Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Clarke of Nottingham and John Hemming

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

We will consider these matters, and it is probably right that Parliament passing a privacy Act might well be the best way of resolving the issue, but we need to get somewhat nearer a consensus and to know exactly how we are trying to strike the balance before something is submitted for the judgment of Parliament. We may well not have to wait until the end of a long, controversial process such as that, and instead find some other way of tackling the issue, but we are considering it and we will come back with proposals in due course. If there were debate on a privacy Bill, there would be an interesting range of opinions even in Parliament, but I have not met many people yet who seem to have the perfect answer as to how to get the balance right.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

Some of these injunctions serve to prevent information from being passed to the police or other regulators. Does the Secretary of State believe the law should be changed so that regulators can always have information passed to them?

[Mr Clarke]

That is one of the arguments which the judge who decides whether to grant the injunction will no doubt have in mind. Whether it is reasonable and in the public interest for the injunction to be granted is what the judge is meant to try to establish. The question for us is how we can make that clearer and more defensible, and how we can know more about what is happening so that we are all satisfied that injunctions are granted only in cases where the right to privacy of the individual is, indeed, being interfered with unjustly, but I know of the hon. Gentleman’s interest in this topic, and we will bear his views in mind—