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Mr. Clifton-Brown: My hon. Friend is well versed in these matters. What is the current procedure if the
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police investigate a serious crime—perhaps involving national security—and somebody is investigated who subsequently proves to be totally unconnected and innocent? Are records kept for ever more? If not, why are these records to be kept?
Mr. Malins: My hon. Friend raises an interesting point on the distinction between crime in relation to national security—we all understand that the Bill relates to terrorism—and other crime, ranging from the lowest sort to some crime encompassed by these provisions, which is more serious.
If, for example, my hon. Friend were charged with a grave offence, God forbid, notwithstanding the fact that he was acquitted unanimously by a jury in the Crown court, records of that charge would certainly be kept, although he would leave court without a stain on his character. To that extent, in relation to terrorist matters, the record would be kept and there would be an existing audit trail.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: My hon. Friend slightly misunderstands what I am probing for. If the police eliminated me completely from their inquiries, there would be no record of my involvement, because I had nothing to do with the crime. However, under this procedure, the information will be sought and put on the register, and we do not know how long it will remain there. That is the difference.
Mr. Malins: I was obtuse. It was too early in the morning for me to spot exactly what my hon. Friend was saying, but I understand now. Of course, if he was utterly cleared under the current law and everyone found out that he had nothing to do with the crime, that would be the end of the story and no records would be kept.
The Minister may want to confirm that we are moving toward a provision under which the scenario advanced by my hon. Friend as to a record being kept may apply to the new register and identity card information. That has not hitherto been so and is yet another relevant example.
I was not able to mention my next point when we concluded our deliberations on Tuesday, because we rushed through a number of clauses and were unable to debate them at length. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), the shadow Home Secretary, and others on the Conservative Benches will continue to express their worries about the effect of the Bill on civil liberties, individual freedoms and the over-mighty state. The clause and subsequent clauses provide a golden opportunity for the Minister to speak at length—I do not want a short reply—and satisfy the Committee that our worries and those that have been expressed by people outside the building about civil liberties and intrusiveness can be met.
My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary said on Second Reading that civil liberties is one of the important tests that the Government need to meet. I am bound to say that, from what I have seen so far in the clauses and in the absence of a full explanation of paragraph 9 of schedule 1, my worries remain distinct.
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9.45 am
Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con): Without referring specifically to cases that are in and out of court and in the public eye at the moment, will the Minister relate clause 20 to our present circumstances? I am talking about bringing British citizens back to this country from a period of detention abroad where they were uncharged and untried and, simultaneously, the new control measures to which the Home Secretary referred when it seemed that terrorist suspects were to be released into the community. Indeed, some may be sent back to their countries of origin, while others will be kept under a type of house arrest or, perhaps, even tagged. How much clause 20 will bear on those three different measures will clearly be important in the future.
Will the Minister reflect on subsection (3), which
''shall have effect in relation to the provision of a person with information by virtue of subsection (2)'',
particularly in respect of overseas purposes? The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam drew attention to the sudden inclusion of the words ''serious crime'' as opposed to ''crime''. I should be grateful if the Minister would relate that to the present circumstances, as it will concentrate our minds in the future. My argument is based on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking when he spoke about the views of the shadow Home Secretary on the importance of civil liberties and how such matters will bear on that.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I had not intended to speak to clause stand part, but the interaction between my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam—and the interaction between clauses 20 and 23—could give rise to serious problems about civil liberties. We must be proportionate, and clearly the state has to take powers to deal with serious crime, but, as has been pointed out several times this morning, the use of information can take place without an individual's consent. When we consider clause 20 and the requirements that must be satisfied under clause 23, it seems that senior officers of the new Serious Organised Crime Agency have to say to the Secretary of State only that they have serious concerns about a person and the Secretary of State will make an order.
Mr. Malins: My hon. Friend refers to the security services saying that they have serious concerns. Nowhere in the Bill do I see the fact that the Secretary of State must then say to the security services, ''Prove your serious concerns. Don't just come fishing, tell me what they are so that I can make a judgment on their merits''. There seems to be no provision by which to judge the merits.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that. It is a significant and serious point.
I will give the Committee two examples where I would be concerned about the use of the powers. I have already shown concern about the first in my intervention on my hon. Friend. It relates to people who are totally innocent but who are connected to
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someone who might be a terrorist. Supposing that, on a Thursday morning, a terrorist goes to collect his shopping from somebody but they are being watched. That somebody would be totally innocent in relation to the activities of the terrorist, yet an inquiry would be made and an entry would be made on their register.
My second concern is association. I do not wish to cast any aspersion on any particular religious group. Supposing there were a religious group—let us not even name the type of religious group—and certain individuals within it were suspected of terrorist activities. The powers might be used to get information on every person who went quite innocently to that religious gathering. Again, there would be an entry in the register for that purpose.
It would not be quite so bad, and I would not have quite such concern, if the Minister could assure us this morning that the entries on the register are sunset provisions, so that when somebody is totally cleared of having any association with a crime, the entry is removed. There could be a build-up of someone's entries. If there are a huge number of entries and someone examines them and says, ''Oh gosh, this person has been inquired about an awful lot of times,'' they might start to be investigated for no particularly good reason. The phrase ''fishing expeditions'' has been used this morning and I am concerned about the state going on such expeditions into ordinary citizens' lives.
Mr. Allan: The hon. Gentleman makes a useful point about the potential effects of someone having had checks made against them, their being on the register and that leading other people to grow the cloud of suspicion around them. Does he agree that it would be helpful for the Minister to clarify whether checks that are made without consent under these kinds of provisions—clauses 19 and 20 and so on—would also be recorded in the audit trail? We know that other checks will be recorded in that trail. It would be helpful to know whether the without consent checks will also all be specifically recorded.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point and it is one of a number to which I would like the Minister to give an answer.
My final query is whether there are any circumstances in which information that has been acquired without an individual's consent can be used in court proceedings. We need to know in what circumstances the information can be used subsequently.
Mr. Browne: I will endeavour to give as full a response as hon. Members would wish on this important matter. The debate has been broader than the provisions of clause 20 and I understand that.
I remind hon. Members that the clause is intended to set out the relationship between the Bill and the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, which this Parliament has already passed. It is part of the law and, as I said earlier, it is the Government's intention to make the provisions of the Identity Cards Bill entirely consistent with that existing legislation and the clause seeks to do that.
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It is probably best to start this more detailed contribution where I think the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam did, and to discuss the ''damned if you do, and damned if you don't'' circumstances. The Government are mindful that the use of the cards, the recording of their use and the recording of information relating to their use or the extraction of information from the register must be recorded. There is no question but that, for the civil liberties of individuals, for data protection reasons and for many other reasons, all of which I think we would subscribe to, it is crucially important that the register records the use to which it has been put in respect of an individual. I would want to be able to know who had access to the information on me, and that must be recorded.
I accept that there are certain circumstances, such as in the investigation of serious criminal matters, in which it would not be in the public interest for the individual to get that information, and the Bill reflects that; exceptions are made for that. However, it is important that the necessary oversight of the scheme allows the relevant commissioner—and that includes the intelligence services commissioner, whom we are about to discuss under the Bill—access to the audit trail so that they can oversee the use of the information. So the collecting of the information is important for the purposes of securing individuals' liberties. I do not think that there is any disagreement about that.
The next question is how long that information should be held. Obviously, information could be misinterpreted, but we ensure that that does not happen by providing for oversight by the commissioners, rather than by inappropriately deleting data so that information about exactly how the records have been accessed is destroyed and therefore cannot be audited in future. Therein lies the rub. The answer lies in the Bill, and I shall come to that later.
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