Lord Harper (Con)

My Lords, I will not detain noble Lords for long. I have three questions for the Minister. First, I want a little detail on the process that is undertaken by the department. Who triggers the review into which organisations have these powers, whether that is as a result of requests from organisations that currently do not have powers but require them or whether it is a periodic review that the department will undertake? It would be helpful to know a bit more about the process. Secondly, I have a question on the powers that are now given to the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency, which is an executive agency of the Department for Transport. I have looked at those powers and at the other parts of the Department for Transport that have similar powers. They all seem very sensible, so I support the change that is being made. My question is on the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency, which is another executive agency of the Department for Transport. As far as I can tell, it does not have these powers, but I would have thought that the same arguments that apply to the DVSA—around public safety and the criminality involved in, for example, forging driving licences, which are important identity documents—would also require the use of communications data. Why has the DVSA been given these powers and not the DVLA? Surely the arguments for one are also true in the case of the other. The other area is that provoked by the report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on the arguments around the ambulance trusts. It makes a reasonably coherent argument that there seems to be some inconsistency. I understand that organisations that require these powers must demonstrate that they have a compelling need and that they have appropriate compliance activities in place. It seems a little odd, therefore, that the powers are being removed from all the ambulance trusts in England. They are being restored for four of them but I do not understand, because there is no detail set out, what it is about those four that means that there are compelling needs that do not apply to the others. Also, of the four that are kept, only one had requested to keep the powers; the others had not expressed a preference. Given that organisations are supposed to have a compelling need in order for them to have these powers—I remember the debate when, as the Minister set out, the Investigatory Powers Bill was going through both Houses of Parliament; I was Chief Whip at the time—it seems to me that, in the case of three of those ambulance trusts, the compelling need case cannot have been made because they did not respond to say that they needed the powers. The powers appear to have been left with them only because they had not specifically said that they did not want them, but that does not appear to be the legal and policy test applied by the department. I would be grateful if the Minister could set that out. I have a final point on resourcing. The instrument and its Explanatory Memorandum say that there is going to be an increase in requests made to the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office because all these organisations will need approval to use these powers. The assessment by the department says that it expects those requests to be minimal, but it does not set out the basis on which it has reached that conclusion. Obviously, there are resourcing requirements that will flow from that, so it would be helpful if the Minister could set out the basis on which that conclusion was reached.