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Revenue and Customs: Data Loss

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Chancellor’s Statement. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that he must be extremely grateful that this is the last time this year that he has to appear before your Lordships’ House to make such a Statement. I am sure all noble Lords would want to wish the Minister a happy and relaxing Christmas in view of his recent exertions and a relatively disaster-free new year, although on recent evidence I am not sure that he can necessarily look forward to that. As well as the issue we are debating today—and we have been spared this in your Lordships’ House—a Statement is being made in another place at 5.30 pm about the almost laughable further misplacing of information by DVLA. There are two sequential Statements in Parliament today about the loss of data held by government. I doubt whether this has ever been the case before. We certainly have no cause to believe that this endemic failure is being resolved by Mr Poynter’s review or anything else. If there is one lesson which jumps out from all the evidence we have seen about the incompetence of the Government in this area, it is that there is no way that they should now be proceeding with even more centralisation of valuable personal data, whether it be for a compulsory ID card scheme, the DNA database or the NHS case records system. The Government are basing their defence of their behaviour here on the distinction between systemic failure, which is the fault of Ministers, and procedural failure, which is the fault of officials. Needless to say, they have come down on the side of this being a procedural rather than a systemic failure. However, is it not the case that in recent years pressure within Whitehall, happily supported by Ministers, has been for ever-greater information-sharing across government, whatever the confidentiality problems? A generation ago, when I worked at Customs and Excise, we were not allowed to share information with the Inland Revenue on the basis of taxpayer confidentiality. Arguably, that went too far in one direction but, equally, I think that very few people could now doubt that the pendulum has swung too far the other way. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, referred to the work that Sir David Varney is undertaking on so-called transformational government. This seems to mean removing barriers to information-sharing within the public sector, the practical consequence of which could be to magnify many times the damage done by information losses of the kind experienced by HMRC. Will the Government now ask Sir David to pause and think further about whether government and the country are ready for further transformation along the lines of the recent disasters? On the specifics, HMRC has now apparently agreed which data are to be encrypted and which are not and it has also agreed to a clear procedure for ensuring that that is done. In that regard, can we be assured that the Government have sought and gained the support of the big computer companies which dominate the operation of IT in HMRC and other departments? On that subject, and to return to something that I raised when we debated these issues earlier, surely it is now imperative that the gateway reviews on the external use of IT companies are published. Can the Minister confirm that the Government will no longer block in the courts publication of these reviews? Can the noble Lord also explain why Ministers have been blocking reasonable questions about security within government? Why, for example, have the Government refused to answer simple factual questions raised by my colleague in another place, the honourable Member for Falmouth and Camborne, about whether departments have existing protocols governing data exchange within and between government departments and agencies such as HMRC? The obfuscation leads to the obvious conclusion that they have no such protocols and are trying to conceal the fact. Can he put pressure on the Cabinet Office to release any such protocols? Two minor but irritating issues have arisen in recent days. Can the Minister explain why the helpline for families who are worrying about HMRC data losses is on an 0845 number? The misuse of 0845 numbers as a revenue source for government departments has been a growing scandal to which there has been no satisfactory response. It is highly unsatisfactory that an 0845 number is being used in this case. Finally, is the Minister aware that the many millions of letters which were sent out apologising for the loss of personal data themselves unnecessarily included a great amount of personal data, including national insurance numbers? As, according to the Courts Service, 8 per cent of all official letters go astray, are not the Government just compounding the error of their earlier disaster with another initiative which uses personal data needlessly and in a way that could lead to its misuse? This is another sad Statement by the Government. So far, the Poynter review has not answered the questions that we need to be answered before we and, more importantly, the public can feel satisfied that personal, confidential information is being dealt with acceptably by the Government. Together with the noble Baroness, I ask the Minister when we can expect, if not a satisfactory conclusion, at least a conclusion to the Poynter review.