A person to whom a certificate is issued by the Secretary of State for the purposes of this section is not liable for the commission of any offence relating to the delivery to the registrar, or the making of a statement, that is misleading, false or deceptive.
The Secretary of State may issue a certificate to a person for the purposes of this section only if satisfied that it is necessary for the person to engage in conduct amounting to such an offence—
in the interests of national security, or
for the purposes of preventing or detecting serious crime.
A certificate under this section may be revoked by the Secretary of State at any time.
For the purposes of subsection (2)(b)—
"crime" means conduct which—
constitutes a criminal offence, or
is, or corresponds to, any conduct which, if it all took place in any one part of the United Kingdom, would constitute a criminal offence, and
crime is "serious" if—
the offence which is or would be constituted by the conduct is an offence for which the maximum sentence (in any part of the United Kingdom) is imprisonment for 3 years or more, or
the conduct involves the use of violence, results in substantial financial gain or is conduct by a large number of persons in pursuit of a common purpose.