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Crime and Security Bill

I thank the Minister for that reply. I think that I have at least stimulated a little interest in the matter. Recently there has been a further development. HMRC has decided that all bookkeepers of a small business or even a sports club, however small a scale they operate on, should become part of the regulated sector and register with HMRC with a view to it being able to make SARs. The danger is that this is a form of sweeping in any sort of information simply for the purpose of having it. Let me just give an idea of the scale of this: it could involve some 1.7 million small businesses employing fewer than five people and the 2 million businesses that employ fewer than 10. It has been made clear in Parliamentary Answers that there is no de minimis exemption, but in practice, although the requirement to register has been in place for two years, small business bookkeepers have not done so. Only 12,000 of those who might have had to do so have actually put themselves on the database, presumably because one deterrent is that any wretched bookkeeper, however small scale, has to pay £95 a year for the pleasure of having registered. I raised this issue with the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, the Secretary of State for Business and everything else. He assured me that he thought that this sounded like a good candidate for the Better Regulation Task Force. I hope that he has referred the issue to that unit so that at least this nonsense will not be taken any further. In the meanwhile, I am grateful to noble Lords for listening at this late hour and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 3 withdrawn. Clauses 57 to 60 agreed. Schedules 1 and 2 agreed. House resumed. Bill reported without amendments. Report and Third Reading agreed without debate.