Statistics and Registration Service Bill

I am glad that my hon. Friend is in his place. This is what I call the Marris amendment. It responds to a point that my hon. Friend made in Committee. He suggested, to some dismay in the parliamentary counsel offices, that clause 36 was ““infelicitously worded”” and that we could helpfully consider clarifying subsection (5). I am pleased to offer the amendment as a way of tidying up what he spotted in the Bill. His concern may not be immediately clear to the rest of the House, so I should explain that the subsection as it stands states, that an"““‘approved researcher’ means an individual to whom the Board has granted access to personal information held by it for the purposes of the statistical research.””" As he pointed out in Committee, it is unclear whether the phrase ““for the purposes of statistical research”” grammatically qualifies the noun ““access”” or the verb ““held””. I hope that the amendment clarifies that. I will turn to what might be regarded as the more substantive amendments that were tabled by the hon. Member for Fareham and the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy). The hon. Lady is right in many ways. The provisions and safeguards for the disclosure of data are not currently consistent and that is part of the purpose of these parts of the Bill. The hon. Gentleman based his remarks on a concern that, if data were shared generally within Government, respondents to surveys might be increasingly reluctant to provide the sort of data that we all require. Clause 36(1) is important because it contains a strong general prohibition on the sharing and disclosure of personal information. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) called it a blanket block. There was concern about the interplay with clause 36(4)(a), in the context of sharing information with other Departments. Essentially, subsection 4(a) is an exception to subsection (1). It allows the sharing of data in circumstances in which the House has already considered and enacted provision for such data sharing to take place. In many respects, it would not be appropriate—and perhaps not possible—for the Bill to override the will and settled determination of the House in a variety of other legislation. The particular concern, however, was clearly for the future and related to the sharing of data within Departments. The desire of the hon. Member for Fareham in relation to amendment No. 24 is to restrict the provision to apply to disclosures for the purposes of the board, or in other words the purposes of data handling. He may remember the discussions that we had in relation to clause 44. It provides for arrangements to see increased data sharing—to the board from Departments and to Departments from the board—in circumstances in which those personal data-sharing arrangements are clear, agreed and specific, the data sharing takes place only for statistical purposes, and supplementary regulations subject to the affirmative procedure are brought before the House, so that the House will have the chance to scrutinise and approve any such arrangements in the future. In that way, we will be able to strike what I started by saying was the balance between the desire to see data sharing for specified and justified purposes, and a concern to see personal data protected with proper confidentiality safeguards. Amendment No. 24 would modify clause 36(4)(a), which permits disclosure by the board when"““it is required or permitted by any enactment””." The amendment would mean that that would apply only when the information was being made available for statistical purposes. I hope that the hon. Gentleman accepts that we do not want to limit the provision to allow disclosure only for statistical purposes because that may prevent existing data-sharing practices that occur in the specific cases where Parliament has previously debated and decided that data sharing is in the public interest. For that reason, I hope that he will not press his amendment. Amendment No. 40 would allow personal information that was held by the board, its employees, or any other person who had received such information from the board to be used only to pursue the board’s functions. I must say to the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne that the provision would limit the board too much because if there were other legitimate interests at stake, the board would not be able to disclose. For example, it would not be able to disclose for the purposes of criminal investigation or in response to a court order. Both those exceptions are identified in clause 36(4). She will appreciate that although those purposes are outside the functions of the board, they are necessary, important and in the public interest. The purpose of amendment No. 41 is not quite clear to me. It seems to have been designed to allow the National Statistician to disclose personal data in specific circumstances, but if that is the case, the amendment is redundant, because the same exceptions regarding the confidentiality prohibition that cover the National Statistician, as a member of the board, are in place under subsection (4). I am not certain whether it is the hon. Lady’s intention that the amendment should remove three of the exceptions in subsection (4): that in paragraph (d), which will allow the board to disclose personal information that has lawfully been made public; that in paragraph (e), which will allow data to be shared if the disclosure occurs in pursuit of a court order—clearly, if the board was subject to a court order and there was no exception to allow the confidentiality restriction to be lifted, board employees would be subject to conflicting legal demands—and that in paragraph (f), which will allow for disclosure of personal information for the purposes of criminal investigations or criminal proceedings. I hope that I have been able to give a full explanation of the Government amendments and our concerns about the Opposition amendments.