§ Mr. Andrew F. BennettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what discussions have taken place between officials of his Department or of the census office and the Post Office about use of postal codes in the publishing of census material.
§ Mr. FreemanOfficials of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys hold regular meetings with the Post Office to discuss the maintenance of OPCS's central postcode directory, which is used by Government Departments and the Health Service to allocate data already held on a post code basis to administrative areas. The use to be made of post codes in statistics to be published from the 1991 census has not yet been discussed in detail at these meetings, although agreement has existed since 1985 that aggregates of post codes could be used to define areas for census statistics.