Clause 5 - Exchange of information with overseas authorities
Social Security Fraud Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Ms Angela Eagle (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department of Social Security; Wallasey, Labour)
I hope that I can satisfy the hon. Lady that the safeguards are adequate to protect information and our citizens' rights in relation to exchange of information.
The Secretary of State may supply information only when it appears to him that arrangements are in place for the legal transfer of information and when it appears that the other country has adequate safeguards against the abuse of information provided to it by the Secretary of State. The amendment suggests leaving out the words
``it appears to the Secretary of State''
and replacing them with
``the Secretary of State is satisfied''.
A similar change is suggested with regard to Northern Ireland.
In reality, however, the amendments would have no effect; they would achieve the same purpose as the Bill. I hope to persuade the hon. Lady that the Bill does what her amendments suggest that it should. For the Secretary of State to be satisfied that something is so, it must appear to him that it is so. Therefore, for a Secretary of State to be satisfied that a country has adequate safeguards against the abuse of information, it must appear to him that those safeguards are adequate. The amendments would not add anything.
I shall explain to the hon. Lady how we envisage the operation of the Secretary of State's decision-making process under the clause. There is a European convention on human rights and a European Union data protection directive, which govern what can be done with information held by a Government about a person and also safeguard that person's privacy. For it to appear to a Secretary of State that the other country has adequate safeguards against abuse, he must therefore be satisfied that the other country is subject to the ECHR and the directive or to similar enactments in other countries. We would also consider other factors such as whether the other country has a stable, democratic system of government. We would not transfer information to a police state or a country with a bad human rights record, where such information might be abused.
The Secretary of State would be under a duty to act reasonably at all times, and would be subject to judicial review if he did not do so. A decision that it appeared to him that there were adequate safeguards against abuse would therefore have to be reasonable. If it was not, the decision would be open to judicial review and could be set aside if the review was successful. If the Secretary of State transferred information unreasonably—for instance, to a country that did not have adequate safeguards against abuse—he would have acted unlawfully. Therefore, his action might also breach the Data Protection Act 1998. If so, it would be open to challenge by the Information Commissioner.
The Information Commissioner could serve the Department with an enforcement notice informing it that it would have to stop sending information to the country causing concern. If it failed to comply with that notice, the Information Commissioner could serve it with a further enforcement notice to stop it processing data altogether. I hope that the Committee agrees that that would be a significant deterrent against wrongdoing by the Department. Clearly, it would have no desire to become involved in wrongdoing or to transfer information to countries that did not meet the criteria.
Amendment No. 46 deals with Northern Ireland, to which everything that I have said about amendment No. 45 applies. I hope that those assurances satisfy the hon. Lady and that she will withdraw her amendment.