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Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (Disclosure of Information by SOCA) Order 2010

My Lords, the order will designate the functions of the UK’s anti-doping organisation as being of a public nature for the purposes of Section 33 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. This will allow the Serious Organised Crime Agency to disclose information to UK Anti-Doping. The order was laid by the previous Government to help the UK prevent doping in sport. This Government are equally committed to tackling doping and are happy to take it forward. There is a strong public interest in preserving the integrity of sport, which is of particular significance in the run-up to our home Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. UK Anti-Doping was set up to address this interest and to protect the right of athletes to compete in drug-free sport. UK Anti-Doping also ensures that the UK Government meet their commitments under UNESCO's anti-doping convention, which include tackling the trafficking and supply of doping substances. The traditional way of stopping athletes doping has been through education and testing; but we have learnt that rogue scientists and cheating athletes will always try to elude the system by relying on testing not always exposing them. We must keep pace with international best practice and go after those who facilitate doping by supplying the substances that are banned in sport, which are much less detectable than they used to be. This calls for a more investigative and intelligence-based approach. Experience in other countries has shown that where there are partnerships between anti-doping organisations and law enforcement agencies, trafficking and supply routes have been disrupted and perpetrators have been caught. This approach is seen as essential by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which co-ordinates the global fight against doping in sport. UK Anti-Doping can already obtain information from a range of sources, including the UK Border Agency and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. Allowing SOCA to have a gateway would greatly add to those sources and would be particularly important because SOCA receives information from UK police forces as well as from Interpol. That will allow UK Anti-Doping to obtain information about the traffickers and the suppliers of these substances and will avoid it having to set up separate gateways with each of the 52 police forces in the UK, taken overall. Information-sharing for anti-doping purposes is supported by law enforcement and the sport community. In particular, it has support from SOCA, ACPO, the Information Commissioner’s office and the British Athletes Commission. Notwithstanding the desirability of UK Anti-Doping having access to information from a wide range of sources, it is also important to ensure that the data protection and human rights considerations are properly addressed. I make no apologies for spending a moment on this, given that we know that this could turn out to be an enormous trap unless we get it right. UK Anti-Doping and SOCA have put in place a number of measures to ensure that disclosures will be lawful and information will be handled appropriately. UK Anti-Doping has carried out a privacy impact assessment, which is available on its website. This sets out how the information-sharing will operate, how data will be handled securely by UK Anti-Doping and how disclosures will comply with the Data Protection Act. In particular, the order will not allow SOCA to disclose all the information that it may have on an individual to UK Anti-Doping. It will be able to disclose only information that is relevant to, and will be used in connection with, UK Anti-Doping functions. SOCA will pass on relevant information only if it is necessary for UK Anti-Doping to have that information to carry out its functions and it would be proportionate to disclose it. There will therefore be no disclosure that would contravene data protection or human rights legislation or indeed jeopardise SOCA’s own investigations. In turn, UK Anti-Doping will give SOCA information only as evidence in a case before a tribunal or will share it with a third party only if it has obtained prior permission and consent. SOCA and UK Anti-Doping will formalise how the information-sharing will operate via a memorandum of understanding. This will mirror information provided in the privacy impact assessment, which UK Anti-Doping has already published on its website, and it will be agreed by Ministers at the Home Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. UK Anti-Doping will also have a dedicated intelligence unit that will receive and analyse SOCA information. It will implement data security policy, setting out, for instance, how information must be labelled and stored, how long it can be retained for and how it will be safely destroyed. I am aware that the retention of data and public access to data were of interest when this issue was debated in the other place, so I shall deal briefly with the points to which that discussion gave rise. UK Anti-Doping will retain SOCA information only for as long as it is necessary to carry out its anti-doping functions effectively. It may be necessary for UK Anti-Doping to retain some information where there is no immediate link to a doping violation—for instance, where it may help to detect future doping violations. In those cases, UK Anti-Doping’s retention policy will set out how SOCA information will be periodically reviewed to test whether it is still necessary to retain it or whether it should be securely destroyed or returned to SOCA. Initially, UK Anti-Doping will carry out these reviews every six months. It is important that these strict controls over the use, retention and, ultimately, destruction of information should be observed minutely and accurately. UK Anti-Doping will not keep a public record of all the information disclosed to it by SOCA, because this could undermine its detection of doping violations. However, when an athlete is charged with an anti-doping violation, information will be disclosed to them as part of any case that goes to a tribunal. Information might be withheld if it is part of an ongoing investigation or if it implicates a third party. If athletes are otherwise concerned about the personal information that UK Anti-Doping holds about them, they may submit a subject-to-access request under the Data Protection Act to obtain that information. There are therefore certain recourses. This gateway will not impose any obligation on SOCA. It will simply facilitate disclosures where SOCA already holds the information. There is no intention for SOCA to itself carry out anti-doping investigations. There is therefore no significant additional cost associated with this gateway. Once the gateway is up and running, the Government will work with UK Anti-Doping and the cross-departmental anti-doping co-ordination group to monitor how it is working in practice, whether any changes are necessary and whether any further safeguards need to be put in place. Doping is a problem which is not going to go away. It will require ongoing efforts as the landscape for doping continually changes. UK Anti-Doping requires the additional information afforded it by this gateway if it is to do its job properly, and this is particularly important at a time when the UK is hosting and bidding to host a number of major international sporting events. This order was approved last Wednesday by the House of Commons Sixth Delegated Legislation Committee, and I commend it to your Lordships.