My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response, but I am still absolutely baffled as to why the Government are doing what they are doing on Article 45. The Minister has not given any particular rationale. He has given a bit of a rationale for resisting the amendments, many of which try to make sure that Article 45 is fully effective, that these international transfers are properly scrutinised and that we remain data adequate.
By the way, I thought the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, made a splendid entry into our debate, so I hope that he stays on for a number of further amendments—what a début.
The only point on which I disagreed with the noble Lord, Lord Bethell—as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said—was when he said that this is a terrific Bill. It is a terrifying Bill, not a terrific one, as we have debated. There are so many worrying aspects—for example, that there is no solution yet for sensitive special category data and the whole issue of these contractual clauses. The Government seem almost to be saying that it is up to the companies to assess all this and whether a country in which they are doing business is data adequate. That cannot be right. They seem to be abrogating their responsibility for no good reason. What is the motive? Is it because they are so enthusiastic about transfer of data to other countries for business purposes that they are ignoring the rights of data subjects?
The Minister resisted describing this as watering down. Why get rid of the list of considerations that the Secretary of State needs to have so that they are just in the mix as something that may or may not be taken into consideration? In the existing article they are specified. It is quite a long list and the Government have chopped it back. What is the motive for that? It looks like data subjects’ rights are being curtailed. We were baffled by previous elements that the Government have introduced into the Bill, but this is probably the most baffling of all because of the real importance of this—its national security implications and the existing examples, such as Yandex, that we heard about from the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope.
Of course we understand that there are nuances and that there is a difference between adequacy and equivalence. We have to be pragmatic sometimes, but the question of whether these countries having data transferred to them are adequate must be based on principle. This seems to me a prime candidate for Report. I am sure we will come back to it, but in the meantime I beg leave to withdraw.