HC Deb 10 July 1973 vol 859 cc1324-35

(1) For the purpose of the compilation or maintenance by the Business Statistics Office of the Department of Trade and Industry of a central register of businesses, or for the purpose of any statistical survey conducted or to be conducted by that Office, the Commissioners or an authorised officer of the Commissioners may disclose to an authorised officer of that Office particulars of the following descriptions obtained or recorded by them in pursuance of Part I of the Finance Act 1972—

  1. (a) numbers allocated by the Commissioners on the registration of persons under that Part and reference numbers for members of a group;
  2. (b) names, trading styles and addresses of persons so registered or of members of groups and status and trade classifications of businesses; and
  3. (c) actual or estimated value of supplies.

(2) Subject to subsection (3) below, no information obtained by virtue of this section by an officer of the Business Statistics Office may be disclosed except to an officer of a Government department (including a Northern Ireland department) for the purpose for which the information was obtained, or for a like purpose.

(3) Subsection (2) above does not prevent the disclosure—

  1. (a) of any information in the form of a summary so framed as not to enable particulars to be identified as particulars relating to a particular person or to the business carried on by a particular person; or
  2. (b) with the consent of any person, of any information enabling particulars to be identified as particulars relating only to him or to a business carried on by him.

(4) If any person who has obtained any information by virtue of this section discloses it in contravention of this section he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £400 or on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two nears or to a fine or to both.

(5) In this section expressions used in Part I of the Finance Act 1972 have the same meanings as in that Part and references to the Business Statistics Office of the Department of Trade and Industry include references to any Northern Ireland department carrying out similar functions.—[Mr. Anthony Grant.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Anthony Grant)

I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

It is just over three years since I last participated in a Finance Bill debate. I am glad that the opportunity to do so again arises in connection with the clause, which I believe will prove advantageous to the small firms sector, for which I am particularly responsible.

The Bolton Report made two important recommendations, which seemed at first sight to be irreconcilable. It recommended that the sector should be monitored and it drew attention to the fact that one of the most hated aspects of life for small firms was the practice of form-filling.

We believe that in the new clause the solution to that problem has been found and that the arrangements proposed will prove a major contribution towards both objectives set out in the Bolton Report as well as being an improvement to the Government's statistical services as a whole.

The object of the clause is to enable the Customs and Excise to pass to the Business Statistics Office the name and address, the industrial classification, the status, the VAT registration number, and the figures of annual turnover of individual businesses, obtained from the administration of VAT. The information would be passed to the BSO in computer-readable form at little cost and would be used only—I repeat, only—for statistical purposes.

There are probably six advantages of this arrangement. First, many small firms would be exempted from statistical enquiries if the BSO knew their turnover and the nature of their business from VAT records. For example, if this VAT information had been available to the BSO before it sent out questionnaires for the 1971 census of distribution, about 100,000 small retailers could have been exempt from the census.

Second, an up-to-date list of names and addresses of businesses with figures of turnover would permit the BSO to improve and extend the sampling systems used in its statistical enquiries. This would reduce also the burden of form-filling for individual firms.

Third, the VAT information would enable the Department of Trade and Industry to monitor the small firms sector, as the Bolton Committee recommended, without introducing the new statistical inquiries directed to small firms, which would otherwise be necessary. We estimate that to monitor the sector in accordance with the Bolton recommendations would mean an inquiry being sent out to 20,000 firms. By the arrangements in the clause this would be avoided. Even for the normal statistical information that has to be obtained, by using this method we believe that it would be possible to relieve 50,000 wholesalers and 200,000 catering organisations and motor traders of the burden of filling up forms.

Fourthly, if large numbers of firms could be excused from the inquiries because information was available about them, the BSO would need to devote less resources to following up non-respondents and would be able to publish the results of its major inquiries more quickly.

Fifthly, the Bolton Committee recommended the development of a central register of businesses. Our investigations indicate that by far the most efficient way to create a central register and reduce the burden of statistical form filling would be for the BSO to use information obtained as a by-product of the administration of VAT.

Sixthly, by reducing the burden of statistical form filling in this way, the arrangements would reduce costs to Government, industry and trade.

I appreciate that some anxiety is felt on the question of confidentiality. I wish to make four short points. First, there has never been any suggestion that the BSO has been negligent in safeguarding the massive amount of information entrusted to it.

Secondly, there is a precedent for passing revenue information. Section 58 of the Finance Act 1969 authorises disclosure by the Inland Revenue to the BSO of names and addresses, with suitable safeguards, which are also applied in this case.

Thirdly, the BSO would use the information obtained from Customs and Excise purely for statistical purposes. The only information that would be published is aggregated information, and great care is always taken to suppress from published tables any information that could relate to individual undertakings.

The fourth point on confidentiality is perhaps the most important one. Under the Statistics of Trade Act 1947 the BSO already has powers to obtain this information, with the exception of the VAT number. With that exception, the clause does not add to the range of information that the BSO and other statistics divisions can collect or obtain from firms under existing legislation.

Finally, there has been widespread consultation about this proposal. The Confederation of British Industry and the National Chamber of Trade, which is very concerned with the small businessman, have publicly pronounced in favour.

It is because I believe that the proposals in the clause will greatly alleviate the burden of the detested form filling—especially for small firms—whilst at the same time improving the quality of Government statistical services, that I confidently commend the clause to the House.

6.45 p.m.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon (York)

I know that the House is concerned to get on with its business today. Therefore, I shall detain it for only a few minutes.

I should feel a certain unease if there were not some discussion about this subject. For many years I have been concerned about the protection of privacy. I have pondered at length on the problems that faces Government Departments in obtaining information about the person—information that could easily be distributed around Government Departments to make it more convenient to collect it on one form and distribute it to all and sundry within the Government machine. That would reduce form filling and lead to a much more efficient use of the available information.

So far in our Government apparatus we have leaned heavily against that course, though it has much to commend it for the very reasons that the Under-Secretary used in introducing the clause. On the whole, I accept the balance that the Under-Secretary has suggested between convenience and confidentiality—that where the information can be circulated to another Department only in a form that will ensure that the particulars of individuals cannot be disclosed and that there is no way in which the information can be used to obtan a profile of any individual or firm that is sufficient safeguard.

What worries me a little about the clause is subsection (3)(b) which contains the words: with the consent of any person, of any information enabling particulars to be identified as particulars relating only to him or to a business carried on by him. The prefacing words—"with the consent"—rule out an intrusion into privacy; because there cannot be an intrusion to privacy which is consensual.

In what way is the consent to be obtained? When we were considering, on the Younger Committee on Privacy, the question of the confidentiality of bank records—which one would think would be the most confidential thing there could be in business relationships—we found that the banks generally took a very cavalier view of the matter, namely, that if a customer had ever asked for a reference on himself to be obtained from the bank, that gave the bank carte blanche to give anybody information about the customer who had requested it. The banks did so without ascertaining on each occasion whether the customer consented. They took the view that once a customer had given his original consent it covered all kinds of information to be disclosed to anybody that the bank thought fit, rather than that the customer thought fit. We had strong words to say about that in our report.

How is the consent to be obtained in this case? If it is to be obtained on each occasion when the information is to be disclosed to another Government Department, so that a personal profile can be obtained, I should be prepared to accept it, but I do not think for one moment that that is intended. I believe it is intended that there should be a note on a form to the effect, "I have no objection to the information going to such authorised bodies as" will perhaps be listed on the form, or are set out in some Act. That is such a general consent that there could be no check on the way in which the information is disseminated.

On the whole, Government Departments keep a close check upon confidential information, and the number of breaches that have occurred have been relatively rare. But they occur. When they occur they are sometimes very embarrassing, as some recent cases have indicated. If we are to go further in our use of information that is obtained for one purpose and disseminated to another Government Department for another purpose, there should be a very close check upon the way in which it is done.

I would much prefer that subsection (3)(b) were deleted and that the proviso contained in subsection (3)(a), together with subsection (1)(a) and subsection (1)(b) should be all that is required to allow the dissemination of information. Everything else would cover most of the information that was required. It would be a rare case indeed which would justify this extra power. I hope that the Government will reconsider this point.

Mr. David Mitchell (Basingstoke)

I welcome the new clause. It appears to those of my hon. Friends and myself who watch the interests of smaller businesses that it is a welcome move, which will reduce the amount of form filling required in the future. Perhaps my hon. Friend will be good enough to tell us a little more about the amount of form filling that it is expected to save.

As I understand it, the new clause will enable the Department of Trade and Industry to obtain information on the basis of which it will not thereafter have to ask firms under census and other arrangements to supply information that turns out to be quite useless. My understanding of the present situation—I do not think I am wrong—is that the Department frequently asks for information only to put it into the waste-paper basket, because a mere glance at the information is sufficient to reveal that the firm concerned is wholly ouside the scope of the inquiry being conducted.

If the new arrangement will enable the DTI to recognise which firms can supply it with valuable information and enable it to leave alone the unfortunate firms that would otherwise be asked for information to no purpose whatever in the inquiry being carried out, it will be a most welcome addition to the Government's armoury in this respect.

Form filling is often thought of in terms of the large company as something that someone in the office does—it is somebody's duty to fill in the return—but in a small business the working proprietor is the only person who knows the answers to the questions, and there are far more valuable things that working proprietors ought to be doing with their time than sitting down filling in unnecessary forms.

I urge upon my right hon. and hon. Friends—I am glad to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his place on the Front Bench—the need to look again at the multiplicity of returns which have to be made to different Government Departments. It seems to me that the possibility opened up here of passing on a certain amount of information could well be extended, so that we cut down the mass of returns that have to be made in one form or another.

For those reasons, I welcome the new clause as a first step, and I hope that it will lead to further extensions in the same direction.

Mr. John Biffen (Oswestry)

The hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) expressed in urbane and restrained fashion some anxiety about the disclosure of information to the Government and to public authorities. How different were the anxieties of yesteryear, so conditioned have we now become, I suppose, to the mass conveyance to the Government, in one manifestation or another, of information about our affairs.

It might be well to read into the record on this occasion how the House felt about these things some distance back. When Mr. Potter brought in a Bill for taking and registering an annual account of the total number of people—this was on 30th March 1753—the records of the House show that Mr. William Thornton—who, I think, must have been the spiritual predecessor of the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis), who has been waving around the front page of today's Evening Standard, which, I gather, carries a somewhat scarifying headline—said: Sir, I was never more astonished and alarmed since I had the honour to sit in this House then I have been this day; for I did not believe that there had been any set of men, or, indeed, any individual of the human species so presumptuous and so abandoned as to make the proposal which we have lust heard … To what end should our number be known, except we are to be pressed into the fleet and the army, or transplanted like felons to the plantations abroad? And what purpose will it answer to know where the kingdom is crowded, and where it is thin, except we are to be driven from place to place as graziers do their cattle? If this be intended, let them brand us at once; but while they treat us like oxen and sheep, let them not insult us with the name of men.

As to myself, I hold this project to be totally subversive of the last remains of English liberty".

Mr. Jasper More (Ludlow)

Hear, hear.

Mr. Biffen

My hon. Friend says, "Hear, hear", and he may be a sceptic on regional policy, as Mr. William Thornton was those ages back. I must say that most of the alarms expressed by Mr. Thornton seem to have been fulfilled in one fashion or another.

I am, however, delighted to welcome the new clause, very much on the ground expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. David Mitchell), that one hopes that it will lead to a diminution of the amount of paper work that falls upon private industry, and upon the smaller companies comprising that sector in particular. Such a modest alleviation was never so needed as it is now, especially with the on-going consequences of the counter-inflation legislation that is subjecting these people to the prospect of all kinds of further domestic business bureaucracy that they would not otherwise have to undertake. I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will be fully vindicated in his assertion that there will be a substantial diminution in the amount of form filling which is required, and that the new clause will in that way fulfil some of the recommendations of the Bolton Committee.

I hope, also, that the consultations that my hon. Friend has carried on will show themselves to have been as wide ranging, and be acknowledged to have been as wide ranging, as he claims them to have been, and as I have no doubt they were, for there is no question but that there is a growing resentment and weariness among businessmen who all too often feel themselves to be persecuted by the amount of form filling they have to undertake—and to what end?—for there is little indication that, with the growing amplitude of statistics, the quality of government is either more refined or notably more successful.

None the less, I believe that the measure proposed by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary deserves the widespread support that I am sure it will have in the House, though, in saying that, I feel that we ought quite properly to take account of the anxieties expressed by the hon. Member for York, even though, as I say, they were in somewhat less trenchant form than they might have been put by our predecessors were they present at this debate.

Mr. Ridley

I understand the anxieties felt by the hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon), and, if I may, I shall tell him a little story about the census of population in my constituency. I was astonished to discover that there were 221 female coal miners in my constituency. They eventually proved to be employees of the National Coal Board's research establishment there, which indeed employed 221 women. That shows how things can be falsely identified from crude statistics which purport to be impartial and reliable.

When I had the job which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State now has, I carefully investigated the matter to ensure that errors of that kind would not happen if the arrangements now proposed were made, and my only regret is that it has not fallen to me to commend the new clause to the House. None the less, I congratulate my hon. Friend on what he has done, and I am delighted that it should be he who has done it. I am convinced that the result will be not only a reduction in form filling but an improvement in the information available to business through the Business Statistics Office and, at the same time, a considerable saving of cost to public funds, which is something else we should all welcome.

Therefore, I strongly support the clause and I congratulate all those concerned who have brought it to its present stage. May I also reinforce what my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. David Mitchell) said and ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to take the next necessary step and that is to knock together the heads of all those people in Government who send forms out to make them agree to one common form wherever possible because it is the duplication of demand for information which irritates the business man.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Grant

I am grateful for the general welcome given to the clause, particularly the welcome by my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) because it was he who started the work on this provision and if any congratulations are to be offered he should accept a substantial proportion of them.

We are looking carefully into this point about the duplication of the forms sent out by Government Departments. We shall continue our work along these lines and if any hon. Member has examples from his constituents of firms or individuals who appear to have a duplication of forms, or a form which they do not understand, I should be only too delighted to look into the matter and to investigate it.

I explained to my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. David Mitchell) in my earlier remarks the large number of firms in the small firms sector which would be exempted by our proposals. For example, 100,000 retailers could have been exempted from the recent census. We hope to make much wider use of the sampling technique which in itself will eliminate many unnecessary forms.

The hon. Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) expressed anxieties in this respect and I hope that what I have said and what I shall now say to reinforce it will to some extent reassure him. Subsection 3(b) states that information can be passed with the consent of any person and I would expect that this power would be used rarely. We have sought in this clause to follow the provision which was passed by the House in almost identical terms in Section 58 of the Finance Act 1969. We have followed that wording because there may be circumstances, admittedly rare, in which it might be necessary to seek someone's consent in this respect. We would expect that consent certainly to be in writing and we should be most careful to try to avoid any of the pitfalls to which the hon. Gentleman referred. The Younger Committee found no complaint against the Business Statistic Office in this respect and I reiterate that its record has been good.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon

The Younger Committee could not find anything because it was not permitted to look.

Mr. Grant

if there had been any complaints it would have been surprising if now after the many years of the work it has done they had not come to light, whether made to the Younger Committee or to Parliament. I maintain that the record of the Business Statistic Office is good. This information is needed for statistical not administrative purposes and therefore it will be concerned not so much with the individual as with information in the aggregate.

I hope that the safeguards I have mentioned will reassure the House and I reiterate that we are taking no legislative powers that we do not already possess under the 1947 Act. We are simply using this procedure to minimise the burden which would otherwise be imposed if we had to operate under the previous statutes. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) and with my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More) who gave a splendid dissertation on freedom. I share his views entirely. The clause does not take away freedom. If anything it creates freedom—freedom from the oppressive barrage of form-filling which is such a curse to so many people.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

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