Partner Article

HMRC plans to release taxpayer data

Timed as it was to coincide with the Parliamentary recess and the Easter holiday weekend, HMRC’s announcement that it is to push ahead with plans to sell anonymised taxpayer data has received much less coverage than it deserves.

The full document published by HMRC is, to be frank, light on justification. Using the information to help deliver more effective and efficient public services, to help inform policy to improve social mobility and to deliver unspecified “wider policy outcomes” all sounds reasonable enough, until one considers the huge range of data sources already available to government, to policy makers, research bodies and the like.

So why is HMRC pushing on with this project when a similar plan to sell citizens’ anonymised medical data has crashed amid concerns regarding confidentiality?

With no clear business case for making taxpayer data widely available, with no intention to make money from the data other than to cover the costs of providing it, and in the face of inevitable concerns regarding confidentiality, the initiative seems misguided.

And the public don’t seem too keen on it either – a recent survey carried out by Baker Tilly has revealed that a staggering 86% of people said that they were against the plans to sell data, while only 14% said they agreed.

Leaving aside the government’s historically dismal track record of keeping confidential information confidential, there seems to be no recognition that compilation of HMRC’s data with data acquired from other sources would lead to the identification of many individuals. HMRC may not have broken rules of confidentiality, but adding huge volumes of tax data to what is already available risks eroding the privacy of millions of powerless taxpayers.

And then there is the way this information will be made available. It would be reasonable to assume that HMRC would extract data from its systems according to set criteria, anonymise it in a way that no taxpayer could subsequently be identified by the compilation of this data with data held elsewhere, and then making the “clean” data available on whatever terms are finally approved by Parliament.

HMRC has issued a statement saying that “…there would be a rigorous accreditation process for anyone wanting access to the data …any access will take place in a secure environment. Those accessing data would be subject the same confidentiality provision as HMRC staff, including a criminal sanction for unlawful disclosure of taxpayer information.”

Taking that at face value, the statement suggests that HMRC intends to release data by giving online rights to accredited persons who may then have access to confidential (presumably named, identifiable) data. If that is not the case, why should it be necessary to protect taxpayer confidentiality with criminal sanctions?

By any standard this is grossly unacceptable.

And after a number of high-profile service failures, shouldn’t HMRC now be concentrating on rebuilding trust with the taxpayers whose affairs it is trusted to administer, rather than undermining that trust with plans to sell their data?

It is clear that the process of consultation alone will not stop this project. When MPs return to Parliament they, and the Public Accounts Committee, should scrutinize these plans as a matter of urgency.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by George Bull .