§ Mrs. Curtis-ThomasTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) whether the Citizen Information Project will cover the whole of the UK; [177795]
(2) whether an independent statutory body will be established to administer the Citizen Information Project; [177796]
(3) what security measures are planned for the Citizen Information Project; [177797]
(4) how identity will be verified of individuals wishing to update information held on the Citizen Information Project; [177798]
(5) whether audit trails will he used on the Citizen Information Project as a means of checking security; and who will be responsible for checking this; [177799]
(6) what assessments have been made of the (a) size, (b) cost of setting up and (c) the time necessary to set up the Citizen Information Project; [177840]
(7) what adjustments have hem made to the Citizen Information Project since the Cabinet agreement to establish a national identity database; [177841]
(8) what the purpose is of the Citizen Information Project. [177842]
§ Ruth KellyThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the General Registrar for England and Wales, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Dennis Roberts to Mrs. Claire Curtis-Thomas, dated 10 June 2004:
The Registrar General for England and Wales has been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Questions on the Citizen Information Project (CIP). I have been asked to reply in his absence. (177799, 177840, 177841, 177842, 177795, 177796, 177797 and 177798)
The objective of CIP is to create, for the public sector, the prime source of address and other core contact information relating to people usually resident in the UK. The feasibility study, conducted in 2003, indicated that the creation of a UK-wide population register could lead to cost and efficiency savings for the public sector.
With regard to the specific points you raise in relation to security, identity verification, governance and logistics of its potential setting up, all of these points are being considered during the project definition stage, which is currently running. It is scheduled to run until June 2005 at which point the Office for National Statistics will report back to Ministers with proposals for how CIP could be taken forward. Therefore, no decisions have been taken yet on the form in which it would develop but the latest thinking can be found in the evidence supplied by the Registrar General to the Home Affairs Committee on 27 April 2004.
486WThe CIP project team continues to work closely with all relevant government departments and to ensure that the project takes account of developments elsewhere.