Digital Government (Disclosure of Information) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-06-25
Topic: Mixed Topics
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to one of the two speakers for remaining and for the points that both have made. If the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, thinks that was a rant, compared to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, he is an amateur; I thought he was very reasonable and measured in what he said. I shall go through his points as quickly as I can The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, was correct to point out that we need to help where we can. The measure is to enable public authorities to share information. A key criterion for the Digital Economy Act was that it had to be for the benefit of individuals and households. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, suggested that, because things were in the wrong order—I will address some of his points shortly—we should withdraw the codes, wait for the Information Commissioner to issue her code and lay the codes again in six to nine months. That will mean that all the good work that is done, which the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, identified, in using public information to help individual households that are vulnerable or suffering will effectively be put off. For example, on the fuel poverty measure, that would be another winter when we could not use the information to help the public. On some of the issues raised by the noble Lord about the information shared, I remind him that the information is permissive: it does not have to be shared; it just allows public authorities to do that. They have very clear outlines of what they are able to do; they must have information sharing agreements. The measure merely allows public authorities to do it; there is no compulsion on any of them. It must also be in accordance with the Digital Economy Act and the Data Protection Act. That will give individuals the right—and mean that they can trust—that their information will not be misused, because it is subject also to the GDPR In talking about the difference between the Digital Economy Act and the Data Protection Act the noble Lord was a bit confused about paragraph 9. I was surprised—I thought it seemed pretty clear, but I accept that it could be made simpler. What it is really getting at is that the Digital Economy Act referred not just to living people, as the Data Protection Act does, but also includes bodies corporate and distinguishes between the information in those. So we are saying that there is a distinction, and they therefore need to apply both, but when it comes to the information referred to, and referring to individual living people, the Data Protection Act will apply and so will the General Data Protection Regulation. I will send a letter to the noble Lord outlining that paragraph to see if we can explain it. I doubt we will be able to do it in words of one syllable but we will try to make it a bit clearer for him and I will put a copy in the Library. I accept that it is not immediately obvious to a normal person I am glad that the noble Lord, in contrast, said that the codes were "clear, succinct and admirable". I point out, however, that these are not for small businesses but for public authorities. The only time that they would involve a private business is when the private business has been contracted by a public authority to deliver something.