HC Deb 08 February 1972 vol 830 cc1139-42

3.35 p.m.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield (Nuneaton)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish a data bank tribunal and inspectorate; to provide for the licensing of data banks containing personal information; and to make other provisions to prevent the misuse of information stored in data banks. I should make it clear to the House, or those of my hon. Friends who have an interest in the computer industry, that I have never intended this Bill to be specifically anti-computer. [Interruption.] I——

Mr. Russell Kerr (Feltham)

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May we have this unholy clatter from hon. Members leaving the Chamber stopped so that we may listen to my hon. Friend?

Mr. Speaker

At all events I hope that it will subside as quickly as possible.

Mr. Huckfield

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that assistance. I want to make it clear that the purpose of the Bill is not specifically to get at the computer industry. [Interruption.] What I am aiming to do——

Mr. Speaker

Order. I have already asked hon. Members to leave the Chamber quietly.

Mr. Huckfield

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The purpose of my Bill is to adapt each successive generation of new technology to make sure that it exists only within a comprehensive legal framework. That is the purpose of introducing a Bill which will set up a data bank tribunal under which all major operators and storers of information will have to be licensed.

We live in an age when we have the facility and the capability of using machines which can record quite faithfully and accurately myriads and millions of details—something we have not been able to do before. We have machines capable of recording personal details without the fallibility of human memory, without the distortion of emotion or human fatigue. We now have it within our power to keep accurate records on a very large scale. That is the unique contribution of the computer in storing information.

Apart from that, having stored the information, we can get at it very quickly. I would be the first to recognise that this confers a large number of benefits on society. It can remove a large element of human drudgery and tedium. It can confer a magnanimity of benefits. At the same time it brings with it substantial social disadvantages unless it progresses within a comprehensive legal framework, that is what I seek to establish.

I do not intend to delve into the more philosophical realms of the definition of privacy because I am sure that Ministers know some of the difficulties I would encounter if I tried. Consequently I have chosen to restrict my Bill to one small area of the need for privacy—nonetheless an important area. It is an area in which we ought to have a fundamental right to control the quantity and the flow of information about ourselves, an area where we ought to have the right to personal anonymity. We ought to have the right to disappear from the record for a time if we feel so inclined. These I feel are the personal freedoms and personal privacies which we have to strive hard to maintain today.

If we look at the Government Front Bench nearly every single Department represented there has proposals to store personal information on computerised systems. They are all represented here this afternoon. There have been allegations in the past about disclosure of information from Government files. Even Members of this honourable House find themselves on files with television, Press, radio, banks. All kinds of people maintain files on hon. Members. Currently we have some contentious examples of files, for example the files being kept on the internees in Northern Ireland. I wonder whether they will ever get the chance to see their files. Then we have the files which will be built up by employers under the Industrial Relations Act. They will be interesting and I wonder whether every trade unionist and shop steward will have the right to access to his files.

It is not only in the public sector but in the private sector too that we have some large-scale examples of confidential and personal files being built up. In the private sector we already have credit agencies with files on 15 million of us. One firm, British Debt Services, records only bad debt information. It is not even interested in good debt or credit information. We are entering an age where just like the United States, unless we have a credit rating we might as well not exist.

This is the kind of facility which the United Association for the Protection of Trade with its National Credit Register, British Debt Services and Tracing Services Limited possess and that is the kind of society all these people are working towards. I hope that we will not progress too fast towards a cashless society without realising some of the grave dangers it presents. [Interruption.] I am talking about a society in which cash is replaced by credit. I agree with my hon. Friends that there is not much credit or cash around at the moment.

We are operating in a sphere in which most other countries already have legislation either going on to the statute book or already there. In Queensland, Australia, and many of the states of the U.S.A., there is already legislation whereby anyone who is denied credit has the automatic right to see the records on which his credit has been denied. He has the right to find out who has been giving information which has led to the denial of credit. Even the Commission under the late Lord Crowther recommended a credit commissioner for the control of the granting of credit.

With the computer capabilities which I mentioned, there is the possibility of integration of all these files. We can integrate local government files with central Government files with private files as well. It will then be possible to make completely computerised profiles of each citizen. We can then make value judgments about who deviates from the norm, who is above or below average.

It is these factors which concern me so much that I have brought forward this Bill for the second time. I am indebted to the National Council for Civil Liberties and to Joe Jacob, of the London School of Economics, who have given me drafting assistance. My Bill provides at least a basis for the kind of comprehensive legal framework which we must have to deal with this matter. It establishes a licensing system under which any large-scale operator or storer of informa- tion, the operator of a data bank, will have to have a licence which will show what information he is entitled to collect, to whom he may give it and what the restrictions are.

Most important, I want to give the individual the right of access to information on his own files. If that information is wrong, he should have the right to correct it and he should be assured that the correction which he has made is given to those who have been given the wrong information. That is a fundamental right under my Bill.

I want an independent inspectorate to make absolutely sure that the conditions of the licence given by my Data Bank Tribunal are adhered to. I do not want this country to advance to the stage reached by the citizens of Media, Pennsylvania, who went around for a week singing: You'd better not laugh, you'd better not smile The F.B.I. has it all on file. But, unfortunately, we now have that capability to deprive us of privacy or personal anonymity and to make all behaviour behaviour for the record. That would be a sort of helpless "Goldfish Bowl Society". As one newspaper reported on the introduction of my first Bill, this is an example of the goldfish fighting back.

I hope that the House will give leave for the introduction of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Huckfield, Mr. Mikardo, Mr. David Stoddart, Mr. Douglas-Mann, Mr. Arthur Davidson, and Mr. Walden.

    c1142
  1. CONTROL OF PERSONAL INFORMATION 58 words