Nov 29 2007
John Redwood Speaks in Opposition Day Debate on HMRC
Speaking in yesterday’s Opposition Day Debate on the loss of sensitive, personal data by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, John Redwood highlighted the failure of Revenue and Customs to perform its basic duty of care to taxpayers, and called for a major change in the culture of responsibility and accountability in the public sector.
The full Hansard text of John’s speech is reproduced below:
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): I rise to support the wise words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell), and the words of my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor. My right hon. Friend was right to say that, above all, we are debating a cultural issue. It is a matter of grave concern that HMRC does not regard looking after data as its fundamental duty, and that it does not consider that the customers or taxpayers whom it serves have every right to expect the highest possible standards when it comes to protecting the very important and extensive personal data that they are forced to give to the state, on pain of prison, so that taxes can be calculated and levied.
We are discussing accountability. We have held this debate because we think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not tell us enough when he first made a statement to the House
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
The most important error to have occurred has not received enough attention. In March, a similar volume of information was sent in a similar manner. Fortunately, the discs did not go missing, but that event should have alerted the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer to the seriousness of the possible problems that such sloppy data handling could cause.
If I recall, these disks were sent back to HMRC once they had been used, thereby doubling the risk.
And, what happens to disks that are returned in this situation ? Are they just put in the bin ?
Or, are they disposed of in a confidential manner. If they are disposed correctly, then the person sending them *did* have an understanding of the confidentiality of the data, but still sent them out without using strong encryption, or even recorded delivery.