NCA’s partners would be threatened if the NCA were subject to freedom of information. I thought that that latter argument was weak. The NCA’s partners should be confident that the NCA will use the exemptions available to it. Freedom of information arrangements are important. I am well aware that in practice it is not always comfortable when one is on the receiving end of freedom of information requests. That does not mean that the regime should be chipped away at by organisations not being subject to it. The Minister also said that organised criminals are very sophisticated. Is it a counsel of despair to think that they are more sophisticated than
the NCA and our law enforcement agencies? That amounts to a failure to acknowledge the proper balance in an advanced and open democracy.
My amendments take a slightly different approach to dealing with the exemption by describing it as,
“only to the extent of information relating directly to the crime-reduction function or to the criminal intelligence function”.
Both those terms are defined earlier in the Bill. This is a matter of some principle, and I look forward to the Minister’s defence of the Bill’s position. I beg to move.
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