UK Parliament / Open data

Statistics and Registration Service Bill

May I point out, as I did in Committee, that it is not only a question of market-sensitive information? It may be a question of health-sensitive information. If statistics come to light that suggest that there is a rapidly developing health problem, such as avian flu, in one part of the country, Ministers and the Department—in this case, it would be the Department of Health—would have a chance to react and put measures in place so that when those statistics came into the public domain, there would not be as much panic, if I can put it that way, because Ministers could say that they were aware of a cluster of avian flu cases, and had taken steps to address the issue. It is not simply a question of market-sensitive information.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
458 c217 
Session
2006-07
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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