Statistics and Registration Service Bill

Perhaps I may deal first with Amendment No. 180 as it is a specific amendment and then deal with the rather more general issues that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, introduced with his amendment. There may be limited occasions when the board may need to disclose in pursuit of its functions, one of which is given, for example, in Section 5 of the Census Act 1920. That function is transferred to the board from the Registrar General under Schedule 1 to the Bill and allows the board to develop statistics on the population for periods between one census and another, and otherwise to supply and further provide for the better co-ordination of such information. In performing this function the board may need to disclose information; for example, to allow statisticians in the Department for Work and Pensions to use that information, with administrative data, to aid in the development of better-quality population statistics. The prevention of such sharing, which would be for the purpose of a function of the board, could cause a real deterioration in the standard of government statistics. I want to reassure the noble Baroness and the Committee that, as all the board’s functions are considered to be statistical, there could be no possibility of this exception allowing disclosure for non-statistical purposes. Nothing in the exception overrides existing restrictions on disclosure in, for example, other legislation. The board will be able to make a disclosure only where it is lawful to do so. The confidentiality protection in Clause 36 will still apply even if the board has passed the data on to others under this exception. It will mean that if anyone who received the data under this exception disclosed it unlawfully, they would be subject to criminal sanction. Nothing in Clause 36 overrides the protections given in the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act. I hope that the noble Baroness recognises why there needs to be an exception.