Clause 36
Statistics and Registration Service Bill
9:00 am
John Healey (Financial Secretary, HM Treasury; Wentworth, Labour)
My right hon. Friend is right. A balanced judgment and a tough examination of both sides of the equation, as he put it, is required from the board, from Departments with which the board is discussing potential future administrative data-sharing arrangements and, ultimately, from Ministers. Parliament will have to scrutinise and agree any proposed extension of data-sharing arrangements, as well as make judgments on such arrangements and hold to account the cumulative decisions of Ministers and the proposals and operation of the board.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth has brought me neatly on to consideration of the exceptions in subsection (4). We have heard in Committee and beyond the House arguments for restricting the exceptions, such as removing exceptions for court orders or in criminal investigations, as was proposed in some earlier amendments. I hope that hon. Members will see such proposals as unrealistic and wrong, but I appreciate that they may have been confused and misled by some of the briefings that they have received.
For instance, the Royal Statistical Society seems to have altered its position at different stages. When we first published the Bill, the society suggested that the confidentiality clause should be substantially reduced and simplified:
“so that all personal information collected under the authority of the Board...or transferred to the Board...must not be disclosed nor used for other purposes.”
That clearly does not strike the right balance. It probably then reviewed and refined its position when it commented on the Opposition amendments. The Society’s view was that data transfers were essential to support an efficient and effective statistical system. The key is to allow such transfers while ensuring that no breach of confidentiality will occur and that the data will be used only for statistical purposes. However, it said:
“amendments 155-174 will have some undesirable consequences.”
I think that the society has come now to a better, balanced judgment that I hope the Committee will want to take into account.
Clause 36(4) contains a list of exceptions, which draws on experience of existing practice, in the case of the Office for National Statistics, and on experience with confidentiality clauses in other legislation—for instance, the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005.