Taxpayers’ data to be flogged off

Taxpayers' data to be flogged offHM Revenue & Customs is risking uproar after revealing plans to sell off taxpayers anonymised data to private firms, in a move which has already been branded “borderline insane” by one Tory MP.
The plans, which will require new legislation, come just weeks after the backlash over a similar scheme by NHS England. Due to start this month, the data.care big data programme has been shelved for six months following a row over its awareness campaign.
HMRC will join a growing band of public and private sector firms – including UCAS, Moneysupermarket, Barclays and EE – who are looking to build revenues by selling customer data, albeit anonymised. The move has met with sharp criticism from privacy and consumer groups.
The Treasury said: “The government has decided to proceed with the proposal to remove the legal restrictions that currently limit HMRC’s ability to share anonymised individual-level data for the purpose of research and analysis and deliver public benefits wider than HMRC’s own functions, but they accept that this must be done only where there are sufficient safeguards in place to protect taxpayer confidentiality.
“HMRC is committed to protecting its customers’ information. We shall be consulting further on implementing the proposals for sharing anonymised data, and would only take forward specific measures where there was a clear public benefit and subject to suitable safeguards.”
But, former Conservative minister David Davis told the Guardian the plans were “borderline insane”.
“The officials who drew this up clearly have no idea of the risks to data in an electronic age. Our forefathers put these checks and balances in place when the information was kept in cardboard files, and data was therefore difficult to appropriate and misuse,” Davis said.
“It defies logic that we would remove those restraints at a time when data can be collected by the gigabyte, processed in milliseconds and transported around the world almost instantaneously.”
HMRC has already embarked on a pilot scheme that reveals VAT registration data to credit referencing agencies. This used a loophole that said because the agencies were contracted to work on behalf of HMRC, they were treated as part of the department and could have access to the confidential information.

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1 Comment on "Taxpayers’ data to be flogged off"

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