APPLICATION OF THE ACT TO ADDITIONAL INFORMATION (Hansard, 24 April 1987)

§ Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington)

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

I have no wish to delay the House. The new clause is in the nature of a promissory note. I shall not repeat the arguments that were advanced in Committee, but there is widespread all-party support in the House for providing more access to the information held about individuals. If ever there was a time to put an idea into practice, this is it.

The new clause provides new powers for the Minister to make regulations on those matters that were in the Bill as originally drafted. These include benefits and other records, employment records, bank, building society and credit card records, as well as immigration records. It puts down a marker to give the Government of the day the necessary authority to introduce regulations after proper consultation, without the need for another Bill.

We are worried about the Government's opposition to the inclusion in the Bill of references to medical records. There is widespread and overwhelming support in the medical profession for such a provision. The Minister told us in Committee that he believed it best for progress to be made on a non-statutory basis. He said that talks would be held with the medical profession in an attempt to achieve that. I hope that progress is made on a non-statutory basis.

The new clause provides a backstop in case it is not possible to reach agreement, so that the Government of the day can decide whether it is right to take hold of the issue and put it on a statutory basis.

It is unusual in such circumstances for bodies such as the Royal College of Nursing of the United Kingdom, the Royal College of Midwives, the Health Visitors Association, the Association of Community Health Councils for England and Wales, the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation, the Royal National Institute for the Blind, the College of Health, MINI) and the Patients Association to reach a common view about the need for the citizen and patient to have access to medical records — with safeguards. I hope that the Minister, who heard these matters discussed in Committee, will at least see the sense of what the new clause would achieve.

It is no criticism of the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), who is the true father of the Bill, to say that it is the way of the world for private Member's Bills to be mauled about, but the hon. Gentleman wants to leave a small footprint on the sand of history. The Bill will take a small shuffle, rather than a small step, forward. I want the inister to accept that this 945 is the start, and by no means the end, of a process. He should accept the idea of a provision that would make that clear in the Bill.

Our national passion for secrecy puzzles me and many others. In large areas of our lives, we feel it right to deny citizens access to information. The records containing such information come into being when we fall into the cradle, and they are still there when we slip, protesting, into the grave.

At the same time, the people who are generally held in high esteem in the land, and to whom we entrust our secrets—secrets that strike at the heart of our national security—far too often breach that trust. It is perverse to put so much trust in those people and yet be so fearful about giving ordinary citizens the right to examine the records that are kept about them. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to our suggestion and will put down a marker for the future. The Bill is not the end of a process: it is merely the beginning.

§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Waddington)

The Government have already set a precedent for access to personal information in the form of the Data Protection Act 1984, for whose passage I was responsible. I do not want to make a party political speech, but those who have been prone to criticise the Government for not moving fast enough on the subject of manual records should be reminded that a Labour Government had ample opportunity to introduce a Bill similar to the Data Protection Act but took no steps to do so. The leader of one of the alliance parties was a prominent member of that Labour Government, but was a tacit supporter of the decision to make no progress in giving people greater access to their personal records. Therefore, it ill behoves Opposition Members to complain about progress being too slow now.

The Conservative Government took the crucial step and gave the citizen access to records about himself that were held on computer. Today we congratulate the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) on having gone a long way towards putting on the statute book a Bill that extends the right of access to manual records.

On Second Reading I made it clear that the Government did not need persuading of the benefits that can accrue to an individual if he can obtain access to records of personal information. We are also conscious, as any prudent Government must be, of the fact that benefits of that kind have implications for resources of manpower and money. As they say in Lancashire, "You can't get summat for nowt." Extending the right of access to personal information costs money and resources. Let no one be fooled by propaganda that suggests otherwise. If we are extending the right of personal access, we are making a conscious choice to spend resources in that area and to deprive other areas of those resources.

At the beginning of the exercise — the hon. Gentleman could not have been more helpful and could not have been more ready to recognise the difficulty of the Government—we had to be careful about putting new burdens on employers, for example. One becomes sick and tired of those who voice concern about unemployment and yet are prepared to place new burdens on private employers that might have the effect of increasing 946 unemployment. As a Government we had to consider the matter in the round, being anxious to extend the rights of individuals to access to their personal records, but being mindful all the time that too swift progress could impose intolerable burdens. There is no doubt that the practicalities of granting access to manual records are of a different scale from those involved in granting access to computerised records.

In reaching our agreement with the hon. Gentleman we came to the conclusion that the authorities and classes of information to be made accessible should be as they now appear in the schedules. I made it clear on Second Reading that the Government believed that the best approach would be to wait to gain some experience of the operation of the subject access provisions in the Data Protection Act 1984, which come into force in November, before we consider giving wide rights of access to manual records. It was for this reason that we reached agreement with the promoter and sponsors that the scope of the Bill should be narrowed.

In effect, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) was asking, "What is wrong with putting into the Bill an order-making power that does not have to be used? A decision could be made later." Perhaps the machinery within the Bill is appropriate for the sort of records that are mentioned in the schedule, but not the preferred machinery to provide an extension of personal access to other records. I do not know about that, but what is certain is that it seems odd to rush ahead and provide a power to increase the scope of the Bill before we have even seen whether the machinery in the Data Protection Act is the right sort, and before we have experimented to ascertain whether the machinery in the Bill to deal with manual records is the right sort.

The hon. Member for Erdington made an important point about medical records. We found in our useful discussions in Committee that there emerged clear concern about medical records. Many people would like to see progress made in this area. It was the view of Ministers responsible for health policy and myself that greater progress was likely to be achieved on providing access to personal information in medical records — there is no disagreement between the Government and the promoter and sponsors about the desirability of that happening—by following the voluntary rather than the statutory route.

I think that I was able to give an undertaking in Committee that was of comfort to those who have expressed a wish to see swift progress made towards personal access to medical records. I repeat the undertaking that I gave on behalf of my colleagues with responsibilities for health that they will enter into talks with the medical profession at an early stage with a view to achieving substantive and timely progress in opening up medical records further on a non-statutory basis."—[Official Report, Standing Committee C, 1 April 1987; c. 60.] The undertaking will open the way to important further progress. The principle of access to personal information having been established in respect of computerised data by the Data Protection Act 1984 and in respect of manual records by the Bill is important. There is a need to see how it works out in practice.

1.30 pm

Extension to other areas is best left, the Government believe, for consideration when we have digested what we have done and after due consideration by Parliament. 947 From the tone of his speech, I know that the hon. Member for Erdington does not propose to press the new clause to a Division but I thank him and his colleagues for having tabled it. It is important that the matter should be ventilated on the Floor of the House, so that the public may know of our concern.