Statistics and Registration Service Bill

My Lords, I am mightily relieved that my noble friend Lord Northesk has returned to assist at Third Reading. I moved a similar amendment on Report, but withdrew it, because my understanding and the Minister’s understanding of the powers of the Information Commissioner under the Data Protection Act 1998 were at odds. On 18 June, the Minister said that, "““the Information Commissioner already has statutory powers to undertake the activities set out in this amendment””.—[Official Report, 18/6/07; col. 64.]" I believed that that was not the case and, clearly, that was important. I therefore withdrew the amendment in order that we could clarify the position. The Minister wrote to me quickly after the Report stage and I am grateful to him for the letter and for the speed of the reply. However, his letter has reinforced my view that the amendment remains necessary. The Minister’s letter rested on the provisions relating to the serving of information notices in Section 43. As my noble friend Lord Northesk has pointed out, we do not get to the provisions of Section 43 unless there is a request under Section 42. It is not always the case that a person will be aware that his or her data have been incorrectly processed and hence will not be in a position to make a request, let alone to establish a substantive request. We therefore have to come back to the Information Commissioner’s powers contained in Section 51(7) of the 1998 Act—not Section 57 as I incorrectly informed the House on Report—which allow the commissioner to carry out an assessment only if the data controller consents. Obviously, in most cases consent will be given, but we cannot always assume it because we have seen that government departments disagree with the Information Commissioner in a number of areas and there is no reason to assume that the data controller of the Statistics Board would always agree with the Information Commissioner. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, has pointed out that it sometimes works against the interests of the person whose data are going to be inspected to agree to that. I hope the Government will agree to this relatively small additional power for the Information Commissioner.