Passenger Name Records: EUC Report

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I should have put my name down to speak and I am sorry that I did not. Briefly, first, I want to make it clear that I support fully all efforts to catch criminals, especially terrorists, so my objective here is not about that. However, we must not lose sight of the dangers that may sometimes be contained within well meaning measures. In the real world, an EU directive does not protect you if there is a failure in the implementation of security measures, electronic or physical. That is the bottom line.

We have a database being built up here of sensitive information. You can easily have unintended connections made, as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said, such as guilt by association. What happens if, by chance, you travelled a few times and coincidence came into effect and someone who might have the wrong associations travelled on a seat not far away from you? The next danger is with the credit cards. Criminals use stolen credit card details; it could be yours on someone else’s ticket. The actions with these data are therefore dangerous. There is also a danger to you. Critical financial information is kept in here, not just the billing address but your credit card details. It has everything you need to get someone’s credit card details in order to commit a fraud. If you used a debit card, they can empty your bank account so these data have to be kept extremely securely— at least to a standard such as the PCI-DSS, I hope, if not higher.

Another question is: who will have access to this information abroad and in the future? Will it be in European countries or worldwide? I can think of certain foreign countries which I would not like to have my information under any circumstances whatever. I can think of a couple of European countries where I would not be too happy with that, particularly considering things such as the European arrest warrant and the way that different crimes are created to have a different sense of gravity in different countries. The data are supposed to be retained for serious crimes, but what is a serious crime? Look at the mission creep that was behind RIPA and where we ended up with that. We have to start worrying about this. We all treat crimes in different ways, and this measure will soon creep elsewhere.

The bottom line is that if we were worried by the national identity register, why on earth are we not worried about this? This contains almost more information about you. There is a huge privacy issue here about the state looking at who you are travelling with, when and in what circumstances. Should it be snooping into some people’s private lives in that way? I have nothing to fear on that score, which is why I can stand up and say that, but some people would be very uncomfortable if they knew that conclusions were being made that could be brought up to silence them if things got awkward, particularly if foreign Governments had access to those data. I can see huge dangers here. There is also the question of business intelligence for foreign purposes. We should tread much more cautiously. You can write what you like on a bit of paper, but it is not worth anything in the real world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I thank all those who participated in this brief debate, which has been extremely useful and has shown a wide measure of agreement. I thank the Minister for her response which, although it may have fallen a scintilla short of what I might have hoped for, nevertheless went quite a long way in the direction that your Lordships' committee wishes to go. I will add on a personal note that she and I, so many years ago that I would not dream of embarrassing anyone by saying how many, dealt with some of the more complex aspects of EU policy, mainly the EU budget. That budget pales into insignificance compared with this system of opt-outs and opt-ins.

Perhaps I may respond to one or two contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, raised the possibility that the directive asks for too much data. I do not have a strong view on that; we do not have to have a view to support the resolution. However, it is only by opting in that we can affect the amount of data that are collected. That is yet another reason to opt in. I and the committee agree with the noble Lord—and here I part company slightly with the Minister, although I accept absolutely her plea that we should help the Government in their negotiating position by standing firmly in favour of the inclusion of intra-EU flights—that this is not a make or break issue. It is not and should not be a sine qua non for opting in. That is a personal opinion. However, the committee does support, without ambiguity, the Government's desire to include intra-EU flights.

One problem that may come up—I hope it does not, and that the Minister is right in anticipating that real progress will be made at the April council to include intra-EU flights—is that it may not be possible by the time we have to take a decision on opting in to be quite sure one way or the other. However, on one thing we can be quite certain: if we opt out, intra-EU flights will not be included, although I do not want to go further into that. I certainly did not mean in the report to criticise the honourable Member in another place, Mr Brokenshire, who gave evidence to us. He gave excellent evidence on our internal security strategy report, for which we are extremely grateful. He was entirely courteous on this matter and there is no reproach. It is, I think, due to the parliamentary timetable that we have had to publish the report and bring this debate forward at a rather early stage in the three-month period. Therefore, it is not a criticism of him in any way.

My noble friend Lord Erroll seemed a little worried about all the details being taken of his credit cards and other things. Of course, the reality is that they are taken by the Government anyway. I think that his objection is mainly that some foreigners might read them. I am sorry—we are in the European Union. There are an awful lot of things that we share with members of the European Union and this will be one of them. In my view and in the view of my committee, it will strengthen the security of this country if we are able to do that. However, as I said, that information is already being collected here.

[The Earl of Erroll]

Perhaps I may make it clear that I am not worried about the information being shared with the European Union, as of course I give my credit card details on the internet to buy things in Europe. The challenge is in the number of times that it will be propagated around systems where we do not know what the security levels are, and the Government do not have a good track record of maintaining security databases. That is my concern.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

That is a question to be directed firmly towards the Minister and not to me, so I shall not take it further.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, was very helpful and supportive about the report and the recommendations. He rightly pointed out that there is considerable intrusion into personal data and personal security and so on. It is perhaps worth pointing out that one of the changes to which I did not refer at great length is that, as a result of the Lisbon treaty, the European Parliament has now become the co-legislator on this matter. The one thing we can be quite sure of is that the European Parliament is not going to let this bone go without giving it several bites and worrying at it a good deal. Therefore, I do not think that we are at the end of that story. I believe that the privacy aspects will get a very thorough airing in the negotiations between the Council on the one hand and the Parliament on the other. I am sorry to say it again but that is yet another reason why we need to be there, exercising some influence.

Finally, the Minister asked those of us who were involved in this matter whether we could take it up with the European Parliament. So far as I am concerned, I would willingly do so. I can see my chairman, my noble friend Lord Roper, nodding sagely to my left. We are going to Brussels next week to have our six-monthly meeting with British Members of the European Parliament, and we will certainly raise this issue with them. We will try to persuade them to fan out a bit and explain why the inclusion of intra-EU flights is going to help with security for all of us.