Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 46: 46: After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause— ““Powers of Information Commissioner (1) The Information Commissioner may assess any aspects of the way in which a reclaim fund holds, uses, discloses or shares information. (2) The reclaim fund must provide any assistance or access that the Information Commissioner requests in connection with an assessment under subsection (1). (3) If the Information Commissioner carries out an assessment under subsection (1), he is to report his findings to the reclaim fund and to the Financial Services Authority. (4) The Information Commissioner may publish any report he makes under subsection (3) and any such report must be laid before each House of Parliament.”” The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 46 takes us out of the detail about how the dormant accounts scheme will operate into slightly wider territory. It inserts a new clause after Clause 12 and gives power to the Information Commissioner to assess any aspects of the way in which the reclaim fund holds, uses, discloses or shares information. The reclaim fund will be subject to the Data Protection Act, but the powers of the Information Commissioner under that Act are severely limited. We have debated this topic in the context of other Bills over the past year, notably the Statistics and Registration Service Bill and the Serious Crime Bill. In each instance, the Government resisted amendments to give the Information Commissioner further powers which, in the light of recent developments in the way in which Government bodies have been handling personal data, might not have looked the right approach. That is why I am pursuing this issue again. Under Section 57 of the Data Protection Act 1998, the Information Commissioner can assess the processing of personal data if, and only if, the data controller consents to the assessment. Otherwise his powers are limited to cases where a request comes from the person affected by the processing of the personal data. It will too often be the case that individuals are unaware of the correct processing of their data. Under EU law, the Information Commissioner should be able to initiate his own investigations, but the Data Protection Act does not give him that power. The reclaim fund may hold personal information about large numbers of individuals. While the banks will act as agents of the reclaim fund when claims for repayments are made, it would be surprising if the reclaim fund had no personal information because it could not function without it, if only to deal with appeals and other matters. We have seen from the recent cases at HMRC that organisations that hold personal information can deal with it in a casual or improper way, and in the case of HMRC, taxpayer confidentiality was enshrined in statute. So there is a risk that organisations cannot be fully trusted. The Government have announced some changes to the Information Commissioner’s powers, certainly in relation to government departments, although it is not clear how the broader case of the Information Commissioner’s powers will develop. We have heard from some interested parties who are in touch with the Ministry of Justice that the prospects for real reform outside the narrow area of spot checks of government departments are not encouraging. The Information Commissioner himself made it clear to the Justice Committee in another place that he wants significant new powers and duties. We have an opportunity in the Bill to make a modest start. Unfortunately, the scope of the Bill would not allow us to draft it for all the banks handling personal information relating to dormant accounts, but we can at least attach it to the reclaim fund, so I seek to take this modest legislative opportunity to improve the Information Commissioner's powers in ways that have been demonstrated over recent weeks to be absolutely necessary. I beg to move.