Commons committee sets out data protection ground rules

A Parliamentary committee has called on the Government to be more transparent about its uses of personal data and to adopt "a principle of data minimisation" .

The report from the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee includes safeguards to halt the progression towards the UK becoming a surveillance society; a risk that Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, first warned about in 2004 when he said the UK was a risk of "sleepwalking into a surveillance society".

Committee chairman Keith Vaz MP said: “What we are concerned with is the tendency to collect more and more data just because the technology allows it and for data to be used beyond the purposes it was initially collected for."

The committee examined surveillance in public and private life, from CCTV and plans for a national ID card to credit card records and search engine logs. Warning of the risks of excessive surveillance, called for a new approach.

"In the design of its policies and systems for collecting data, the Government should adopt a principle of data minimisation: it should collect only what is essential, to be stored only for as long as is necessary," said the report released last week. It warned that the Government "should resist a tendency to collect more personal information and establish larger databases."

The report sets ground rules for the Government and its agencies to build and preserve trust. Among these are recommendations that Government take responsibility for safeguarding the personal information it collects.

The committee also said there should be an explicit undertaking to adhere to a principle of data minimisation and Government should resist a tendency to collect more personal information and establish larger databases.

In addition, the report sets ground rules for the Home Office; the report urges the department to ensure it doesn’t routinely use administrative information collected and stored in connection with the National Identity Register (the database associated with the ID card), to monitor the activities of individuals.

"Unless trust in the Government’s intentions in relation to data collection, retention and sharing is carefully preserved, there is a danger that our society could become a surveillance society," it said.

The committee also recommended that the Information Commissioner should lay before Parliament an annual report on surveillance. The Government should make a formal response to this report, it said, also to be laid before Parliament.