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UK Borders Bill

I want to comment briefly on the new clause moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), which is about people obtaining information. There are good reasons why we have data protection legislation and why third parties are not normally given access to information under that legislation. In general, it is right that the legislation applies. I am familiar with the type of problem to which my hon. Friend referred and have seen a significant number of such cases, although they do not always involve criminal offences. A common situation might be that a marriage has broken up less than two years before an application for indefinite leave to remain was granted and a constituent claims that the person they left was violent and subjected them to harassment. Often, no criminal offence is committed in such cases so it can be difficult to decide whether information should be released, because when someone approaches us in such circumstances we inevitably hear only one side of the story. We might have an opinion on how valid that side of the story is, but we are only hearing one side of the story. I have handled cases that involve situations similar to those described by my hon. Friend. Recently, a constituent I was dealing with had separated from her husband who had been violent. He had then been convicted of a sexual offence elsewhere in the country. He had also been subjecting her family to considerable harassment after the marriage broke down. In my opinion, we should have got rid of him as quickly as possible. However, we ran into the problem of not being able to get information about what was happening to him and whether he was going to be deported. As my hon. Friend said, we will not necessarily always get the result that the constituent wants—the other person being removed. However, whether or not they are removed it is common sense that the victim ought at least to have information on that. Has the person been subject to a deportation order? Has that order been signed? Has it been put into effect? If that has happened, it will give the victim some peace of mind. If for some reason it has not been possible to deport the convicted person, at least the victim will know that and can, if necessary, take whatever precautions they think are reasonable to try to avoid coming into contact again with the criminal.