The DVLA has been accused of ‘scandalously’ selling the personal details of more than a million motorists to ‘dodgy characters’ last year, after the government agency admitted it had made £8.5m from the practice.
The row erupted after DVLA chief executive Simon Tse told the Commons’ transport committee that 1.2 million pieces of information – including names, addresses, licence and vehicle details – given to private parking companies a year were part of a total of 21 million pieces of data given out. Some 16.7 million were given to the public sector, including information to local authorities.
Labour MP Graham Stringer said: “Some of these parking companies are pretty close to the edge of legality. Some are pretty dodgy characters.”
Civil liberties campaigners also condemned the move as ‘scandalous’. Nick Pickles, director of the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, said: “Access to this information is being allowed to commercial companies, some of whom operate some very dubious practices.
“For the DVLA to try to profiteer from selling data to these rogue traders and cowboy clampers is scandalous. At a time when privacy is under attack from government databases and snooping authorities, the scale of this trade in personal information should be of deep concern to every motorist in the country.”
The details are usually given out to parking companies seeking to send out fines, often with the threat of bailiffs if the recipient fails to pay up. The DVLA’s data earned it £8.5m last year.
Tse claimed information from the DVLA’s database was given only to parking companies approved by the British Parking Association. He added that the DVLA did not make a profit from the information given out, charging only £2.50 an inquiry to cover administrative costs.
MPs asked whether charges could be imposed in the future, particularly given the fact that the DVLA has been asked to find £100million of savings a year.
Tse said there had been discussions with the Department for Transport about the possibility of charging for information, but that no decision had yet been taken.
