Prime Minister Tony Blair is conducting a policy review which
aims to break down the barriers between blocks of information held
by Government on citizens. Currently data protection law prevents
one department using information gathered by another in most cases,
and Blair wants to ask a specially convened panel of citizens to
give their view on changing that law.
"Some individuals can regularly deal with as many as 30
different agencies, none of whom share information on that
individual," said John Hutton, the government's Work and Pensions
Secretary.
"We need to ask whether people would be in favour of relaxing
current privacy procedures and data sharing laws if it would mean
improved public service, particularly at points of greatest
stress," said Hutton.
One of the main principles of data protection law is that
information gathered for one purpose should not be used for any
other purpose. Changes being sought by government would require
that principle to be set aside.
"Too often it may be legally forbidden to use information other
than for a single purpose," said a statement from Blair's office on
the proposed changes. "At other times services may assume there is
a legal barrier when there is none, and sometimes it is the
traditional culture of separate government departments, divisions
between different agencies or even separate parts of a single local
authority that contribute to delays and barriers."
Any plans may involve a change in the law, said Dr Chris
Pounder, a data protection expert at Pinsent Masons, the law firm
behind OUT-LAW.COM. "The issue about Hutton's plans is whether the
sharing is by consent of the data subject or via statutory power,"
said Pounder. "If it's consent, there is no data protection issue
under the first principle, or interference in terms of human
rights."
"The Government in its Vision Statement argued that sharing was
in the "public interest", which implies statutory powers to
legitimise the sharing," he said. "In addition, the term 'necessary
in the public interest' is a term identified in the ID Card Act and
this explicitly refers to the purpose of 'securing the
efficient and effective provision of public services'."
The plan to make the changes is one of the issues that will be
put to newly convened citizens' panels, a proposal from Blair to
involve people more heavily in government decision making.
The proposed ID card database, the National Identity Register,
is the most likely central hub of any new data sharing system,
experts believe. Campaigners against the controversial card and
register say that the new plans would increase the state's power
over individuals.
"NO2ID’s warnings about the database state are coming true,"
said Phil Booth, NO2ID's National Coordinator. "Mr Blair doesn’t
trust us, but he expects us to put absolute trust in all government
departments. By tearing down the fundamental safeguard of
confidentiality, he intends to give them all the right to talk
about us behind our backs, which means more power to intervene in
our lives when it suits them."
“For a government that can’t look after its own employees’
personal information, and that is so plainly incompetent at linking
computer systems to imagine this will increase efficiency is
ludicrous," said Booth. "That it expects people to give up all
privacy and just trust it is frightening. The vast majority of
people already don’t.”
The new plans are along similar lines to those uncovered by
OUT-LAW early last year, when it was revealed that the government's
Citizen Information Project proposed the use of the identity
register for other, administrative functions. Those functions are
additional to those listed as the reasons for an identity register
in the last Labour Party manifesto.
Blair said at a Downing Street meeting today to launch the idea
of the citizen panels that the move was not a pre-cursor to a
surveillance society.
"This is a very good example of how a perfectly sensible thing
can be misconstrued," he said. "The purpose of this is not to
create a new piece of technology at all or a new database. This is
about sharing data in a sensible way so that the customer gets a
better public service."
