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Statistics and Registration Service Bill

moved Amendment No. 39: 39: Clause 7, page 4, line 33, at end insert ““and ensuring appropriate data protection safeguards in respect of the raw data from which official statistics are derived”” The noble Earl said: We will in due course move on to discuss the information-sharing provisions of the Bill, when we reach Clauses 35 to 51. To an extent, therefore, this amendment foreshadows our debates on those issues, although I shall endeavour to confine myself here to the matter in hand. The logic of the amendment is straightforward. The later clauses of the Bill sanction access to wide swathes of administrative data, a fair proportion of which will be personal and/or sensitive information within the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998. In such circumstances, it is wholly appropriate that, "““good practice in relation to official statistics””," should include adequate and proper safeguards for the raw data from which they are derived. Manifestly, this is what the amendment seeks to achieve as a counterpoint to the Bill’s entirely appropriate emphasis on the desirability that, as it were, the finished product of official statistics should be properly accessible. I beg to move.