Coroners and Justice Bill

These amendments fill a small gap in the Bill as currently drafted. Noble Lords may be aware that the Government have introduced a new two-tiered structure for the fee which data controllers pay to the Information Commissioner to be registered as a data controller. This replaces the existing flat-fee structure. The notification fee for tier 1 data controllers will remain at £35 while the fee for tier 2 data controllers will be £500. The higher tier will encompass all data controllers with 250 or more members of staff and a turnover of £25.9 million or more, as well as all public authorities with 250 or more members of staff. We estimate that that represents around 5 per cent of all data controllers. The new fee structure will ensure that the Information Commissioner’s Office has the necessary income to fulfil its current and future data protection responsibilities, such as those being brought forward in this Bill. Schedule 19 as drafted contains provisions that allow the Secretary of State to make regulations to require data controllers to provide information to the Information Commissioner for the purpose of verifying that the correct annual notification fee is paid. However, this information has to be provided only upon initial registration. There is currently no mechanism to require data controllers to notify the Information Commissioner’s Office of changes in circumstance that would place them in another tier. Section 20 of the Data Protection Act 1998 requires data controllers to notify the Information Commissioner’s Office of certain relevant changes in circumstance. Amendments 118 and 132 amend Section 20 to enable regulations to be made requiring data controllers to notify the ICO of any changes to their registrable particulars for the purpose of ensuring that the correct annual notification fee is paid. We have drafted the amendment whereby organisations will not need to provide the Information Commissioner’s Office with this information year after year whenever they pay their notification fee. Instead, they will need to provide this information only upon a change of circumstance. This will help to ensure that the bureaucratic burden on data controllers is minimised. I hope that noble Lords will agree to these amendments. I beg to move.