Published: February 10th 2009 - at 3:30 pm

This article is one of a series that intends to inform and highlight the issue of Data/Information Sharing as proposed in the Coroners and Justice Bill currently being put before parliament. This is a serious issue for our individual liberties and is one I, and others, will be writing about over the course of the next month or two. If you have not already heard about this bill, please take a look at our analysis of the Coroners and Justice Bill’s contents and learn why you should be concerned by the legislation in its current form.
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In the past week the committee stage has started to take place; a session which involves a small number of interested MPs with the aim of deliberating on the legislation put before them, and listening to the views of experts and affected parties. The intention is that through this fact finding a better bill can be finalised for final debate in the House of Commons. For the purposes of Information Sharing the key witnesses (experts) we are interested in are Liberty, who cast a legal eye on the human rights affected, and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), whose opinion is more practically minded.

The ICO is the main body to watch on this issue, so though arriving last to give evidence to the committee, I want to address their comments first. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ), including Jack Straw himself, has cited the report made by Walport and Thomas (the latter being the current Information Commissioner, personally representing his office and his stake in the report at the committee) as the reason the Information Sharing sections of the bill exist. Indeed the assertion made to the house was that the report was what asked for these measures…essentially that the experts thought what the MoJ had put forward was necessary.

This is a lie, a misrepresentation of both the content of the report and the views of the Information Commissioner himself (read the ICO portion of the minutes). Richard Thomas had the following to say in his opening…

I and my office can give only a heavily qualified welcome to part 8. We think that there are beneficial aspects to it. We have provided the Committee with a written memorandum setting out our position. But we fear that the data-sharing powers are somewhat wider and less safeguarded than was proposed in the Thomas-Walport report and that the powers available to my office are substantially weaker. We would like to see what eventually emerges by the time of Royal Assent more closely mirroring what we spent seven months researching and putting forward.

There you have it, plain as day. The people that will be involved in monitoring and enforcing Data Protection legislation say that whoever has drafted the Coroners and Justice bill has gone overboard on the powers, not safeguarded those powers enough, and has categorically ignored qualified research in the pursuit of this dangerous end product.

Clearly the ICO isn’t exactly enamoured that the MoJ has decided to take a review that essentially asked for simplification and for greater powers to the ICO and mould it in to a catch-all, do-almost-anything piece of legislation that can for all intents and purposes ignore the ICO if it so wishes.

Liberty also had plenty to say on this issue (read the Liberty portion of the minutes); their stance one of understanding regarding the usefulness of information sharing, and even the necessity in some circumstances, but a principally opposed to all aspects of the sections 152-154 in part 8 of the bill. Anita Cole, Liberty representative, summed up this feeling succinctly at one point after being hounded by the insufferable George Howarth…

[The information sharing portion of the bill] is not improvable. It should not be included in the Bill. It should be removed. It breaches article 8 in the sense that the purposes are not set out in the Bill.

Through their associated memorandum (essentially a fact sheet for the members of the committee), and their answers before the committee, it has been made clear that the safeguards that reportedly exist for this legislation are in fact no safeguards at all, compounded by the admittance of the ICO that the bill itself is too vague and that there are lots of presumptions as to how correctly and legally such law could be used.

The experts and those that would have a day-to-day task of investigating and advising on an information sharing scheme such as is proposed are in agreement on a fair amount. They agree that in principle certain Information Sharing can be necessary, and they agree to Information Sharing where clearly set out and scrutinised. Most importantly though they agree that this bill allows for an Information Sharing scheme that is both too broad and too loose to make law that the public can trust in Government hands.

About the author
Lee is a 20 something web developer from Cornwall now residing in Bristol since completing his degree at the lesser university. He has strange dreams, a big appetite, a small flat, and when not forcing his views on the world he is probably eating a cookie. Lee blogs independently from party colours at Program your own mind.
· Other posts by Lee Griffin


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1. Liberal Conspiracy

   New blog post: Protect your data – crucial blows the the government argument http://tinyurl.com/czw2f5

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