Pensions Bill

The Minister’s amendment to this Bill has, to a certain extent, been foreshadowed by an amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding to the Energy Bill on 1 July relating to the sharing of information with the energy companies to help them identify those vulnerable to fuel poverty. The Minister has explained the predicament. In responding to my noble friend’s amendment then, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, quite rightly talked at length about the difficulty of ensuring that information was kept secure, and I would certainly agree with him on that. He noted the legitimate privacy and data protection concerns and pointed out: "““We must be sure that any sensitive information being shared can deliver the outcomes that we are looking for, is appropriately protected because the safeguards are in place and can be delivered in a way that is consistent with data protection and human rights legislation””." All of this I fully agree with. The information we are talking about sharing is intensely personal. To hand over private financial information without the proper safeguards would be worse than irresponsible. That the information is a marker of poverty makes it yet more sensitive. How many more pensioners—the whole exercise is not about pensioners per se—would choose to suffer rather than accept state handouts if they were not completely confident that such a step would remain confidential? The Minister might incidentally balk at the word ““handouts”” but I have used it and I will stick by it. The Government’s promise two weeks ago that they, "““will continue to keep the case for large-scale legislative data-sharing provision under close consideration””," would be more reassuring if it was not clear that pension credit information is being used as a pilot test for all this. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, stated: "““The precise details of future arrangements are still being considered and discussed with supplier companies””." He continued: "““The amendment to the Pensions Bill is an important start, and we will learn lessons from it to help inform further work””.—[Official Report, 1/7/08; col. GC 43-45.]" We cannot accept that pensioners are going to be made guinea pigs in this exercise. Can the Minister explain why the Government have decided to treat pensioners like what one of my noble friends recently described as a canary down a coal mine? They are proceeding with this amendment and have announced their intention to implement a policy of sharing sensitive information when they have admitted that the entire process has not been fully thought through and the safeguards they know are necessary have not been finalised. Either the Government have done the necessary groundwork and my noble friend’s amendment is perfectly reasonable and proportionate—although clearly the noble Lord’s colleague thought not—or much more work must be done before any data-sharing can be thought of. The noble Lord said that the information of fuel companies must be ““good enough””. I should be extremely grateful if he could expand on that rather remarkable statement. In the way that he said it, I found it not exactly readily explicable. Does the Minister not consider a more responsible way forward would be to establish how a power was going to be used before coming to Parliament and demanding it? Before he responds, I suggest to him that using the word ““flexible”” when talking about what he considers to be acceptable standards of safety would not be appropriate.