Clause 14
Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [Lords]
12:30 pm
Damian Green (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Ashford, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment 9, in clause 14, page 10, line 7, at end add—
‘(8) Nothing in this Act shall enable any of the officers designated under this Part to use any personal data of UK citizens to restrict their right to enter or leave the United Kingdom for legitimate purposes.’.
We now come to a more contentious part of the Bill dealing with the use and disclosure of information. The Minister will be aware that this matter is extremely fraught. Conservative Members think that it is hugely important and that far too much of the relevant Home Office policy is proceeding in the wrong direction, with a dangerous tendency to collect too much information and to give the various organs of the state too much power to share it with one another without the permission of the person about whom the information was collected. Through amendment 9 and, even more so, amendments 10 to 12, we seek either to probe or change Government policy.
It is arresting to think that an amendment need be tabled to a Bill to prevent legislation from being used to bar British citizens from entering or leaving their own country for legitimate purposes, but we seek to do just that. Essentially, our worry is that the powers taken by the Government in this clause might allow them to do precisely that. The Bill does not make clear how UKBA intends to use the data collected from this function in conjunction with the e-Borders function, which is also being introduced. I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about databases and information sharing. He will be aware how much information will be available through the e-Borders system and the customs information being collected under clause 14, which will provide the Government with more information that presumably will be recorded. This is a classic example of where two sets of information collected perfectly properly might be combined and then used improperly.
It would be helpful to the Committee if the Minister could set out the extent of the information that could be brought together partly under the aegis of clause 14. As well as the provisions in the Bill, the e-Borders database can track and store international travel records, names, addresses, telephone numbers, seat reservations, travel itineraries and, potentially, credit card details. I am sure that the Minister will be proud to tell us that, when it is fully up and running, the system will monitor all 250 million journeys made in and out of this country each year. He will be aware that the Government propose, rather controversially, to store the data for up to 10 years. We think that that is excessive and that some of the data being collected will be ineffective in tackling cross-border crime and hugely intrusive for the entirely innocent. It will also be massively expensive.
It is even more toxic, however, to combine that with the use and disclosure of customs information under clause 14, because huge questions remain to be answered—on top of those about e-Borders—about the intersection of these different systems. The intrusion of privacy of anyone, even the most innocent British traveller crossing their own borders, is going up and up. The amount of information that will be collected and stored for many years by the Government goes up with every piece of legislation. It is not the appropriate time or place to debate the e-Borders system—the Minister knows that we think other countries have implemented similar but better systems in far shorter periods.