Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (Disclosure of Pupil Information by Welsh Ministers) Regulations 2011

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, these regulations, which are being considered together with the Statistics and Registration Service Act (Disclosure of Value Added Tax Information) Regulations 2011, are the third and fourth uses of the data-sharing powers under the 2007 Act and the first time that the powers have been used by the current Government. The Welsh school pupils’ regulations make possible the sharing with the Office for National Statistics of data on individual pupils attending schools in Wales. The ONS is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, which is referred to in the legislation as the Statistics Board. The regulations follow those made in 2009 that allowed the ONS to access information on pupils attending schools in England.

Access to these data will enable the ONS to improve the accuracy of mid-year estimates and projections of population for local areas in Wales, to develop ongoing research as part of the Beyond 2011 programme, which is to consider possible alternatives to the traditional census in producing census-type statistics and to improve the assessment of the quality of statistics on schoolchildren from the 2011 census.

The other regulations being debated today allow the ONS to receive certain information provided to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in VAT returns. This will enable the ONS to improve its business and economic statistics and to reduce the burden on businesses, some of which will no longer need to supply this information in addition to other information through regular returns to the ONS. The data will also be used for economic analysis and to make improvements to various business surveys run by the ONS.

The regulations permit the sharing of a long run of VAT data submitted to HMRC on or after 1 October 1985 to provide a better economic understanding of the whole economic cycle. Data confidentiality and security arrangements are being assessed as a fundamental part of the preparation of the data-sharing agreement between the organisations concerned. The ONS already works to very tight confidentiality guidelines and has an excellent data security record. It has put the necessary measures in place to protect the data and to ensure that there is no disclosure of any personal information about specific pupils or businesses.

Section 39 makes it an offence for a member or employee of the authority, including the ONS, to disclose personal information it holds other than in tightly defined circumstances. Any unlawful disclosure could result in imprisonment and/or a fine. Both sets of regulations enable administrative data already collected by government to be further utilised but only for the purposes set out in the regulations; that is, for the ONS to improve the statistics it produces on the population and on the economy.

In summary, providing the ONS with access to data on Welsh pupils and businesses’ VAT data will lead to improvements in the accuracy of the statistics that it produces and to efficiencies which will benefit government and society as a whole. Better statistics will inform better policy making. I therefore ask the Committee to support and accept both regulations. I beg to move.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I have no intention whatever of objecting to these regulations, but I should be grateful for one or two points of clarification on the ONS regulations. First, I noted the emphasis placed by the Minister on data confidentiality, which obviously is central to all this. I note that in Regulation 2, the list of details about the pupil that will be made available excludes, of course, the pupil’s home address, presumably because of the dangers that exist. Yet, it includes the postcode. Certainly, with the name of Wigley and a postcode in my area, it would be fairly clear who that person is, although it may be more difficult with the Evanses and the Joneses. Given that, there cannot be a watertight assertion of data confidentiality.

My second point is in regard to Regulation 2(a)(vii), which refers to the,

“ethnic group and source of that information”.

I am not quite sure what is meant by the “source of that information”, but I imagine that it could be a matter for some consternation. Is the Minister in a position to tell me why? If not, perhaps he would be good enough to drop me a note about it because I realise that I may be splitting some hairs on these matters.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, the Minister will be delighted to know that I do not intend to oppose or object to these regulations. I can see the relief on his face at that statement. I will make a few comments on the reasoning and the likely outputs, and just touch on the confidentiality point.

The mood of the Explanatory Memorandum seems to suggest that the Welsh regulation—I will only talk to the Welsh regulation—is to facilitate the Beyond 2011 Programme. It does not quite say it, but the language of the Explanatory Memorandum seems almost to suggest that the decision has already been made not to have the 2021 census. In this day and age there are probably three reasons for having a census. The first is as a source of information for decision making. I have looked at the Beyond 2011 Programme and the sense of trying to produce something of equivalent capability for decision making is there in the terms of reference, and that is good.

We have also moved on in what the census is used for. The census has become highly valued in our society for academics, for what it can tell us about history, for the insights produced by past censuses— I am not sure what the correct plural is—that the academics have been able to glean, and the extent to which many citizens of this country find great value in being able to look back into their past, their families and the history of their surroundings. I hope the Government have not made the decision to abandon the 2021 census yet, and I hope that in making that decision they will take all considerations into account, including those that are of value to individuals as well as to the decision-making bureaucracy. Perhaps I should say administration—I would not call it bureaucracy because I like administrations.

My second question is: what are they going to collect? The terms are probably well defined in some administration Act, but I would be grateful if the Minister would flesh them out a bit. The two things that stand out are the ethnic group and the source of that information, and what we mean for these purposes. My wife was foolish enough to buy some tickets to the Millennium Stadium, so I have to be partly Welsh in this. I am not sure whether Welshness is ethnic or not, but as sure as hell it is sensitive. Is a sense of Welshness or Celticness part of what is being gathered here, as well as other things? Clearly it is an important issue in the country. What do we mean by the “source of that information”?

The second area is what is almost the political correctness around asking about a pupil’s level of fluency in English where their first language is neither English nor Welsh. I see that if your first language is neither English nor Welsh, fluency in English is quite important. However, fluency in English is also important if your first language is Welsh, because in the United Kingdom the extent of fluency in English must be important information about the way people live in the wider community. We move about this land from Wales to England. If one is gathering information about fluency in languages, one should gather it comprehensively. We have a peculiar situation where, as I read it, if you are fluent in Welsh your fluency in English is not even a consideration.

[Lord Wigley]

Before the noble Lord leaves that point, I say that I go along with what he says on the need to ascertain fluency in English. However, given the growing importance of the Welsh language in Wales, would he accept that there would be an equal case for ascertaining fluency in Welsh?

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

I certainly see that the people of Wales might think that there would be an equal case—and because I am not a brave person, I would support that.

The Explanatory Memorandum refers to a series of outputs. Paragraph 7.4(ii) refers to,

“differentiating migrants in order to improve our understanding of moves within and between local authorities in England”.

Once again, I am not clear what a migrant is. Is it somebody moving from Shropshire to Monmouthshire, or somebody with no connection to the United Kingdom who finds themselves in Wales as the first place they come to? Does it include somebody who comes from outside the United Kingdom who goes first to England and then to Wales? What level of granularity are we talking about when it comes to migration? Are we talking about small movements or larger ones?

Finally, I must say a word or two about confidentiality. The essence of much of the data-gathering law in this country is that it puts barriers between departments so that they cannot look at each other’s data, in order to maintain confidentiality. We then break down those barriers in order to use the data in a richer way. That is an entirely reasonable thing to do, but it is equally reasonable that whenever the barriers are broken down, as they are by these regulations, we should seek assurances that we are moving forward on confidentiality. It is no secret that there were unfortunate lapses under the previous Administration. I am absolutely sure that they were not in any way malicious. We acted in good faith and I am sure that this Administration, too, will act in good faith. However, have they made progress towards being able to assure us about improved confidentiality? Are there any new techniques, audits or penalties that will allow the Minister to say that confidentiality when this barrier is taken down will be even better than it was in the past? With those few comments, we are quite happy to support the regulations.