I thank the Minister for his response, but he has left us tantalised about the outcome of his meeting. What is the solution that he has suggested? We are none the wiser as a result of his response.
This pudding has been well over-egged by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Already, only certain senior officers and the data protection leads in police forces have access to this functionality. There will continue to be a legal requirement to record the time and date of access. They are required to follow a College of Policing code of practice. Is the Minister really saying that recording a justification for accessing personal data is such an onerous requirement that £46.5 million in police time will be saved as a result of this? Over what period? That sounds completely disproportionate.
The fact is that the recording of the justification, whether or not it is false and cannot be relied upon as evidence, is rather useful because it is evidence of police misconduct in relation to inappropriately accessing personal data. They are actually saying: “We did it for this purpose”, when it clearly was not. I am not at all surprised that the National AIDS Trust is worried about this. The College of Policing code of practice
does not mention logging requirements in detail. It references them just once in relation to automated systems that process data.
I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for what he had to say. It seems to me that we do not have any confidence on this side of the House that removing this requirement provides enough security that officers will be held to account if they share an individual’s special category data inappropriately. I do not think the Minister has really answered the concerns, but I beg leave to withdraw my objection to the clause standing part.