§ Mr. Andrew F. BennettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) if he will take steps to ensure that no information collected for the 1991 census, based on postal code areas, is used by insurance companies or building societies or others to withhold or weight policies based on that information;
(2) if he will take steps to ensure that no information collected for the 1991 census is used to prepare mailing lists for any purpose.
§ Mr. FreemanIt would not be practicable for the Government to control the uses particular customers make of the aggregated data published from the Census. However, as with previous censuses, stringent measures will be taken to ensure confidentiality. No information on682W identified individual people or households will be passed to anyone other than employees of the registrars general. Furthermore, in order to guard against possible indirect disclosure of such information, no statistics, except, possibly, simple totals of people or households, will be published for areas containing very small numbers of households or people.
Statistical summary tables relating to fairly small local areas have been produced since the 1961 census. These have proved to be of great value to a wide range of users in central and local government and in health authorities, as well as to industry and commerce. The facility to define such areas directly in terms of groups of postcodes as well as census enumeration districts will add to the usefulness of these statistics, particularly to local and health authorities; and, subject to the overriding requirement to avoid disclosing data about individuals, I am anxious that the most effective use should be made of the data which everyone is required by law to provide to the census offices.
If census statistics were not made available for areas defined directly in postcode terms, it would still be possible for anyone to use maps and postcode directories published elsewhere in order to relate the statistics for any local area to the set of postcodes and to the set of addresses which fall within that area. Such uses could be prevented only by suppressing all census statistics for local areas. This would unnecessarily reduce the public availability of statistics collected by the census offices, and substantially diminish the value of the census.