Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 14 September 2020 to Question 83792 and with reference to his statement of 9 July 2020 in his Computer Weekly article that Open banking models have allowed those in financial need to share their income to HM Revenue & Customs, fast-tracking their applications for new welfare entitlements, whether he was describing an application neither commissioned nor used by the Government.

The reference to Open Banking in the Computer Weekly article of 9 July 2020 was a reference to the Open Banking use case identified by the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) as part of their COVID repository. The repository is a database for novel use-cases of artificial intelligence and data in public, private and third sectors being used to counter and mitigate the effects of COVID-19 around the world. This innovative application of Open Banking was developed to the beta stage but was neither commissioned nor used by the Government.