Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

The joke is on me. I was once a government lawyer. I then become a civil rights campaigner and the director of Liberty. I fought big databases and compulsory ID cards. Now look at what I do: I walk around with my personal electronic tag, and I pay for the privilege. In recent days and weeks, we have all read about big tech and the way in which it designs its platforms and serves its profits while undermining not just personal privacy but principles against discrimination—in fact, all the principles of a decent, kind and civil society. I am not suggesting for a moment that the Government intend those outcomes, but having big data collected in one place for whatever good intention is inherently dangerous. It is not just dangerous to medicine, teaching, youth work and our trust in civil society and each other; it will undermine the fight against serious violence, and will undermine law and order and sensible policing.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be relatively brief, for two reasons. The first is the time. The second is that many of these issues were raised in our earlier debate on medical confidentiality.

The amendments in my name in this group would remove provisions in a number of clauses in this chapter of the Bill, allowing for obligations of confidence and restrictions on the disclosure of data to be breached. They target the same provisions that have already been raised by noble Lords in this debate. At this stage, the intention of my amendments is to probe the intended effect of these powers.

As we have heard, the Bill provides:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations authorise the disclosure of information”


between authorities involved in the serious violence duty. Clause 9(4) provides that those regulations

“may provide that a disclosure under the regulations does not breach … any obligation of confidence owed by the person making the disclosure, or … any other restriction on the disclosure of information”.

Subsection (5) goes on to qualify this somewhat, stating that the regulations must

“not authorise a disclosure of information that … would contravene the data protection legislation”.

However, it then provides that,

“in determining whether a disclosure would do so, any power conferred by the regulations is to be taken into account”.

What restrictions do the Government envisage being breached under the provision for “any other restriction” in Clause 9? What restrictions do they mean? Do these provisions differ from what is in place for existing duties that require joined-up working? The Bill states that the one restriction the regulations are not intended to breach is data protection legislation but, as I have said, it then seems to suggest that this will be qualified by the powers under the Bill. Can the Government expand on that in their response? In what way should

“any power conferred by the regulations”

be taken into account? Can the Minister give some examples?

The sharing of information and the prevention of silo working are, as has been said, vital for tackling crime and for safeguarding purposes. We have heard in previous groups, not least from my noble friend Lady Blake of Leeds on housing provision, what can happen when services are not able to work together to put necessary or urgent support in place. However, the wording in the Bill has given rise to considerable concern in organisations working on these issues, as has been said already. I will not repeat the points already raised but will touch briefly on a few issues before I conclude.

First, one of the key concerns that has been raised by organisations, and which was raised again during the debate this evening, is the erosion of trust that is risked if people feel that private information about them may be passed on in unexpected ways. In particular, there is a risk of young people feeling they cannot build the relationships of trust with social workers, teachers or service providers which are absolutely irreplaceable for preventing violence and keeping those young people safe. Do the Government recognise that risk that breaches of trust risk make it harder to achieve the aim of reducing violence? Who makes the decision about when it is or is not in a young person’s best interest that information is shared, an issue which my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti raised in an earlier debate?

Secondly, later in the Bill, we will spend time debating provisions to protect the privacy of victims of crime. This section explicitly defines

“becoming involved in serious violence”

as including victims of crime. How will these data-sharing provisions impact the victim of crime?

Finally, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and the Information Commissioner’s Office have both reported significant problems with the Met’s gangs violence matrix, an existing tool to identify and risk assess individuals involved with gangs. The key issues included the disproportionate inclusion of young black males on the matrix, and data protection, including serious data breaches. What proactive learning has been undertaken from the experience of the gangs violence matrix to prevent the same problems arising again under the provisions of this Bill?

I said I would be brief; I hope I have achieved that. Like other noble Lords, I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his brevity and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and other noble Lords for setting out the case for these amendments. The noble Baroness put forward Amendments 34 and 60 which seek to avoid possible conflicts with competing duties. As the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said, the arguments put forward in this debate are very similar to those discussed in relation to earlier amendments.

To engender an effective multiagency approach to preventing and reducing serious violence, we need all the relevant parts of the system taking equal responsibility and playing their part. The specified authorities for the serious violence duty, being the police, local authorities, probation, youth offending teams and fire and rescue authorities, clinical commissioning groups in England and local health boards in Wales, have been intentionally chosen because of the direct link between the work they already do and the need to prevent and reduce serious violence. Therefore, I do not feel it is necessary or correct to provide such authorities with the opportunity to be exempted from the serious violence duty, as we expect that it would complement the existing duties of such authorities rather than conflict with them.

I understand that there are wider concerns that this duty may breach other duties of the specified authorities, such as duties of confidence, the point most frequently mentioned, and I will come to address those shortly. However, I think that Amendment 34 would unhelpfully weaken the impact of the serious violence duty.

Similarly, in relation to Amendment 60 to Clause 14, we have intentionally required the initial collaboration between specified authorities and education, prison and youth custody authorities as part of the preparation of the local strategy in order to ascertain whether any such institution ought to be involved in the implementation of the strategy or, indeed, need not be involved, as the case may be. This is a crucial step in ensuring that the institutions which are affected by serious violence will be drawn into the work of the local partnership without placing unnecessary burdens on those which may not. Therefore, I do not think that such authorities should be able to opt out of this consultation, given that it would ultimately be in their interests to engage with the specified authorities at this stage in order to ascertain whether their future engagement in the strategy’s implementation will be required.

I understand Amendment 35 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, to be a probing amendment about the relationship between the serious violence duty and the work of crime and disorder partnerships. I agree that crime and disorder reduction partnerships can and do play a vital role in ensuring community safety and reducing violent crime locally, but I do not think that they are or should be the only partnership model responsible for doing so. Again, the draft guidance makes it very clear in that context. The geographical reach of such partnerships might mean that they are not the optimum partnership model in all areas, which is why we have intentionally built in flexibility to allow local areas to choose the most appropriate multiagency structure to deliver this duty. However, I recognise that they have a key contribution to make to local efforts. That is why, in addition to creating a new duty, we will be amending the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to include a requirement for crime and disorder reduction partnerships to have in place a strategy for preventing and reducing serious violence. Such a strategy would in any case meet the requirements of the serious violence duty if all relevant partners specified in the Bill are involved in its development and implementation.

The other amendments in this group bring us back to information-sharing. It might assist the Committee if I recap why we have included provision for the disclosures of information. The serious violence duty proposes to permit authorities to share data, intelligence and knowledge in order to generate an evidence-based analysis of the problem in their local areas. In combining relevant data sets, the specified authorities, local policing bodies and educational, prison and youth custody authorities within an area will be able to create a shared evidence base, upon which they can develop an effective and targeted strategic response with bespoke local solutions. Each of the authorities specified in the legislation has a crucial role to play, and it is vital that authorities are able to share their data to determine what is causing serious violence in their local areas. For example, information-sharing can contribute to local efforts by allowing authorities to identify patterns and trends, geographical hotspots and the most vulnerable victims. This data should be regularly reviewed by authorities to determine the effectiveness of the interventions they put in place at a local level.

I shall explain what we mean by information-sharing in this context. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked a pertinent question. Clause 15 will create a new information-sharing gateway for specified authorities, local policing bodies and education, prison and youth custody authorities to disclose information to each other for the purposes of reducing and preventing serious violence. I must be clear that this clause will permit, but not mandate, authorities to disclose information to each other. It simply ensures that there is a legislative basis in place to enable information to be shared between all authorities exercising functions under Chapter 1 of Part 2. However, the clause ensures that any disclosures must be made in compliance with data protection legislation and cannot be made if certain prohibitions on disclosure set out in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 apply.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked for examples of data types that may be shared by partners. To be fair, he asked me that under a previous group as well and I completely forgot to answer him, so I hope to combine the two answers in one at this point. Examples include hospital data on knife injuries, the number of exclusions and truancies in local schools, police recorded crime, local crime data, emergency call data, anonymised prison data, areas of high social services interventions, and intelligence on threats such as county lines, including the activity of serious organised crime gangs in drugs markets. I hope the noble Lord finds that information helpful.