§ Mr. Don FosterTo ask the Secretary of State for Education if he will make a statement about the requirement arising from the Data Protection Act 1984 on the headteacher and governing body of a school to be separately registered with regard to the holding of personal information on computer records when only one registration was previously required for the county as a whole on behalf of all maintained schools; and what proposals he has to lessen the consequent expense.
§ Mr. Forth[holding answer 11 December 1992]: Data users for the purposes of the Data Protection Act are individuals or groups of people who control the contents and use of a set of personal data. Any such data controlled by school governing bodies and headteachers for the purposes of their respective statutory responsibilities, should be registered accordingly with the Data Protection Registrar. The cost of registration was one of a broad range of pressures on local education authorities that the Government took into account in fixing education standard spending for 1992–93.