Clause 29 - Unauthorised disclosure of information
Identity Cards Bill
5:30 pm
Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister, (Assisted By Shadow Law Officers); Harborough, Conservative)
I do not want to say more than is strictly necessary, because my hon. Friend the Member for Newark has said most of what needs to be said. I just wanted to be sure about something. While we are discussing a criminal offence of unlawful disclosure—we would like it to apply only if the discloser is reckless or deliberate—what the system is concerned about is the disclosure. Confidential information might be true, but its disclosure can have terrible consequences for the individual concerned. I am thinking about health records, matters that are private to the bedroom and all sorts of confidential information that we give to our priest, doctor or teachers at school. Such information may well be true, but it is not the sort of information that we would want broadcast.
The common law of confidence, which is growing and has been doing so since the Prince Albert pictures case in the mid-19th century, is concerned to allow a claimant to seek an injunction to prevent a disclosure if he gets wind of it. First, I need to be assured not only that we will deal with the position after the event, as we do under clause 29, but that, if the disclosure is unintentional but has exactly the same devastating consequences for the subject of the breach, he or she will have some remedy under civil law against the discloser. Secondly, I need an assurance that the Department would be susceptible to an application for an injunction if I, as the citizen whose confidential information was about to be disclosed, got to hear of it. That is a failsafe, but it is necessary to have such a discussion in the context of the amendment.