HC Deb 02 February 1990 vol 166 cc413-4W
Mr. Nigel Griffiths

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1) what assessment he has made of the circumstances in which decision-making involving public safety could be compromised because of the lack of openness to scrutiny by the public or the scientific community of the computer codes which may be involved in that decision-making;

(2)what steps the Government are taking to ensure that decision-making involving public safety is in no way compromised by the commercial secrecy of computer codes which may be involved, directly or indirectly, in that decision-making;

(3)whether he has identified any occasions on which decision-making involving public safety has been compromised because of the lack of openness to scrutiny by the public or the scientific community on computer codes which were involved in that decision-making.

Mr. Forth

In my reply to the hon. Member on 6 November 1989 I described the steps which the Government are taking to encourage the development of suitable standards and guidelines, both at national and international levels, and in particular the work of the Inter-departmental Committee on Software Engineering (ICSE) and its working group on safety-related software, of which my Department and the Health and Safety Executive share the secretariat.

On the relevance of any commercial secrecy pertaining to computer codes, I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), (Official Report, 2 November 1989, column 358): under section 20 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, inspectors have powers to make any necessary examination or investigation.

On the question of openness to scrutiny, the public and the scientific community have the opportunity to contribute to the development of the standards which will be used by regulatory bodies and their inspectorates in assessing the safety of systems which rely on computer codes. These standards are evolving and their coverage in the software field is being made more complete. I know of no occasion on which public safety is known to have been endangered by shortcomings in the existing arrangements for software inspection.