Clause 31 - Duty to share information
Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill
4:00 pm
Tony McNulty (Minister of State (Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality), Home Office; Harrow East, Labour)
The agencies clearly hold intelligence information related to freight and travel that is not obtained under the powers specified in clause 31(4)(a)—the substantial part of the subsection—and which may be useful for the purposes of another agency or agencies. The amendment would preclude any of that information gathered under entirely different legal auspices outside the Bill’s scope. It would prevent any of the agencies sharing those data with other agencies, whether they were substantive enough to matter in terms of the pursuit of crime or of any other matter. It is overly limiting.
I suspect that the confusion arises partly from the legalese. “Other matters” does not refer generically to every other matter that anyone could possibly imagine. It means, as I understand it, other matters germane to the existent and statutory base of each and every one of those agencies. Given that the clause is all about the duty to share information above and beyond that alluded to in other parts of the clause, the amendment would limit things in such a way as to render the duty to share not quite redundant, but extremely restricted. I am pretty sure that that is not the intention. The hon. Gentleman is trying to narrow the clause from the perspective—albeit inadvertent—that it is far too wide at present. “Other matters” does not mean anything we fancy; the definition is much stricter than that.