Welfare Reform Bill

moved Amendment No. 84: 84: Clause 40 , page 33, line 4, after ““information”” insert““, excluding patient data,”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, our amendments in this group are twofold. First, I would like to exclude patent data from the information that public authorities may share with each other. Secondly, I would like to ensure sufficient parliamentary scrutiny of the regulations that will govern how these data are to be shared. The aim of this clause is to allow the department to share what information it has on benefit recipients with local authorities. I hope that this will have two positive results. One is that fraud will be tackled more efficiently; after all, if a person is illegally claiming a benefit such as income support, it is possible that he is also claiming other benefits, such as housing benefit, illegally and vice versa. The clause should also allow a claimant to receive related benefits more easily. If they have established their eligibility for one Department for Work and Pension’s benefit, sharing information may well make their eligibility for other benefits, such as disability living allowance, more apparent. However, there must be limits to this information sharing. While we are very happy that the Government are improving their ability to tackle fraud and are trying to improve benefit up-take, these measures must not infringe on claimants privacy or put confidential information at risk. Our first amendment is designed to ensure that patient data are not shared under this clause. By patient data, I mean health information about a claimant combined with information about their identity. Both pieces of patient data will continue to be able to be shared separately. After all, the identification of an individual as a recipient of ESA might be necessary to combat fraud. Similarly, a Jobcentre Plus in one part of the UK might want to share statistical information with another centre in a different part of the country on how many patients of a certain disability they have managed to move off benefits. What is not appropriate is that these two pieces of information are combined, so that a housing authority, for example, will be able to look at this information and know that a certain recipient of housing benefit is also suffering from a certain disability. This combination of health and identity information would be considered confidential. The exclusion of patient data is a principle that has been accepted by the Government in the Serious Crime Bill, also going through this House. I hope that the Minister will be equally amenable to the principle here. I beg to move.