§ 21. Mr. Patchettasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will introduce legislation to amend the Data Protection Act to cover manually held police records.
§ Mr. WaddingtonNo. As I made clear during the passage of this legislation, it is the use of computers to process personal information which increases the potential threat to the individual and which justifies special measures. The Act is specifically aimed at automatically processed data and it would not be appropriate to extend its provisions to manual records, whether held by the police or by any other body.