Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

The noble Baroness fairly described the powers of the Information Commissioner and I do not need to repeat those nor enter into a debate on them. The amendment would go further than the Data Protection Act 1998 to allow the Information Commissioner to exercise powers in relation to any information held by the reclaim fund, and not only personal data. Of course, the role of the Information Commissioner and the whole question of data protection has been an issue of lively public interest in recent months. As the Committee will be aware, the Prime Minister announced on 21 November that the Government would give the Information Commissioner the power to carry out spot-check inspections of government departments. Further, he asked Richard Thomas and Dr Mark Walport, as part of their review, to look at the Information Commissioner's powers of assessment to see whether there was scope for extending them. The issue is under lively consideration by the Government. It would not be right to extend the powers in the Bill only in relation to the reclaim fund and to what, in the wider scheme of things, is a fairly modest measure. I hope that the noble Baroness will give the Government due credit for addressing the Information Commissioner's powers and I hope that she will agree that it would not be appropriate at this stage to change the Information Commissioner’s powers in relation to this Bill.