My Lords, one of the things that we are saying is that because the Bill has a mixed heritage, it is perhaps not as clear as it could be and does not have the benefit of the expert work to which my noble friend referred. I am clearly going to have to read very carefully what has been said, but I want to make a few comments now.
First, I am grateful to the noble Viscount, but I do not think what he was saying was quite as the noble Earl put it with regard to the word “may”. We need to come back both to the “may” and the “other considerations” in particular and to the relationship between the subsections. That fact that the list in subsection (4) is not exclusive makes the matter even more difficult.
I obviously do not want to go over all the ground again. With regard to the privacy and civil liberties board, it was of course a construct—a compromise—but my noble friend Lord Strasburger’s point about somebody having the responsibility to make sure that privacy and civil liberties are right at the top, immovably in the agendas that the Government may have, is an important one. I, for one, would welcome something more than was in the Act.
I agree that listing where the duty bites does help clarify and transparency, but I had a difficulty in being completely certain that it bites on everything that I think it should; the filter in Clause 63 was my example. If the filter is part of granting, approving—obviously not—or cancelling an authorisation, that is fine, but it should be clear. I am afraid I am not hugely persuaded by a code of practice, since it is not primary legislation. In fact, I think the Minister said that we should have regard to it. If it provides that these matters are absolute, rather than discretionary, then the codes of practice will not be consistent with the primary legislation, and that will be a bad thing.
I come back to whether this clause has been invented here, or wherever it has been invented. I will offer to supply the hot towels for everybody—I might even provide cake—but this is a provision that would benefit from further discussion. I certainly do not offer not to bring it back on Report—I might if we can get to somewhere that satisfies all of those who are clearly concerned before then—but for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.