Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 3:50 pm on 19 March 2009.
I am grateful for the Minister's response. It is helpful to know that. As he will appreciate, the sensitive issue of the over-representation of children and people from minority ethnic communities has been highlighted. This matter needs to be properly debated in Parliament and appropriate safeguards must be put in place. That opportunity will not be forthcoming if the matter is dealt with by statutory instrument.
Two other Government reviews and consultations on these matters are up in the air. There is a consultation on the interception modernisation programme, which is the Government's plan to store all our e-mail communications on a new central database. Some have described it as the Big Brother database.
There is also a consultation on the use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. That Act was originally introduced on national security grounds, but we believe that its powers now have an abusively wide scope. The reasons for accessing and using our data have been extended to include the prevention and detection of crime or disorder, economic well-being, the protection of public health and tax collection. RIPA gives all 474 local councils in England, every NHS trust and fire service, 139 prisons, the Environment Agency and even Royal Mail the authority to access and use communications data. It is not confined to services working to protect national security. That has led to RIPA powers being used in investigations into a wide range of matters that most people would consider to be utterly inappropriate, such as whether pot plants have been sold unlawfully, dog fouling and issues of refuse collection. Even the Home Secretary has described her concerns over the use of RIPA by what she called the "dustbin Stasi".
Earlier this week, the Minister could not give any clarity on the timetables for the consultations on RIPA or the interception modernisation programme. Can he do so now to avoid the impression that they are simply being kicked into the long grass? Will he confirm that the consultation on RIPA will happen, given the comments in the annexe to the information memorandum on the statutory instrument implementing the second part of the EU data retention directive, which suggested that there was no planned change in policy? We have discussed that previously. If the outcome of the review is unfavourable, will there be policy changes or has the Home Office already set its face against any changes in RIPA and the way in which it applies? I think that the Minister is gesticulating for me to give way.