Dear Mr Rees-Mogg
I suspect you and I wouldn’t agree on many things, but, before I moved into private practice I spent many years in the public sector. I saw many examples of efficient and inefficient working there (as well as countless dedicated officers who rarely had time to be sitting at their desks when senior management deigned to visit).
So, despite our different worldviews, and in the spirit of helping improve the efficiency of the offices of Members of Parliament, may I make a couple of suggestions about data protection compliance?
First, you said recently, before the European Scrutiny Committee, that constituents who come to see you at surgery are asked to sign a two-page disclaimer. Nothing in our data protection law requires this (in fact, expecting them to sign one is likely to be contrary to those laws). You should give anyone whose personal data you collect certain information, generally in the form of a notice, but that’s just a matter of being fair and transparent – there’s no reason at all to require a signature or a disclaimer. You could even just refer them to a notice on your own website (your current one is rather well hidden). That should save you a bit of time and money.
Second, at the same hearing, you were concerned that you needed to delete files on constituents prematurely. Again, this appears to be a misapprehension on your part. Personal data should be kept for as long as is necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was collected: if you still need it, you keep it. There – another efficiency tip!
Third, and more generally, I do find that there is a lot of misunderstanding of data protection law. It has a dual objective – to offer protection to individuals and to allow for free movement of data (both of which are obviously subject to qualifications and provisos). I don’t pretend that the law couldn’t do with some revisions, and I’ve even spoken to some of the people helping with the reform programme to suggest a few. But in general, it’s quite possible to run the public bodies and businesses efficiently and also comply with the data protection law – but I fear that training and awareness of that law have been, and continue to be, handled rather inefficiently at government level.
Yours
Jon Baines
The views in this post (and indeed most posts on this blog) are my personal ones, and do not represent the views of any organisation I am involved with.
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