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Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food

Answer

Mr. Quentin Davies: To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, pursuant to his answer of 4 April 2001, Official Report, column 224W, on IACS, if IACS applicants submitting electronically can be protected against the Post Office using their names and addresses for commercial purposes. [160241] Ms Quin: [holding answer 8 May 2001]: Applicants submitting their 2001 IACS forms electronically must first obtain a digital certificate which they use to digitally sign their applications. Digital certificates are issued by commercial companies who have been accepted as competent Certification Authorities. There are currently two digital certificate providers approved by the Office of the e-Envoy: Equifax Secure who issue SecureMark certificates and the British Chambers of Commerce in partnership with Royal Mail Viacode who issue ChamberSign certificates. In order to obtain a digital certificate applicants provide personal information to the Certification Authority. The information supplied to certificate providers by applicants is held under the terms of the UK Data Protection Act 1998 and as such cannot be used for any purposes other than that for which it was originally intended, unless authorised by the applicant. This includes other commercial purposes. As part of the Public Key Infrastructure which underpins digital certificate technology, some of this information (name, company name and e-mail address) will be held in a public electronic directory. This is necessary to enable the transmission of secure e-mail. In addition, section 11 of the Data Protection Act 1998 also offers protection to the applicant against the use of personal data for the purposes of direct marketing. Section 11 states: (1) An individual is entitled at any time by notice in writing to a data controller to require the data controller at the end of such period as is reasonable in the circumstances to cease, or not to begin, processing for the purposes of direct marketing personal data in respect of which he is the data subject. (2) If the court is satisfied, on the application of any person who has given a notice under that subsection (1), that the data controller has failed to comply with the notice, the court may order him to take such steps for complying with the notice as the court thinks fit. (3) In this section "direct marketing" means the communication (by whatever means) of any advertising or marketing material which is directed to particular individuals.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

368 c222-3W; 160241

Session

2000-01

Subjects

Data protection Applications Agriculture ICT Marketing Subsidies Integrated administration and control system

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk