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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, has pointed out, we have Amendment No. 95ZA in this group, which is slightly more limited than the noble Baroness’s amendment. As she put it in shorthand, her amendment covers the public and private sectors, whereas ours covers only the public sector and, under subsection (2)(b) of our amendment, "““a person acting in pursuance of a government contract””." So it would cover some others. I can presume from that that the noble Baroness certainly would support our amendment. We have some doubts about whether we would go as far as her slightly wider amendment. I shall have to give this some thought, particularly after I have heard the Minister’s response. The noble Baroness was also right to say that we probably did not have a long enough debate on this matter in Committee and, bearing in mind we want to finish this Bill this evening, we are probably rather short of time for debate on Report. Perhaps the noble Baroness remembers that we felt slightly constrained for time on the previous occasion. We suddenly noticed the House filling up as noble Lords waited to debate the whole question of blasphemy, which, for some reason—I look to the right reverend Prelates—seemed to interest the House far more than the very important issue of data protection. I want to make clear to the Minister that I shall press my amendment if the noble Baroness does not press hers. Probably, we both want to hear from the Minister before we make the final decision on whether it will be the noble Baroness’s amendment that goes ahead, which we might support, or my amendment that goes ahead, which she might support. We will listen to the noble Lord with interest.