– in a Public Bill Committee at on 18 January 2001.
I remind hon. Members that with this we are considering the following amendments: No. 84, in page 20, line 8, after `the', insert `specific'.
No. 85, in page 20, line 10, after first `the', insert `specific'.
No. 86, in page 20, line 11, after `disclosed', insert `to interested parties'.
I want to respond to the observations made by the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow). First, in my 50-odd years of life—
On a point of order, Mr. Sayeed. Several members of the public are waiting to get into the Committee Room, but the door is locked.
That is a genuine point of order.
Rare as it is, a genuine point order. I have been insulted by experts during my life, so the trivial observations of the hon. Member for Buckingham while trying to be rude—
I was not trying to be rude; I was being rude.
That just proves my point that there is no civility on the Opposition Benches.
If the hon. Member for Buckingham had read the data protection legislation, he would understand that his amendments are pointless. Any data holder who is required to make data available to a third party under a statute, or who chooses to make it available to a third party, is required to advise the data subjects of that fact when the data is collected. Therefore, the amendments, in so far as they affect data protection legislation, would be irrelevant to the Bill.
The answer is simple. The clause lacks specificity, of which the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) is patently unaware, or, even, woefully ignorant. Were he aware of the deficiency of the clause, he would not object to the propriety or wisdom of tabling the amendment. He took two or three minutes to make a bad point, to which I have tried to respond. Perhaps the Committee can now proceed to a more constructive consideration.
I am tempted to comment on the length of time taken by some Committee members to make exceptionally bad points, especially on Tuesday. However, it would not be appropriate to descend to the gutter in such a way.
I want to make a couple of preliminary points. First, a remark—I do not think that it was meant offensively—was uttered, although I may be mistaken, by the hon. Member for Buckingham. That comment was that the Secretary of State's issuing of a certificate, in accordance with the Human Rights Act 1998, was a relatively formal, simple or straightforward process. In fact, it is a serious document, on which the Secretary of State receives substantial and considered legal advice, which he considers carefully before deciding whether it is appropriate to put his certificate on a Bill. It is not a trivial matter; I would be surprised if, during the next 10 years, the House did not consider Bills for which such a certificate had not been signed. It has not arisen so far, but it is a considered and important matter.
Secondly, I want to make two points in relation to the debate about regulations, although I do not want to return to it in great detail. I have occasionally felt while watching Government in action that there is some substance in the suggestion that, sometimes, draft regulations could be made available earlier for the Committee's consideration, and I have always tried to ensure that that happens. However, there are also circumstances—this is one such circumstance, as I shall point out—in which it is not possible to make draft regulations available because one foresees events in the future that will create a different set of circumstances for the draft regulations.
My final preliminary point is that data protection is a serious matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, in his usual cogent and considered way, described correctly the way in which data protection and data sharing is dealt with.
The point is the specificity of the clause.
No, he put the point correctly. However—this is an important issue—how data is shared across Government and between Government and the private sector using an insurance database is difficult and complex. As the Committee is aware, the performance and innovation unit and the Cabinet Office, under the ministerial sponsorship of my noble Friend Lord Falconer, are working so that we can come to a series of conclusions about how to deal with such matters.
With your permission, Mr. Sayeed, I should like to raise some points on clause 35. Important matters have been raised and I should like to place on record what the clause seeks to achieve. It enables the police to have bulk access to a motor insurance industry database, which will improve their ability to identify—and take appropriate action against—people who drive without insurance.
I was grateful for the support of the hon. Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant). Driving without insurance is a big problem that needs to be tackled more effectively. In 1998, there were 254,951 convictions for driving while uninsured—a substantial number. The Association of British Insurers estimates that at least 1 million people drive while uninsured—about 5 per cent. of drivers. Driving while uninsured is a crime in itself, but may be associated with vehicle theft and other forms of criminal activity.
While we have this moment of agreement between us—and I trust that it will be more than a moment—does the Minister agree that driving while uninsured is also a crime against the victims of road accidents, who are often unable to get full compensation?
That is precisely correct. It often causes tragedy and hurt to victims. That is one reason why we give high priority to attacking that part of the problem. The Motor Insurers Bureau meets the cost of accidents suffered by victims of uninsured drivers; clearly, that does not deal with the trauma of which the hon. Gentleman spoke. In the year 2000, the levy on insurance companies towards that end was expected to be about £215 million. In addition, the costs borne by insurance companies directly were thought to be at least as much again. Both sums are passed on to policyholders in the form of higher premiums, ranging on average from £15 to £20 per policyholder. That is substantial.
Giving the police bulk access to the motor insurance database will enable them to identify uninsured vehicles more easily and check the insurance status of the drivers. When records show that they have insurance, motorists will be spared the inconvenience of having to produce the necessary documentation at a police station. The police need bulk access to the database because the information is expected to be available to them at the roadside from July 2001, but access will be limited to individual inquiries. Bulk access will enable the police proactively to identify uninsured vehicles and drivers. That is why the proposal has the full support of the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of British Insurers, the AA, the RAC Foundation and the Motorists Forum. It is widely supported by the industry and by motorists' organisations, for the reasons that I have set out.
It is intended that the police will have bulk access after January 2003—I hesitate to provoke the hon. Member for Buckingham yet again—when the fourth European Union motor insurance directive is implemented. The insurance database will contain a complete record of all insured vehicles and drivers. The database will hold all the information found on the insurance certificate, together with the address of the policyholder and information about additional drivers.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I will just complete my presentation and then give way. The database will be matched against the DVLA vehicles register held on the police national computer to produce a subset of data that will consist of a list of registered, but uninsured, vehicles and can be used in conjunction with automatic number plate recognition systems. The technology is developing—it was first used to deal with terrorists potentially threatening buildings in the City of London—to detect uninsured vehicles and drivers.
Mr. Bercow: Has the final form of the European directive to which the Minister referred been determined in respect of its transposition into United Kingdom law? If so, can he tell the Committee the extent of the consultation and say whether the principal features of that process were published?
I cannot answer that question off the top of my head. I should have prepared myself for that question, in the knowledge that anything with the initials EU would send the hon. Gentleman into a minor frenzy. I apologise for not doing so. However, as I am writing to members of the Committee about the directive that we discussed this morning, I shall enclose with it a copy of the directive under discussion now and set out the consultation process.
I appreciate the good-natured reply of the hon. Gentleman, but he was anxious this morning to have some matters on the record and other matters removed from it. I therefore take the opportunity to confirm what any observer would detect, which is that I am not in a frenzy—minor or otherwise—about the matter. The directive might have merits; I was simply anxious to know the final form of the consultation. I am a model of passivity.
I shall certainly give the hon. Gentleman the information he seeks. Behind his placid exterior, it sometimes difficult to detect what degree of frenzy is taking place.
Specific mention was made of the compatibility of the provision with the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act 1998. It is compatible and the Home Secretary made a statement to that effect under section 19(1)(a) of the Act. I reinforce what I said earlier; there is a considered statement and it is not something that comes automatically. While the provision authorises the disclosure of personal data such that article 8 is engaged, article 8(2) of the European convention on human rights permits interferences with the right to privacy when, as here, it is necessary in a democratic society for the prevention of crime or the protection of the rights or freedoms of others; that is the essential issue at stake.
The provision is a proportionate measure to achieve the crime prevention objective. Information that is subject to the provision is targeted as that which is necessary for the prevention and detection of uninsured driving. There are additional safeguards, in that subsections 2(b) and (c) further provide for regulations that can limit the purposes for which the police may be given access to the information and the onward disclosure of that information. The measure helps to tackle uninsured driving by giving motor insurance information to the police; such information is relevant to help the police to enforce that law.
Similarly, the provision complies with the Data Protection Act 1988, a matter raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston. While the Human Rights Act 1998 requires disclosures of data to comply with the data protection principles, exemptions from any of those principles that would otherwise prevent disclosure are permitted by virtue of section 35(1) where, as here, there is a legal obligation to make the disclosure.
I apologise for taking up the time of the Committee, but I wanted to set out the background to the provision before referring to the amendment.
The Minister is making a better job of accurately explaining the provision than the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston who made a ham-fisted attempt at doing so. Nevertheless, I am not absolutely clear about the matter and I should be grateful to receive clarification. [Interruption.] The sedentary chunterings of the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston do not assist the considerations of the Committee at all, unlike those of the Minister. Will the Minister establish the circumstances in which disclosure would not take place?
I cannot foresee any circumstances in which disclosure would not take place, if required. Obviously, the measure is concerned with crime prevention and circumstances will have to be taken into account. However, I shall take advice on the matter before responding in detail to the hon. Gentleman's question.
The hon. Member for Lichfield gave examples from other countries of the disc and asked to what extent that had been considered in the process. The ABI confirm that insurance is this country is attached to the driver, whereas on mainland Europe it is often attached to the vehicle, which is a significant distinction. An insurance windscreen sticker system is viable in continental Europe because cars can be driven on the owner's insurance policy with the owner's agreement. However, because the risks being accepted by the insurance company are greater, the ABI considers that that leads to higher motor insurance premiums than would otherwise be the case.
In deciding how best to make insurance information more readily available to the police, the motor insurance industry considered advocating a windscreen sticker system along the lines that the hon. Member for Lichfield suggests, but it did not believe that that was viable or would be as effective as a computerised database. Police bulk access to a computerised database of insurance information will enable the police to be proactive in identifying uninsured vehicles and drivers, including making use of technology in a way that would not be possible if they were restricted to making visual inspections of windscreens.
I am aware that that touches on the point made by the hon. Member for Lichfield about whether the process is quicker than it might otherwise be, which has some substance.
I am totally satisfied with the Minister's response to my question, but I should like to ask him a separate question about the bulk database. To what extent is he comfortable with the idea that smaller vehicle insurance companies may not be as quick to put data from their databases on to the bulk database as some of the others? As a consequence, police officers may assume innocent drivers to be breaking the law if the bulk database gives a nil response, suggesting that a driver is not insured, when he or she is.
I understand that the motor insurance database is tightly organised by the ABI, which brings the entire insurance industry together, and that the regulatory system would not permit the problem that the hon. Gentleman describes. I shall check, and I will tell him if that response is not accurate.
Does that mean that all vehicle insurers are members of that association?
That is my understanding, but I am answering off the cuff. I shall write to the hon. Gentleman if I have misunderstood in any important respect. Certainly the overwhelming majority are—and I believe that they all are. I shall double check and let him know.
The amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Buckingham and his hon. Friends are designed to provide a more specific definition of the information required. The wording
such information of a particular description
in subsection (2)(a), which the hon. Member for Buckingham asked about, is designed to enable the Secretary of State to limit the obligation to disclose information to PITO to a subset of the relevant information required to be held under section 160(2)(b) of the Road Traffic Act 1988. It should not be necessary for all information on the insurance database to be given to the police, only the part of that information that is involved, which will enable the police to fight crime more effectively.
I do not want to labour the point, but specificity is exactly what is required in this case. I hope that, even if the Minister believes that our amendment is redundant or undesirable, he would agree that it would help him to explain the merits of the unamended clause if he could elucidate his case with an example. Will he give us an example of the sort of circumstance that he has in mind, in which our requirement would be too all-embracing and his wording would more appropriately define the particulars required in such a case?
I had intended to be helpful at the end of my explanation, but I shall say now what I intended to say then. The hon. Gentleman refers to the need to be more specific about the information to be disclosed in regulations. We have set out the parameters of that information under the definition of ``relevant information'', which is in the Bill and available for the Committee to scrutinise, and the regulations may specify only that information or a subset of it, not any additional information. The concession that I intended to make, and the assurance that I intended to give, is that the hon. Gentleman made some good points, and I am prepared to consider the definition before Report, to establish whether I could provide further clarification, and to think about whether further amendments might be tabled on Report relating to more specific information, as he suggests. He reasonably put the point that clarity is required about the total range of data on the database, compared to the subset that we would seek. I will consider that matter carefully and come back to it on Report.
I say too, ``as advised'', as we like to say in this Committee, that the police are as concerned as anyone else that the database be complete, accurate and up to date. The fourth European Union motor insurance directive—[Interruption.] Is the hon. Member for Buckingham going into a frenzy? The directive will require all insurers to notify details to the MID. If necessary, after consultation, arrangements can be made to omit details when a policy has expired only a short time before—a month or so before, for example. I want to be helpful and take the debate further, because I understand the seriousness with which the hon. Gentleman makes his point.
The Minister mentioned the European Union again. One advantage of European Union membership, I suppose, might be cross-border co-operation. Is there a plan—and does it fall under the ambit of the Bill—to include information on the bulk database about the many drivers who come here from member states and drive vehicles insured by European Union but not British insurance companies? To put it another way, is some form of co-operation planned to ensure internetworking between similar databases in Europe, so that if someone arrested for an offence in the United Kingdom was driving a Dutch vehicle, a British police officer could discover whether that vehicle was insured?
The co-operation to which the hon. Gentleman refers is being developed but is not there yet. That is the short answer. He is right to make the point, as cars are sometimes transported in and out of the country with different plates. [Interruption.] I think that the hon. Member for Buckingham really has gone into a frenzy now, perhaps because he sees that my officials are getting worried about what I am saying.
``Frenzy'' seems to be the Minister's word of the week—perhaps he has recently discovered it. I am not in a frenzy; I was mildly amused—I apologise for my visible amusement—because the Minister was having some difficulty with his trousers.
As we were saying before our proceedings began, fashion is not one of my fortes, and neither is geography. I was having trouble with my belly button, rather than my trousers.
We love the Minister none the less. I have not scrutinised it, and have no desire to do so, but there appears to be nothing wrong with his belly button.
Yes, indeed—and I am not hiding an insect in it either.
Let us return to the Bill.
The hon. Member for Lichfield is correct in thinking that we are developing the co-operation that he mentioned. The European Union motor insurance directive to which I referred will put in place a legal framework within which it can be achieved. That is one of the many examples of the benefits to this country of European Union membership, which would be jeopardised if the hon. Member for Buckingham were to have his way.
I need to clarify my answer to the question about whether all insurance companies are members of the database; I was almost right, but not exactly right. All insurance companies are obliged to keep information pursuant to the Road Traffic Act 1988. The clause would oblige such persons to disclose information to the police, so any insurance company not linked to the database must still comply with the clause. The police will have complete information that reflects the data available from all insurance companies.
I have written to the Minister on this subject, and I would be grateful if he could clarify for me in writing the position of those who self-insure. Some concerns have been expressed as to whether and how that will fall within the ambit of the Bill.
I will clarify the matter for my hon. Friend in writing.
Will the Minister clarify the answer he gave to my earlier question? He said that every insurance company was obliged to keep its own record and that those records must be available to the police.
Does he mean the bulk database? If a driver were insured with a smaller insurance company that kept its own database, the police proactive interrogation of the bulk database would still come up negative. That would require the insurance company to give the police information some days later, perhaps of a written rather than an electronic nature, putting the driver to some inconvenience. Does the Minister understand the difference between the two possibilities?
I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. However, I can best answer it by reading out the wording of the clause:
The Secretary of State may by regulations provide for relevant information which is required to be kept by regulations made by virtue of section 160(2)(b) of the Road Traffic Act 1988—
that is the Act that requires the information to be kept—
to be made available to the Police Information Technology Organisation for use by constables.
The Bill goes on to state that regulations may
require all such information or such information of a particular description to be made available to the Organisation.
For the sake of clarity, will the Minister explain whether the Police Information Technology Organisation, rather than any third party, will maintain the bulk database? It may just be my ignorance, but people reading Hansard may ask the same question.
The bulk database is maintained by the insurance industry itself. PITO, which is controlled by police forces in conjunction with the Home Office, and whose governing board is made up of nominees from the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Police Authorities and various other bodies, will get the information from the insurance database. From there, it can be made available to individual police forces.
I am grateful to the Minister for persevering, but I am still unclear as to why subsection (1) provides the answer to my initial question. If PITO does not operate the bulk database, how do we know that the information maintained by the insurance companies in one big database contains all the information to be found on the smaller databases of all the individual companies?
The information kept by the insurance companies is the information that they are required to keep by the Road Traffic Act 1988, so we know exactly what information every company keeps. The motor insurance industry database collects all that information together from all insurance companies in the way specified by law. The clause states that PITO can get access to that information. I am sorry if I am being unclear; if it would help the hon. Gentleman, I will pursue the matter in correspondence.
My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mrs. Gilroy) asked about self-insurance. The current definition of ``relevant information'' in subsection (3) does not properly cover the point that she raises, which she has also raised in correspondence. That is partly why I was ready earlier to state that we were willing to consider the process again before Report, to get our definitions exactly right. That applies to the points raised by the hon. Member for Lichfield, too. There are points of substance on which we need to check that our wording is correct, which is why we are ready to introduce amendments on Report.
I hope that after those assurances, the hon. Gentleman will consider withdrawing the amendment.
Yes, I am happy to do so, as I was pleased by the Minister's response, and, especially, by his commitment to come back to us on the question of specificity before Report. I assume that that means that some correspondence will take place between us—or at least that there will be a letter from him on the subject, which I can copy for my hon. Friends. On the strength of what he said, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 35 ordered to stand part of the Bill.