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Proposed Directive (Information Systems)

I thank the hon. Lady for her broad welcoming of this decision and the actions that the Government are taking to combat the threat of cybercrime and on cyber-security. This is probably the first time that the House has had the opportunity to debate a number of these issues and ask questions on them, so I welcome the opportunity as part of our scrutiny of EU directives. With regard to the hon. Lady's questions, I can assure her that the opt-in decision was made in time, so there is no issue of any harm in that sense. The negotiations and detailed consideration of the directive were started only recently, so the UK's position has in no way been compromised by our decision. Indeed, the timing has been part of respecting the parliamentary scrutiny—allowing the three-month period so that the European Committees can do their work. The hon. Lady raised questions about changes to legislation and made other points on how implementation might take place. I think that it would be premature to address those points directly until we see the final version of the directive, which is still subject to further discussion and consideration. We will investigate clearly and set out for the House properly how we intend to take matters forward once the directive has been finalised. The hon. Lady asked questions about the national contact point and about statistics, information and funding. As I have set out, the Government take the issue of cybercrime and cyber-security very seriously, which is highlighted by the £650 million that the UK has committed as part of its national cyber-security programme. We are considering carefully how allocations will be made for that, taking account of the need to ensure that the UK continues to respond effectively to the challenges posed from the online environment. I welcome the hon. Lady's broad welcoming of the decision to opt in. We see positive benefits and direct advantages from the directive. On her point about the EU directive on human trafficking, we did not decide to opt in at the outset because it contained no operation or co-operation measures from which the UK would have benefitted. We have said that we will review that position after implementation of the directive, at which point the UK could apply to opt in retrospectively.