Clause 36
Statistics and Registration Service Bill
9:00 am
John Healey (Financial Secretary, HM Treasury; Wentworth, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. He picked me up on a slip of the tongue; rather than a greater era, I meant to say—I think I did correct myself—an era of greater information sharing. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to make that crystal clear to the Committee.
In the future, in such an era—greater or otherwise—it will be essential that people are confident that their personal data will be handled appropriately. Statistical surveys often rely on people giving their information voluntarily and even when that is not the case, statisticians need complete and truthful responses on which they can rely and, indeed, on which we can all rely for further analysis.
A statistical system, therefore, needs strong confidentiality safeguards to give individuals and businesses confidence that their personal information will not be disclosed improperly to other partiesfor other purposes. A crucial part of the board’s maintaining its credibility in collecting, analysing and publishing data is that there is the highest protection of such personal information.
The Office for National Statistics—indeed, the Government’s statistical service generally—has a long history of maintaining data confidentiality and already securely holds information including that from census returns, information on employees’ earnings and data on businesses’ profits. However, we are taking the opportunity in the Bill to increase the confidentiality safeguards and sanctions on personal data. On safeguards, the data-sharing arrangements that we propose will be permitted only for statistical purposes, only where they are judged in the public interest and only where permitted by the Bill, including the specific exemptions in clause 36, or by orders under theBill. Any proposed extensions by order must havethe agreement of Ministers and, most importantly,the further scrutiny and agreement of Parliament or the devolved Administrations.
The Bill introduces a criminal sanction for the unlawful disclosure of information concerning both individuals and businesses—whether held by the board, on members and employees, or by anyone to whom the board has passed the data on—where that information identifies an individual or business or where it might allow someone to deduce their identity. The criminal sanction, which could be up to twoyears’ imprisonment, is an important addition to the confidentiality regime for personal information collected by the board. The confidentiality provisions are structured to allow both the sharing provided for within the clause—whether current or new flows—and the necessary exceptions in subsection (4).