Statistics and Registration Service Bill

Amendment No. 176 would remove the exception to the confidentiality obligation in Clause 36(4)(a) that allows the board to share personal information when another enactment requires or permits this sharing. Clause 36(4)(a) is there to take into account existing information gateways agreed by Parliament. We would not want to remove this exception or limit it to allowing disclosure only for statistical purposes. This may prevent existing data-sharing practices occurring in those specific cases that Parliament has previously debated and decided are in the public interest. Schedule 2 gives the examples of other Acts, such as the Finance Act 1969. Another example of where sharing between the ONS and other departments is allowed by existing legislation is the Inter Departmental Business Register. The IDBR is a list of UK businesses maintained by the ONS, collected under legislation such as the Statistics of Trade Act 1947. These data are used by various government departments, such as the Department for Education and Skills and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or by the devolved Administrations, for selecting samples for surveys of businesses to produce, for example, analyses of business activity. It is vital for statistics around government to ensure that these existing flows of data from the IDBR are allowed to continue. Amendment No. 176 would stop this by preventing the board from sharing data when other enactments allowed it. The noble Baroness asked for a comprehensive list. We hope to provide that to her before the next stage of the Bill. I hope that she will feel able to withdraw her amendment in the light of what I have said.