Clause 12 - Register of licences
Private Security Industry Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
Mr Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)
That raises the issue of how public people's addresses are, which has arisen in the context of all sorts of issues, such as animal experiments and Members of Parliament standing for elected office. I am keen to know what the process is for ensuring that somebody has an authoritative and up-to-date statement of an address, even if that need not be given in public. I understand the argument—I am not persuaded of it yet—that the personal address of the holder of a licence should not be known publicly. The licence holder may of course be corporate, in which case there is no excuse for the address not being public. I assume that that address should be the registered office of the company, and it would be illogical if it were not. In the case of personal licence holders, I should be interested to know what address would be valid other than their current personal address. In that context, I should be interested to know whether the Minister takes the view that because people are given licences to do a public job, their addresses should be made public.
I assume that the Government intend that the authority will ensure that the register is accessible through all modern methods of communication. The main way in which the corporate and business sector will want to access information is through a website or a national database, rather than a local library, as in the past. Will the register of licences be held in a technologically accessible way? Of course, data protection issues arise. I concede that I have not thought the matter through, but a Home Office official doubtless has. I assume that, having applied for a licence, a person can expect the relevant details to be in the public domain and available to anyone with an interest in the sector.