Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 8 September 2022 to Question 45846 on Immigration: EU Nationals and with reference to the correspondence from the the3million to his Department of 11 August 2022, whether the instances of personal data breaches alleged in that correspondence (a) did not happen, (b) did not require reporting and (c) have not been investigated.

We are unable to comment on specific cases without further information. However, we are aware of technical issues with similar characteristics to the three case studies provided in the correspondence from the3million, where individuals have reported that other individuals’ face images or personal details appeared on their online digital immigration status.

These technical issues can sometimes constitute data breaches. We handle data breaches extremely seriously and if they occur they are reported and raised with relevant teams in accordance with Home Office data handling procedures. All such incidents are then referred to the relevant Data Protection Officer to investigate and assess against the data protection legislation to determine next steps and raise to the ICO if necessary. No data breaches relating to digital immigration status have been raised to the ICO as they fall below the threshold for escalation.

All technical issues reported by users of digital immigration status are logged, investigated, and fixed at the root cause to prevent users experiencing the same issues again.