Baroness Lawlor (Con)

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Sharpe. I declare an interest as a director of a very small business—a think tank. As an employer, the idea that we have no warrant or judicial oversight of an enforcement officer’s intrusive visit to a business to seize or take copies of documents and to check up is intrusive on the time and output of the business. It is also an infringement of a business freedom to conduct the business to the best ability of those in the office or the business. Both clauses in fact contain very intrusive proposals. As my noble friend pointed out, one of the things that is deeply worrying about them is we do not know who the enforcement officers will be or exactly what their powers will be. We have seen, even with the best trained police force in the world, the Metropolitan Police and local police forces, a certain amount of over-zealousness in pursuing certain types of crime. Therefore, with an untrained and unknown quantity and with such powers, we need very clear limitations, and we need to focus on the most serious crimes and those outlined in these amendments. For those reasons, I support both the amendments in the name of my noble friend.