Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Earl of Erroll

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hamwee]

Perhaps I had better not continue down this route—I could, but it would take more time than the Committee might like to devote to it.

Another point on which I am perhaps not with the noble Lord is that every school knows what every child is up to all the time—I wish that were so. I am sure that we are going to hear from the Minister about the balance between privacy rights and sensible use of technology—I hope that we are not going to hear about feed-in tariffs, which seemed to stretch the analogy a bit far.

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, did not know, on reflection, what his Amendment 85 was about. I have been in that situation as well, but that is not so on this amendment, against which I wrote “silence equals assent”—I think that it is the difference between opt-in and opt-out.

Before I come to the detail of my amendment, I wish to pick up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, about the technology being used in schools not being as sophisticated, if I can use that term, as technology used in other contexts. Can the Minister say how reliable the equipment is? That was the immediate question I had in response to the noble Lord’s comment.

My amendment does not contradict any of the other amendments that have been spoken to and is not inconsistent with the Bill. It provides that the relevant authorities, schools, academies and FE colleges should tell parents and children of their rights to refuse consent at least once in every academic year—in other words, it is about informed consent. The suggestion comes from the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, which supports the provisions in the Bill for ensuring that the institutions cannot process biometric data if consent is refused. I know that my noble friend will say a word about the convention rights.

I have been told by the Children’s Rights Alliance about research which shows that most children using these systems have not considered how long their fingerprints would be held for and they generally were not concerned. My response to that is that of course they would not—they are children and they do not necessarily think through all the implications of what they are being asked to agree to. Therefore explaining exactly what the subject matter is, both to them and their parents, is important. Other research—again, I am not surprised about this—shows that when schools have introduced a biometric system they have emphasised the benefits and not talked about the problems. All of this is natural human reaction.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, referred to the report of the Information Commissioner in 2008. The Information Commissioner made it clear that schools which collect data must be aware that children are data subjects and that they,

“should in the first instance be informed and consulted about the use of their personal data”.

This being the first principle of the Data Protection Act, he went on to say that,

“Fairness requires that schools ensure that pupils are informed about and understand the purpose for which their personal data is being processed”.

Our amendment would require that they are in a position to give consent—or, indeed, withhold it—but on an informed basis.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, this is an area which I have been thinking and worrying about because of the practicalities of it all. The part about children and schools is a well meaning and well intentioned effort to introduce legislation to make sure that children’s privacy is not breached and that no information is kept on them which could make things difficult for them in later life. It is very important that we should not do that.

However, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said, we could try to make sure that the biometric information that is used for administrative purposes is not kept to evidential standards. In other words, the information could not be used in courts; it could not be linked up with the police computer; it could not be linked up elsewhere. That could be done simply by making sure that it is kept to a standard which is good enough to identify people for administrative purposes in populations of a few thousand, but once you raise it up to a national scale it does not work. For instance, under EU directives there have to be 13 matching points for a fingerprint to be admissible in evidence in court—that is, 13 out of 18. If only 10 or 11 were kept, which is probably quite sufficient for the school’s purposes, the information could never be linked with the main national databases. That might well be a way round it. That is contained within this group of amendments.

Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Earl of Erroll

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, if I had got my act together a bit more quickly, I would have added my name to the amendment, because it is very sensible. There are some residual powers in the Bill which we need to keep an eye on. Although an Information Commissioner exists, he does not have the power to march in and look at things unless there are complaints. He would also be overextended.

We need to look out for residual powers that could give rise to concern. They come in Clause 10. Subsections (8) and (9) sensibly state that certain information which is gathered to prove someone’s identity when a passport is being issued should be destroyed after 28 days. Given that the Government will destroy the information within 28 days, I am happy for them to consult other databases—I mentioned in Committee electricity bills, which is probably the quickest way of finding whether someone has changed address or where they really are. I have no problem with the Government doing that to verify a person’s identity for the purpose of producing a passport.

However, then we get to subsection (10), which is the good old catch-all. It says that the Government can retain the information beyond 28 days for the purpose of “preventing or detecting crime”—I remember this sort of wording in RIPA, which led to a lot of grief—and “apprehending and prosecuting offenders”. Well, that depends on how quickly they apprehend them again. We should have oversight by an outside commissioner who reports to Parliament and not by a Home Secretary, because this sort of thing can get out of hand and, later, suddenly rise up to bite a Government in the future. We have several commissioners doing this sort of job elsewhere in the security world. We either add it on to someone’s job or create another one, but it is sensible for protecting the public.

[Baroness Hamwee]

In Committee I raised the point on subsection (10) to which the noble Lord referred. Is it the noble Earl or the noble Lord?

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, it is the noble Earl. It is very confusing. I am actually the Earl of Erroll, but we are in distinguished company as we have two Earls who have surnames as their titles—Earl Ferrers and Earl Attlee. However, I would still refer to them as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers. Thank you very much for correcting the House on this.

Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Baroness Hamwee and Earl of Erroll

Monday 1st November 2010 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Erroll]

I thought we had leapt ahead of ourselves for a moment; it was great. I also put my name down to Amendment 19 because it is always important to have independent scrutiny. It makes people feel much happier and much safer. I do not see that in this case it needs to be very expensive; you do not need a huge office, a huge outside body or anything like that. Public confidence can otherwise be destroyed. Sometimes things go wrong, so it feels much happier having external independent scrutiny. We forget that at our peril.

Having someone reporting up the same chain of command to the same boss is never quite the same as getting a report straight out to Parliament. On something like this, which potentially involves civil liberties and citizens’ rights, it is very important to have a direct report to Parliament, which is outside the normal chain of command, just in case. It is not that I mistrust any of the people in the system; they are trying to do a good job under difficult circumstances, particularly as the politics of it are shifting and changing on a monthly basis. There is no bad will on my part. Rather, we should always do this as a matter of principle, and it is dangerous to start not doing it.

Something the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, read out reminded me of the phrase in RIPA,

“for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime”.

That was the general-purpose provision that was slotted into RIPA. We were told that the Act would apply only to serious and organised crime but it ended up with local councils using it for other things. At that point, everyone realised that we had a political problem on our hands because uses can change. There could be similar issues buried within the Bill that I remember noticing when I first went through it but then forgot about.

[Baroness Hamwee]

We have an amendment on that later.

[The Earl of Erroll]

Absolutely. It is important to have an external view of these things that will report directly to Parliament, because it is our duty to protect the rights of citizens against the Executive.