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Coroners and Justice Bill

I am a member of the Justice Select Committee, which has considered many of these issues. I am sure that the Committee Chairman will, if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, summarise some of the Committee's comments, but I want to underline some specific points and to make some personal observations. I must say that I was disappointed by the rhetorical flourishes that we heard from the shadow Justice Secretary. Of course we would all agree that the line between free speech and protecting the public is a very fine one, but preserving that fine line needs a constructive approach rather than caricature. Bureaucratic insanity in the interpretation of legislation is a problem, even when the law is sensible and very precise. Let me start by referring to data sharing and the Information Commissioner's work. As I said, the Justice Committee has made a number of helpful comments about that, and I think that the present Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, has worked hard in that role to achieve a constructive balance, while being both clinical and challenging. The first inclination I had of the difficulty of getting the line right on this issue came when, both in opposition and as deputy Home Secretary—in that role I worked very closely with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice—I found that there was immense reluctance on the part of local government and the police to share data for the purposes of preventing crime. Indeed, we were so concerned about that that a clause went into the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 to say that preventing crime is a legitimate reason for sharing data. Lawyers told us that that was already the case, but, frankly, lawyers and data protection officers refused to accept that and to act on it, which is why we felt it necessary to put the provision in the legislation. The hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) referred to the Soham case in his response to my intervention, but that case exposed a problem of systems failure and systems not speaking to each other between two police forces. Actually, what came out of the failure of the police collectively to use information that was available in one part of the police service and their failure to share it with another was a ““headline”” view among the public that everything must be shared in order to protect the vulnerable, particularly children. On the other hand, news reports on data protection and the data loss that we have seen on a number of occasions led to the equal and opposite headline that nothing should be shared. Both of those arguments are untenable and inappropriate. The advice still given on occasions by lawyers and data protection officers is, ““If in doubt, don't share the data””. That is wrong—and wrong in principle. It is just as wrong as saying, ““All data must be shared without reservation””. The important thing is that on every occasion, a balanced judgment must be made by those who have the information as to whether it is in the public interest, as well as in the interest of individuals, to share it. Nobody who is a holder of data can escape the specific responsibility to balance the pros and the cons and address the public interest. There is no escape from that responsibility. I fear that the shadow Justice Secretary went very wide of the mark by coming down on just one side of that equation. The second issue is one of public confidence in the way that data are managed and shared. In that regard, I suggest to my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary that the comments of the Justice Committee offer particular help. Parliamentary accountability is the answer. There is public suspicion of government, which is fed by the headlines of the press and media—it is a fact of life; we cannot get away from it—but Parliament can be a constructive and critical friend to government. I rather felt that in his early remarks, my right hon. Friend was looking for an answer along those lines. Giving a role to the Justice Committee and other instruments of the House is a way of ensuring that the Government are able to achieve the objective of protecting the public, while subjecting the management of data to transparency and scrutiny—both by the Information Commissioner and a Select Committee of the House. I say to my right hon. Friend that I know we have seen, on occasion, Select Committees acting as a Rottweiler, but that more benign canine friend, the sheepdog, is the one that I would suggest if there were a properly understood role to be played between Parliament and the Government.