Clause 20
Counter-Terrorism Bill
6:30 pm
Tony McNulty (Minister of State (Security, Counter-terrorism, Crime and Policing), Home Office; Harrow East, Labour)
This group of amendments and the change to the schedule are consequential and technical and they follow from the thrust of clauses 19 to 21. Essentially, they reconcile the disclosure and intelligence service provisions of clauses 19 to 21 with existing legislation through consequential amendments to, among others, the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001, the UK Anti-Terrorism Crime & Security Act 2001, the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, which I put through the House—if one lives long enough, one gets to amend the Bills that one put through in the first place—and the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.
Simply put, at the time that the original clauses were tabled, the full extent of the necessary consequential amendments were not appreciated and the amendments are the logical consequences of the original clauses 19 to 21.
The amendments to the 2001 regulations are required to preserve the existing rights of the service to receive information on the electoral register while removing the restriction on onward disclosure. The other amendments refer in similar fashion to, among other things, removing the existing bespoke information-sharing gateways to the intelligence and security agencies for revenue departments, immigration and nationality information, and Statistics Board-related information. The provisions are unnecessary given the new general provisions that allow any person to disclose information to the intelligence services for the purposes of the exercise of their functions.
I know that people bristle when a Minister says that the amendments are purely technical and not to worry about them. I assure the Committee in this instance that they are and I commend them with relish to the Committee.