Lord Clement-Jones (LD)

My Lords, I think we have had quite enough excitement for one day. I want to thank colleagues all Benches—they know who they are—for making the fairly gruelling passage of this Bill endurable. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and the noble Lord, Lord Vallance. We were sorry to lose the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, but the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, played the part of a kind of impact substitute in the second half of the match, and I thank him. I thank Mohamed-Ali Souidi in our Whips office for his enormous hard work on this Bill. I also thank the rather sleep-deprived Bill team. They engaged constantly on the Bill and what has resulted is a much better Bill than its predecessor, the DPDI Bill—but it is still not perfect. I think we have made some progress, as the Minister outlined, on the charities’ soft opt-in, which I welcome that very much, the automated decision-making code to be drawn up by the ICO, the jurisdiction review, which was not heralded in Hansard, but I very much hope that the MoJ will get that under way, enhanced children’s duties, which were just passed today, assurances on researcher access to the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and two enormous strides, potentially. I tend to think of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the web crawlers as a new rock band, but we place a lot of hope that the Government will see the light on that and that in due course we will also see the outcome of the debate on what constitutes scientific research. Of course, the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, has triumphed today with her new offence and I very much hope that, in its full form, it will take its place in statute. Sadly, there was no movement on ministerial powers in key areas such as recognised legitimate interest, but we live in hope that this Government will, at least at some stage, have a self-denying ordinance. We are not there yet; maybe we have to keep plugging away in future Bills. But we are a lot more content with this Bill going forward to the Commons than we would have been if the DPDI Bill had gone in the same direction.