Statistics and Registration Service Bill

moved Amendment No. 203: 203: Clause 44, page 20, line 21, at end insert— ““(c) governing further disclosure by the Board of information in circumstances where the disclosure would otherwise be permitted by a rule of law, this Act or an Act passed before this Act.”” The noble Earl said: I shall speak also to the other amendments in the group. To a greater or lesser extent, this part of the Bill liberalises the data-sharing regime, albeit it is constrained by Clause 51, which seeks to guarantee that the Data Protection Act and Human Rights Act cannot be disapplied or over-ridden under any circumstances. However, notwithstanding the Minister’s fulsome reassurances earlier, statutory provision already exists—notably Section 9 of the Identity Cards Act—whereby the safeguards afforded by these two Acts have been breached. Thus, the purpose of the amendments, as with Amendment No. 176, is to attempt to ascertain what extant statutory powers there may already be where the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act can be over-ruled and to find out how the Government intend to deal with such scenarios in the context of the board. Indeed, I could be tempted to suppose that the proposed regulations, irrespective of whether the intention behind the drafting is that the board take on some sort of role as an information clearing house, should be subject to the additional scrutiny safeguard proposed in the amendment, if only to introduce additional accountability and transparency. I beg to move.