Passenger Name Records: EUC Report

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, I am sure that the whole House is very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, as chairman of Sub-Committee F, for presenting its report today and accompanying it with his recommendations, which also meet the Government’s own inclinations in this matter, and for his characteristic clarity and thoroughness in explaining the main issues. He is quite right to remind the House that there is further work to be done on the actual scrutiny process of the directive details themselves and that this is really just about the main issues that are encapsulated in the Motion that he has tabled today.

I welcome very much what I hope the Minister will be able to say in reply. This is an occasion, as has already been said, when the opt-in procedure is, prima facie, proceeding on a smooth basis and is one of a growing number now. The system appears to be settling in on the basis of the original Ashton procedure, set out two years ago. I welcome that too because it means that the United Kingdom can make more progress in the JHA field working with our partners than we would do on our own and can overcome some of those anxieties from some years ago about this pillar and whether we were conceding too much. For those of us who may sound old-fashioned nowadays in being enthusiastic Europeans, it seems to me that as the UK is a country renowned for having more opt-outs, exclusions, exceptions, derogations and “would you mind if we don’t” clauses in the whole system than the other member states, it does occasionally create a better impression when we do opt in with some enthusiasm, particularly in this growing field, which is becoming a major area of Community policy formation.

At the same time, I understand my noble friend’s apprehensions about some of these aspects of giving personal data in this way. This is a growing scenario in many fields of commerce as well as for many government departments and local authorities—not only in this country but all over the world and between countries. People are right to be apprehensive about what happens. Therefore, Governments and the international institutions involved need to reassure their own local and international publics that these data will be treated with the appropriate operational reverence to make sure that they do not get into the wrong hands and that there is some kind of lapsing period for the retention of data from people who are manifestly not even putative terrorists or dangerous criminals, according to the evidence.

My noble friend was also apprehensive about the list of things that can be included in the PNR list. I assume that the way in which the technology works is that people have the correct codes to feed in to the computer on the basis of the information they may have received from the security services, so that is a way in which they can do it in a tabulated process. It does not mean that they have literally to comb through every single item of data. I hasten to add that I am not an expert, but I assume that to be the case.

When the Minister comes to reply, I hope she will have time today to deal with a number of points, which I will mention quickly now, on the need for the EU-wide approach. That has already been dealt with and it does inevitably meet the Government’s ambition to make this apply to intra-EU journeys as well. It seems manifestly illogical for them not to be included and I think that the committee and the European Union Committee—the chairman is present and listening to the debate—would presumably support that wholeheartedly, as does Sub-Committee F.

A further detail that we will need to concentrate on in future is whether the committee is right to express a certain hesitation about a reply from the Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office. When it asked what he would think about opting in, he politely and rather commendably replied that the Government might want to wait for the committee to have time to give its own views and that the Government would pay attention to those. I refer here to paragraph 20 of the report. However, the chairman is quite right to add at the end of that paragraph:

“While this is a proper line for the Government to take in the light of the Ashton undertakings, it would have been helpful to have some indication of the Minister’s own views”.

I hope that habit will develop more and that the Government are not too shy of indicating even a preliminary position on that. I do not think that would be misused by members of the Select Committee or the sub-committees in their further investigation of particular subjects.

I move quickly, if I may, to paragraph 5.4.1 of the Commission’s own report to the Council of Ministers. Again, I am only speculating for the future, because it is not of course a matter for today’s debate, but there is that question of similar security procedures and the data collection of PNR in non-air travel as well as in the preliminary ticketing before PNR is collected. Paragraph 5.4.1 deals with that at some considerable length and there is something to be said for it.

Finally, I return to the other comments of my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots, when he referred, with some nervousness, to the encroachment of the European Union on some aspects of our domestic life. That is not a phrase I would use because if you are a keen member of the European Union as well as a patriotic Briton—the two go hand in hand, as far as I can see—you do not regard it as an encroachment. You consider the whole organisation to be a club of like-minded sovereign members, with their own intrinsic national sovereignty but working through agreed and integrated institutions. With more and more agreed majority voting in the future, as I hope, we will sometimes be doing what other members want as well as what we want. That is in the nature of a club. The European Union is therefore one of the finest clubs in the world in that sense. I hope that my noble friend will get reassurance from my words because he, too, can change his mind on that in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)]

My Lords, I join noble Lords in expressing my gratitude to the European Union Select Committee for organising this debate. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for acknowledging the Government’s willingness to give practical effect to the procedural undertakings that they have given. As a result, we have had a discussion on the Floor of the House at an early stage of consideration. The Government will take very serious account of what has been said today.

One of the things that has emerged from the debate is that the European Union Committee, the Government and a number of noble Lords are in agreement that there is concrete evidence of the utility and benefits to be derived from the analysis of PNR data in terms of passengers’ security. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, put the case for the directive containing intra-EU PNR data as well as data on third-country flights as least as cogently as I could, if not more so. Therefore, I do not need to go over why the Government consider this to be an important part of the legislation, and why they wish to continue to strive to get it included. We have consistently argued that the directive should contain this information and that it should cover intra-EU routes.

I note what my noble friend Lord Hodgson said—that this is a “nice to have” rather than a “must have”. However, I shall seek to explain why the Government take a different view for two reasons. First, the argument that it is possible to evade the information that this provision might yield by choosing another form of transport may be valid. However, that is not itself a compelling argument for not obtaining the information if you believe it to be necessary to inhibit terrorism. Secondly—this is the major point—we have had ample evidence since earlier drafts of this legislation that aviation is a major terrorist target. We cannot ignore that. Therefore, it is right, consistent with individuals’ right to privacy—I entirely take the points that have been made about that and will return to them—to provide and maintain the maximum security that we can for passengers on aircraft, otherwise aircraft may well be blown up before they reach us.

[Lord Dykes]

Further to that point, with which I agree, does the Minister agree that it is remarkable that, although the security procedures at airports are extremely irritating for most passengers and that we all suffer, there is a high degree of psychological support for those measures among passengers, who know how vulnerable air flights are?