Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 7:33 pm ar 4 Mawrth 1991.
Stephen Dorrell
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health)
7:33,
4 Mawrth 1991
Once again, I am grateful for the expressions of support from all parts of the House for the principle on which the Bill is based, which is that it is important to establish beyond peradventure that information given in the course of a census is the subject of a statutory duty of confidentiality that is complete and unquestioned. I am grateful for the support of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) and his hon. Friends for that important principle. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Perry Barr that the 10-year series censuses in this country provide valuable information. Certainly, the information is valuable for the management of the health service. It is also valuable to the Opposition, because it enables them to support their prejudices with the occasional smattering of facts when they advance their case against us.[Interruption.] It is a tactic which has been used by successive Oppositions down the years.
Obviously, the information provided through a census is an important basis of political debate. As the hon. Member for Perry Barr has stressed, there is no connection—indeed, there can be no connection—between the information provided in the course of a census and information associated with the community charge. First, the information collected in the course of a census is the subject of a statutory duty of confidentiality and cannot, therefore, be passed to those responsible for the community charge register. Secondly, by the time census information was published, it would be out of date for the purposes of compiling a community charge register.
The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) continues to be concerned about the possible commercial exploitation of the information provided through a census. I do not see how, in a free society, one could prevent information published by census offices from being used by commercial organisations as a basis for market research. I think that that is neither possible nor desirable.
The hon. Gentleman, seeing that information is to be published by the census offices on the basis of postcode sectors, makes the link between those sectors and junk mail. Apart from the fact that both have at least an indirect connection with the Post Office, I do not think that there is an important link between them. The hon. Gentleman's argument rests on the assumption that the publication of information on the basis of postcode sectors involves a greater risk to confidentiality than does the publication of information on another local basis. As I reminded the members of the Standing Committee, the average postcode sector is roughly 10 times the size of the average enumeration district. So far as I know, the hon. Gentleman does not challenge the suggestion that we should publish information on the basis of enumeration districts. The average postcode sector contains 2,300 households, whereas the average enumeration district contains 200 households.
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