§ Mr. Cohenasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is his Department's policy towards fees for subject access under the terms of the Data Protection Act; how many register entries his Department has; and what would be the total cost to a data subject seeking access to personal data held under all register entries.
§ Mr. RentonFollowing an internal assessment of the actual cost likely to be incurred in responding to subject access requests, data subjects will be charged a subject access fee of either £5, £7.50 or £10, depending on the particular Home Office registration to which they are seeking access, for each application.
On 26 October 1987 the Home Office had 88 confirmed entries in the register, with a further seven applications at various stages of consideration by the registrar. Twenty of these registrations contain data used solely for preparing statistics or carrying out research and, as such, will not contain any data which the Home Office is required to reveal to data subjects, and two relate solely to the provision of bureau services. Of the remaining 73 registrations, four will attract a subject access fee of £5, and four a fee of £7.50. The remainder will attract a fee of £10. This means that fees totalling £700 would be payable if a data subject were to apply for subject access to all Home Office registrations: this is an unlikely eventuality given the wide spread of Home Office registrations as listed in the departmental pamphlet, "Summary of Home Office Registrations", a copy of which I am placing in the Library.