Criminal Records Bureau

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the Bill has not completed its passage and it will obviously have to come back to this House after consideration of Lords amendments in another place. After completion, when we have had our last chance to discuss these matters, we will issue that guidance.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

Further to that question, the noble Baroness suggested that it would be discretionary for the ISA to pass such information to the police. I had understood the Minister to say that his intention was for that information to be passed to the police automatically, so that they could use their discretion. Does he agree that having two sets of discretion in this area is likely to lead to individual cases falling through the net, which could be very damaging to the children who might subsequently be abused?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I do not have the precise words that I used on that occasion, but the noble Lord is probably right to imply that we were offering discretion to the police.