My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for her comments, which were thoughtful and helpful, as ever. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that now, after midnight, I will withdraw my amendment. She need not worry about any more debate.
I recognise very much the problems of collecting this information, which is why I went out of my way to speak at some length about the Home Office counting rules. I happened to be involved with their development when I was at the Home Office. They are very much based on consultation with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, experts, think tanks, academics and so on. As I said, these rules ensure that the collection arrangements are easily amended in the light of practical experience on the ground. I have no doubt that any debate about the collection of such information will get careful consideration by the experts at the Home Office who run the counting rules, by the police, and others.
I still think that it is important to have national criminal information. One of the weaknesses of our system, as we said in an earlier debate on the Bill, is that we have 43 separate forces with 43 chief constables, each deciding how they will collect and maintain crime statistics. This is not the best way to do it. Some noble Lords will no doubt suggest a single police force, as in Scotland. That is not such a good idea, but there is another way of doing it—by Parliament setting clear rules at high level, and the experts then deciding how best to collect the information sensitively, with due respect to human rights and to people’s deepest feelings, ensuring that they take the population with them. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.