Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600-608)
Dr Victoria Williams
14 MAY 2008
Q600 Lord Woolf: First, may I make
a general point. One of the advantages of the PIA system is that
it does at least make people conscious of the need to decide whether
there is any justification. That starts off favourably, does it?
Dr Williams: Yes. I think intellectual
rigour and discipline is important and a framework of PIA can
impose that discipline. It prevents the exercise from resolving
into a weighing up, "feels acceptable all round" sort
of exercise; it does indeed structure it and indeed can lay it
bare to scrutiny. It is opened up in the courts. If a decision
is plainly unreasonable and unsupported by evidence, it will at
least be laid bare in the documentation.
Q601 Lord Woolf: That takes me on
to what I really wanted to focus on. If the information that is
collected is going to be used for any purpose, and presumably
it must be going to be used for some purpose or it should not
be there, who should be, so far as public space is concerned,
responsible for reviewing it or approving it in our set-up? Is
this another power for the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice?
Dr Williams: I see two different aspects.
Review, on the one hand, I would perceive as effectively an internal
matter to be carried out by an approved officer of a local authority
or someone who is accredited or trained, but approval and regulation
I would then take out of that rule and I would say someone of
the standing of the Information Commissioner or an independent
body of that sort ought to be responsible for licensing or indeed
to have the powers to stop projects going ahead, to intervene
in planning permission and effectively quash planning permission
if a scheme was found to be excessive or disproportionate. I would
have an independent body, not a government department. I have
stopped short of saying regulation by the courts. That could come
in more readily perhaps if we had a written constitution that
laid down explicit rights or indeed a statute that laid out explicit
rights to a presumption against surveillance. In the first instance,
I would say in independent body such as the Information Commissioner.
Q602 Lord Rowlands: The Information
Commissioner would have the right to receive all applications
by a local authority or any organisation to put new cameras into
a public space and review them and then either authorise them
or not?
Dr Williams: One would have to have some
sort of proportional criterion to prevent the ICO being overwhelmed
but, subject to that, from my own point of view I would say: yes,
the ICO should have the power to quash a public surveillance scheme
if not approved by the ICO.
Q603 Lord Rowlands: That is a huge
extension of his responsibilities?
Dr Williams: It would be, yes.
Q604 Lord Rowlands: It would cut
across the powers of planning authorities, et cetera?
Dr Williams: Yes. I think it should be
part of a profound consideration of the relationship between the
citizen and the state, of which this is simply part. It may well
be that a significant shift in those powers is necessary. At the
moment certainly nobody would appear to have the power to quash
the planning permission. There would not appear to be an overarching
framework of control over mass, non-specific surveillance. So
one would have to consider whether that is necessary. We do have
a lot more surveillance perhaps than other jurisdictions now.
Perhaps we have reached a point where that level of surveillance
needs to be met with a commensurate level of regulation.
Q605 Chairman: Dr Williams, you have
covered an immense amount of ground, for which many thanks. You
have covered partly what I am about to ask but perhaps you could
give us a final formulation of your view in answer to this. You
suggest in your written evidence that if PIAs are to be successfully
applied to surveillance Parliament must, and I quote, "develop
a clear set of principles to be applied to assessing the social
impact, rather than merely the personal data privacy impact, of
public surveillance". How do you think Parliament might undertake
that task? Do you think that the principles should be included
in any legislation making PIAs a mandatory requirement? Do you
think that the development of these principles is only a matter
for Parliament and not also for the Information Commissioner or
civil society groups?
Dr Williams: I think in the limit ultimately
of course it has to be a matter for Parliament if laws are going
to be enacted to regulate schemes of surveillance. In terms of
where society draws the line in terms of how much we wish to be
watched, it is a matter for the people at large, but of course
Parliament is the voice of the people. One can only recommend
a wide-ranging consultation with those groups that are affected.
We do not have another process, short of revolution. Usually these
countries that have developed massive constitutional change have
undergone some very significant upheaval, but the way we do things
here is by way of consideration and consultation. We do not have
anything better than that. It is certainly not a matter simply
for internal political debate. I think it should be a very wide-ranging
gathering of views and representation from all interested groups.
Q606 Lord Rowlands: One question
that has not been listed, and if you do not feel you can answer
it please say, so is this. When we were in Canada we had a very
vocal case made to us that there should be a division of responsibility
between freedom of information and privacy. In Canada there is
a division between them; they are separate because they see the
potential conflict of interest. Do you think that is a valid case
and that we should have a Freedom of Information Office and a
privacy officer or a privacy commissioner?
Dr Williams: I do not think it necessarily
follows. Freedom of information can be constrained legislatively
to cover or to exclude information about private individuals.
So that if one had a sufficiently clear legislative framework,
I would not be so concerned about the necessity for separation
of those powers, but it may well be, and I think it probably is,
the case that in Canada they have a more wide-ranging freedom
of information right perhaps than we have here. I do not know
personally. If they have more wide-ranging freedom of information
rights, then one can readily understand that there might be a
conflict between those two. If one can formulate legislation that
does not place the two in conflict, then one does not face the
need for separation.
Q607 Lord Rowlands: Do you think
at the moment we have that legislation right?
Dr Williams: As I understand it, freedom
of information requests would be declined if they relate to individually
identifiable private data.
Q608 Lord Lyell of Markyate: You
refer to developing a clear set of principles. It sounds very
sensible. Have you thought about this? Have you written anything
about it or if we were to ask you to write to us with two sides
of A4 as to what those principles should be, would you be able
to do so?
Dr Williams: I certainly would be willing
to carry out that task. I have not written anything other or beyond
what I have written in my submission. I wrote a longer version
of that that has been published in one of the journals, for which
I can give the reference. The focus I think would be on the chilling
of the exercise constitutional rights and perhaps there ought
to be a review of jurisprudence on that. It is much more of an
international matter in the sense than it is a national matter.
I can certainly produce something.
Lord Lyell of Markyate: It is really the principles:
you talk about the review of jurisprudence but you and I know
that that is very scattered.
Chairman: Dr Williams, you have been extremely
generous with your time. May I thank you on behalf of the committee
for being with us and for the evidence you have given.
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