§ Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) when he hopes to publish the report of members of the Council of the Royal Statistical Society on the privacy of the census;
(2) when he hopes to publish the report of the Computer Society on the privacy of the census which has been submitted to the Government.
§ Sir K. JosephMy right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and I are considering the reports of the British232W Computer Society and the Royal Statistical Society on the security of the 1971 Census. Some of the societies' proposals need to be studied in relation to the recommendations in the recent Report of the Committee on Privacy, Cmnd. 5012, under the chairmanship of the right hon. Sir Kenneth Younger and to the Government's own studies of the categories of personal information held in the computer systems of Government Departments and the uses to which this information is put.
I am not yet in a position to announce a date for the publication of a report on the societies' findings and the Government's comments on them.