Protection of Freedoms Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I like this Bill. There is a lot of it that I shall take a deep interest in as it goes through. I am sure my noble friend is well aware of my interest in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, freedom of information and vehicles left on land but all those have been very well covered by others. I should make a quick declaration: a proportion of my DNA is on the national database—probably enough to identify me—and there is a clause in the freedom of information sections which will resolve various disputes I have with various universities in my favour. So I shall be careful when we come to that.

I want to concentrate on the section on biometrics in schools. This section is a daffy overreaction. Biometric systems are very widely used in schools. They have great benefits and I am not aware of any instance of serious problems with them. They improve safety. They mean that you know where the kids are, and in some schools that is very important. They improve privacy, because you can no longer tell who is claiming free school meals, and that generally results in a large uptake of free school meals. They greatly improve efficiency, because you no longer have to divert teachers to supervisory jobs which are done quickly and efficiently. Kids are used to it, because a lot of the systems that they are familiar with incorporate biometric systems.

The Explanatory Memorandum talks about risks as if they have been established, but I have not seen anybody create a scenario where there is a believable, practical risk to the kids in any way at all. We are dealing here not with something that is available nationally but with a closed system, a community that is using this data within itself—which we do here. All of us are subject to a highly sophisticated biometric scanning device every day: they are called doorkeepers. They do not scare us, and they are not a danger to us. The fact that they recognise us without difficulty is not something that gives rise to problems.

Within a closed community, the fears that people have on the wider scale do not apply. It is as if we put exclusion zones around hospitals that were using nuclear medicine, in case something exploded. It is just not real. It is an association of words which has been got up by the Daily Mail, of course—that lover of freedom, that respecter of privacy, that hater of intrusion—because it made a good story and it scared people. I am very sorry that both our beloved parties took it seriously and have stuck something in the coalition agreement which I suspect to some extent means that we have to keep it in the Bill. But I very much hope that we will be able to get some amendments through which will avoid or at least reduce the waste of resources which will result from the Bill as it is at the moment, and the increase in the incidents of bullying which will result if we cannot use this system consistently, particularly where free school meals are concerned. It gives me some pleasure that the Daily Mail, that scourge of government waste, is setting out to increase it, but I hope to save them from their own excesses.