My Lords, I am immensely grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord Bassam, for their interventions. In particular, given his background, if the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has concerns about these clauses, we all ought to have concerns. I am grateful to the Minister for the extent of his unpacking—or attempted unpacking—of these clauses but I feel that we are on a slippery slope here. I feel some considerable unease about the widening of the disapplication of principles that we were assured were immutable only six years ago. I am worried about that.
We have had some reassurance about the right to transparency, perhaps when it is convenient that data subjects find out about what is happening. The right to challenge was also mentioned by the Minister but he has not really answered the question about whether the Home Office has looked seriously at the implications as far as the human rights convention is concerned, which is the reason for the stand part notice. The Minister did not address that matter at all; I do not know why. I am assuming that the Home Office has looked at the clauses in the light of the convention but, again, he did not talk about that.
The only assurance the Minister has really given is that it is all on a case-by-case basis. I do not think that that is much of a reassurance. On the proportionality point made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, I think that we are going to be agog in waiting for the Minister’s correspondence on that, but it is such a basic issue. There were two amendments specifically on proportionality but we have not really had a reply on that issue at all, in terms of why it should have been
eliminated by the legislation. So a feeling of unease prevails. I do not even feel that the Minister has unpacked fully the issue of joint working; I think that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, did that more. We need to know more about how that will operate.
The final point that the Minister made gave even greater concern—to think that there will be an SI setting out the bodies that will have the powers. We are probably slightly wiser than when we started out with this group of amendments, but only slightly and we are considerably more concerned. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.