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Let me take an area in which inspection plays its part in a product that we all hold very dear to our hearts; education. It is possible for the inspectorate to be part of the board and represented on it. The inspectorate has an entirely different job and a different responsibility—it is the inspectorate of what the board is responsible for producing. There is no suggestion that because the chief executive is concerned with the promotion of educational standards, the inspectorate is somehow compromised because the inspector serves on the same board. However, it must be clear that their functions are defined as separate and that the board is there to guarantee that separation. That is exactly what is being proposed in this model.
In Amendment No. 166 the noble Baroness has alighted upon the phrase, “so far as practicable”. I recognise why she should: because there is a danger that this provision is a get-out from the position that those concerned with the production of statistics should not be involved in assessment. In the normal course of events, we expect that the board will ensure that staff do not engage in the production and simultaneously the assessment of statistics. We have kept this phrase simply because it is possible that a member of staff might move from a post in the production of statistics to one on the assessment side and a small overlap in their work might result. That is not in any way, shape or form to compromise the principle on which the board will operate—to keep assessment separate from production—but working situations of that kind might arise. We simply did not want a position where a low-level overlap for a short period would cause a member of staff and the board employing him or her to fall foul of the legislation. That would render movement between the two functions very difficult indeed. But in career terms, a member of staff may well be involved at one stage in the production of national statistics and then pursue a career move on the assessment side.
The provision is included for that purpose only, and the safeguard is that the board is charged with these two separate functions. That is set out clearly in the Bill and the board’s working practices will embody them. I have illustrated the point with an example from the field of education. The noble Baroness has indicated that her amendments are probing in nature, and I certainly hope that on this occasion I have satisfied her that the Government have thought this issue through.
Baroness Noakes: I will have to disappoint the Minister again by saying that I am not wholly satisfied with his response. He gave an example in education where an inspector sat on a board. In fact, the Bill does not have the head of assessment sitting on the board. Some may think that he should be on the board, but that is not what this legislation seeks to achieve. My amendment does not address that issue because I can see quite easily how two people might function at a senior level within the organisation. My point concerned the staff.
Can the Minister explain why the Bill sets up an arrangement for the National Statistician to head an executive office with a full staff but is completely silent on any issues relating to staff for the head of assessment? Nothing in the Bill refers to the resources that would need to go to the head of assessment. The Minister says that the Government have thought this through clearly, but I cannot see that in the Bill.
Lord Davies of Oldham: We do not put staff numbers and remuneration in legislation; we are merely making it absolutely clear that the staff working for the head of assessment have nothing to do with the production of statistics, nor do they work in the executive office under the National Statistician. It could not be clearer than that.
Baroness Noakes: The Minister is clear on it, but the Bill is not. It does not state that staff working on the assessment side should not be in the executive office. Indeed, a casual reading implies quite the reverse. I fear that the Minister has also not explained how the National Statistician can be the chief executive of the board when there are supposed to be two sets of staff and the National Statistician is the chief executive of only one set. This takes us back to an aspect of the confusion lying at the heart of the Bill.
I said when I introduced these amendments that they are probing in nature, and therefore I shall take them no further today. I do not believe that the Minister has adequately explained how these two streams of activity are to exist within the new Statistics Board, and I hope that he will choose to reflect on that before we come to the Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 164 not moved.]
Clause 30 [Head of Assessment]:
On Question, Whether Clause 30 shall stand part of the Bill?
Viscount Eccles: I do not want to go over the ground that has already been covered by my noble friend Lady Noakes, so I will be brief. However, I should like to suggest to the Minister at least one reason why the arrangements in Clause 30 are unsatisfactory. It is not the habit of chief executives to be told that they may not have anything to do with part of the organisation for which they are executively responsible. Chief executives reckon that the buck stops on their desk. If, for example, when I was chairman of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, I had told the incoming director that there was a large chunk of the gardens’ operations for which he would have no responsibility, I would have had trouble concluding a contract with him.
While I can see that if the three-day chairman is to be the public face of the Statistics Board—to guard the code, to be responsible for the board’s detailed relationships with the Government and the person who deals with the media—he or she will need advice. However, the presence of a second executive member with the title of “Head of Assessment” alongside the National Statistician, who is to be the chief executive and yet is to have no working relationship with the head of assessment, is a recipe for trouble. Any highly qualified chair would be able to deal with these matters without the intervention of such a prescriptive clause, put in the Bill no doubt in pursuit of continued Treasury control. I suspect, from the discussion so far, that if the clause were not there and an amendment was put forward to include it, we would be told that it was too prescriptive and not needed.
Lord Davies of Oldham: I thank the noble Viscount for presenting his opposition to the clause in such a constructive way, although obviously we regard this provision as important. I am afraid that I am obliged to reiterate the role of the head of assessment in the way I did when responding to the previous amendment. The head of assessment is not a competing voice to the board’s chief adviser—the chief executive in the form of the National Statistician. While the National Statistician will advise the board on its wide range of statistical functions, the role of the head of assessment will be strongly focused on supporting the board in one, and only one, of its key functions, that of assessment.
I recognise from the response of the noble Baroness to my explanation on the previous amendments that I have not as yet won the argument and achieved total conviction. We have further stages where these issues may be pursued. I shall study what has been said this evening in criticism of the government model in Hansard carefully, and I hope that the replies from this Box will also be studied with care. We believe that the Bill gives a clear prescription of the role of the National Statistician and the enhancement of that position as the chief executive of the board and head of national statistics, and of the assessment function with which the board is properly charged which is separate from that. I hope that if we return to this subject on another occasion, noble Lords will have looked at these arguments as carefully as I intend to.
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Viscount Eccles: I shall certainly look with great care at what the Minister said, as is only right and proper. I do not think that there is any disagreement about the dual role of production and quality control—as I prefer to call it as opposed to assessment. The point of disagreement is why it is not right and proper to leave this matter to the Statistics Board and its chief executive, the National Statistician, who would be uniquely well placed to carry out the function of quality control.
Clause 31 [Separation of Functions]:
[Amendment No. 165 to 168 not moved.]
[Amendment No. 169 not moved.]
Clause 36 [Confidentiality of personal information]:
[Amendment No. 170 not moved.]
Lord Newby moved Amendment No. 171:
Clause 36, page 15, line 16, after “disclosed” insert “nor used except in relation to the exercise of any of the Board’s and National Statistician’s functions,”
The noble Lord said: We have tabled this probing amendment because we believe it is very important that there should be clarity about the circumstances in which information submitted to the board, particularly by an individual, can be used. The amendment seeks to ensure that information not only cannot be disclosed; it cannot be used,
This seems a very strange amendment because, presumably, a member or employee of the board, or of a committee of the board, will be exercising only the functions of the board. Therefore the amendment does not apply to paragraphs (a) and (b).
The amendment relates to paragraph (c), which states that information must not be disclosed by,
The key issue, on which I seek reassurance from the Minister, is what types of person will receive the information directly or indirectly if it is information that board members and their employees cannot disclose? What does the Bill mean by “disclosed” as opposed to information which is received?. Does paragraph (c) mean that anyone who receives information for some reason, not necessarily as a result of a deliberate disclosure by the board, is bound by the disclosure rules; or is it intended to refer, for example, to a subcontractor to the board who is not a member or employee of the board or of any of its committees? What category of person does the Minister envisage will be receiving information? Can we be certain that, in the Bill as it stands, anyone who is not employed by the board will be limited in the use they can make of any information they receive simply to the exercise of the functions of the board? I beg to move.
Baroness Noakes: My Amendment No. 180 in this group is different from the Liberal Democrat amendment but addresses some of the same issues. Amendment No. 171 would restrict the board in the use of personal information to the board’s or National Statistician’s functions. Amendment No. 180 seeks to delete Clause 36(4)(c) and would not allow the disclosure of information which is,
My purpose in tabling Amendment No. 180 is to probe why the board should ever need to disclose information for the purposes of its functions.
I can see why the board might need to use personal information and I can see how it might feel that it could disclose in some of the circumstances set out in subsection (4), but I cannot understand the circumstances in which the board would need to disclose information for the purposes of its functions as set out in the Bill, such as reporting official statistics, defining official statistics, producing statistics, compiling the retail prices index and providing statistical services. It also has a function in research, but that is specifically covered in subsection (4)(i), and paragraph (c) is clearly not about that.
So we are left with one area, the census, which is the only area given in the Explanatory Notes as the reason for the board needing to disclose information for the purposes of its functions. If that is the only reason, we believe that a much more targeted reference to the disclosure of information for that purpose should be included in the Bill, rather than the extremely broad permission given in subsection (4)(c) to disclose anything in relation to the board’s functions. I look forward to the Minister’s explanation.
Lord Davies of Oldham: Perhaps I may deal first with Amendment No. 180 as it is a specific amendment and then deal with the rather more general issues that the noble Lord, Lord Newby, introduced with his amendment.
There may be limited occasions when the board may need to disclose in pursuit of its functions, one of which is given, for example, in Section 5 of the Census Act 1920. That function is transferred to the board from the Registrar General under Schedule 1 to the Bill and allows the board to develop statistics on the population for periods between one census and another, and otherwise to supply and further provide for the better co-ordination of such information. In performing this function the board may need to disclose information; for example, to allow statisticians in the Department for Work and Pensions to use that information, with administrative data, to aid in the development of better-quality population statistics. The prevention of such sharing, which would be for the purpose of a function of the board, could cause a real deterioration in the standard of government statistics.
I want to reassure the noble Baroness and the Committee that, as all the board’s functions are considered to be statistical, there could be no possibility of this exception allowing disclosure for non-statistical purposes. Nothing in the exception overrides existing restrictions on disclosure in, for example, other legislation. The board will be able to make a disclosure only where it is lawful to do so. The confidentiality protection in Clause 36 will still apply even if the board has passed the data on to others under this exception. It will mean that if anyone who received the data under this exception disclosed it unlawfully, they would be subject to criminal sanction. Nothing in Clause 36 overrides the protections given in the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act. I hope that the noble Baroness recognises why there needs to be an exception.
Baroness Noakes: Is there an example other than the census? That is the question which I posed in my opening remarks.
Lord Davies of Oldham: I gave the clearest illustration that I could. I will write to the noble Baroness if there are other illustrations, but this is the key one in respect of the necessity for having exception.
On the more general issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, we believe that there are adequate and proper safeguards in place for personal information. They are vital, as the noble Lord emphasised. That is why the Bill ensures the strongest possible protections for confidentiality of personal information consistent with the public interest in allowing the existing flows of data to and from the board to continue and allowing the possibility of increasing the sharing of data for, I emphasise, statistical purposes only.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights concluded that the Bill did not raise sufficiently significant human rights issues for the committee to examine it further. A committee that, as we know, examines Bills with the greatest care thought that this Bill had a clean bill of health as it stands. As I said on Second Reading, overall the Information Commissioner welcomes the fact that the Bill recognises the importance of ensuring personal information is used only where necessary and confidentiality is respected. The Information Commissioner welcomed the creation of a criminal offence for the illegal disclosure of personal information in Clause 36, which he believes should act as a significant deterrent to those working for the board and to anyone else in receipt of the information who needs to act on it for statistical purposes only.
The Government’s approach to the data-sharing and confidentiality clauses is clear. We intend to ensure that the existing flows of data to and from the ONS are replicated in the new system. We do not want to damage the flows of information on which the ONS has been dependent in the past. We want to allow for the possibility of increased sharing of data to and from the board and other public authorities where that sharing is for the purpose of statistical production and analysis and anywhere that it is judged to be in the public interest and approved by Parliament through secondary legislation. We have introduced strong confidentiality safeguards to ensure that people have confidence that their data will be held securely. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, gave voice to obvious anxieties on that score, which need to be allayed.
These are the principles on which we are working. We are building on the long history of the ONS, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, or the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said, was an excellent brand name. I see that the noble Baroness takes responsibility for that phrase, and I congratulate her. We do not want in any way, shape or form to do anything other than enhance that. The ONS has had a long history of properly protecting data. We are taking this opportunity to increase the confidentiality safeguards on personal information, introducing into the Bill a criminal sanction for wrongful disclosure.
I emphasise that we fully appreciate the noble Lord’s concerns. Others have looked at the Bill carefully and have given a favourable response to the issues of confidentiality. I hope that he will therefore feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Newby: I am most grateful to the Minister for that explanation. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 172 to 175 not moved.]
8.15 pm
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Hooper): If Amendment No. 176 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 177 because of pre-emption.
Baroness Noakes moved Amendment No. 176:
The noble Baroness said: I shall speak to Amendment No. 177 as well. Amendment No. 176 would delete paragraph (a) of Clause 36(4). This paragraph allows the board to disclose personal information that is required or permitted by any enactment. The amendment would remove that as a basis for permitted disclosure by the board or anyone else who had received it from the board.
Paragraph (a) is very wide. I can see that for Acts passed after this Act is brought into effect it will be open to Parliament to authorise disclosure. I have a bigger problem with this Act permitting a completely unspecified number of disclosures or opportunities for disclosure on legislative grounds. Clearly the existing statutes do not refer to the Statistics Board, so I am struggling with what kind of Acts we are talking about. Are they referring to disclosure to the ONS? If so, why do we not see a schedule of technical amendments for that purpose? The Explanatory Notes give one solitary example. Are there any others? Can the Minister provide a comprehensive list of the statutes concerned as at today’s date? If he cannot do so today, will he undertake to do so before Report?
Amendment No. 177 generously assumes that the Minister can make a case for disclosure on the basis of paragraph (a). If that paragraph remains in the Bill, we believe that it should be made plain that the information may be disclosed only if it is for statistical purposes. We have discussed the principles of this before. We believe it important that the board should not disclose personal information for non-statistical purposes, except in the most clearly defined and substantiated cases. Paragraph (a) is not clearly defined and must therefore be constrained by statistical purposes. I beg to move.
Lord Evans of Temple Guiting: Amendment No. 176 would remove the exception to the confidentiality obligation in Clause 36(4)(a) that allows the board to share personal information when another enactment requires or permits this sharing. Clause 36(4)(a) is there to take into account existing information gateways agreed by Parliament. We would not want to remove this exception or limit it to allowing disclosure only for statistical purposes. This may prevent existing data-sharing practices occurring in those specific cases that Parliament has previously debated and decided are in the public interest. Schedule 2 gives the examples of other Acts, such as the Finance Act 1969.
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