COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 29 June 1984)

§ Lord Elton

My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 39 to Clause 33.

This amendment does not raise any major new issues of policy. It is a tidying up amendment. As originally cast, Clause 33(4) exempted personal data from the non-disclosure provisions in any case where the disclosure was required by or under any enactment or by the order of a court. It was put to us, however, that there might be rules of law which also required the disclosures of data: trust law, for example, may in certain circumstances require trustees to disclose information. Clearly if there is a legal obligation to disclose data, whether that obligation arises at common law or under statute, a user should be able to meet the obligation without breaching the nondisclosure provisions of this Bill and this amendment ensures that he will be able to do so.

It also recognises that a user may sometimes need to disclose personal data for the purpose of obtaining legal advice or, more generally, for the purposes of 1183 legal proceedings. Of course, a registered user could do this without breaching the non-disclosure provisions if he included his legal adviser or courts of law as potential recipients of his data, but a user who is claiming the benefit of an exemption such as that in Clause 31, for payroll and accounting data does not have this option open to him and would have to forgo his exemption if he wanted, for example, to use some of his accounting data in order to bring an action against a debtor. The amendment avoids this by ensuring that the disclosure of data in such circumstances does not breach the non-disclosure provisions. I beg to move.