My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, often sounds ministerial, and from comments that he may have made earlier this afternoon he is clearly anticipating events in May when he will be able to perform that task. I do find myself in the rare position of agreeing with his comments generally about these amendments, in that they have appeared very late—late even among the amendments that have appeared in the course of this Bill, and there has been no shortage of amendments and no shortage of complexity in amendments. Indeed, I pay tribute to Members of the House for managing to get through so many amendments of such complexity today. It has taken a great deal of restraint by Members to enable the arguments to be deployed, often by others. No doubt those Members who restrained themselves may have thought they would have made better arguments or expressed the arguments with more clarity than those who did speak, but admirable restraint was shown.
We come to consider these amendments. My noble friend Lord Marks will appreciate that the pressures of time on myself and my officials has limited my ability to respond adequately to what are plainly serious issues, as he has outlined. I intend to speak to Amendments 106C and 106D in this group first. Sections 77 and 78 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 already provide for the changes that have been proposed for the Data Protection Act. Section 77 provides for an order-making power permitting
the Secretary of State to introduce a custodial sentence for breaches of the offence in Section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998. The penalty will apply irrespective of who has committed the offence. Given that people’s liberty is at stake and the seriousness of the offence, it is vital that proper thought is given to the introduction of such a change. That is why Parliament also provided that there must be a properly undertaken and detailed consultation with the Information Commissioner, the media and other potentially affected parties before that penalty applies. Therefore, such a change in the law now would be premature.
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All the changes to the Data Protection Act that Lord Justice Leveson proposed need to be considered together, as a package of checks and balances. The European Commission is currently working on a new data protection regulation and it is the Government’s view that the Leveson recommendations should be viewed in that overall context. For that reason, I am afraid that I cannot support this amendment.
I turn now to Amendments 106A and 106B, which insert new defences to offences under the Bribery Act 2010 and Section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act. Offences committed under these Acts amount to serious breaches of the criminal law. Provisions in each of those Acts already contain targeted defences. The Computer Misuse Act includes a savings provision for law enforcement, while the Bribery Act contains a defence that applies to the conduct of the intelligence services or the Armed Forces when engaged in active service, which is necessary for the proper exercise of their functions. The existing defences for these offences have been carefully considered.
From what my noble friend Lord Marks said, I understand that the primary intention behind all these amendments is to provide a defence for journalists acting in the public interest. While I agree that it is important that journalists can undertake genuine investigative work to uncover misconduct, these amendments raise complex areas that need more thinking and a detailed understanding. I am sure that the majority of journalists work with the utmost integrity but there is a risk that such defences could encourage a culture of wrongdoing, however well intentioned they may be. Of course, the defences would also have a much wider application—for example, giving any potential defendant the right to show that they had a reasonable belief that what they were doing was not illegal.
Noble Lords will be aware that the Crown Prosecution Service must take the public interest into account in deciding whether to prosecute in every case. In addition, proceedings under the Bribery Act may be instituted only with the personal, non-delegable consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions or the director of the Serious Fraud Office. This provides an important safeguard against inappropriate prosecutions against journalists or, indeed, anyone else.
For the reasons outlined in my remarks, we consider that further thinking is needed in these complex areas. We do not take issue with the fact that these are
matters of concern, and I do not criticise my noble friend Lord Marks at all for raising them, albeit at a late stage. However, I hope that he appreciates that the complexity of the issues, together with the competing interests at the heart of these amendments, means that they should not in any way be rushed. They took a long time to identify in the course of the Leveson report. They have been the subject of much comment inside and outside Parliament. All the appropriate considerations and consultations need to take place before we can proceed with this matter. I hope that that will persuade my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.