Digital Economy Act 2017

78 Disclosure of information by the Revenue and Customs to the Statistics Board

(1) Section 45 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 (disclosure of HMRC information to the Statistics Board) is amended as follows.

(2) In subsection (2) omit “, other than its function under section 22 (statistical services)”.

(3) After subsection (2) insert—

“(2A) In determining whether the condition in subsection (2) is met the Commissioners must have regard to any views of the Board which have been communicated to them.”

(4) In subsection (3) omit “, other than its function under section 22”.

(5) After that subsection insert—

“(3A) Information disclosed under subsection (1) may not be used by the Board for the purposes of its function under section 22 (statistical services) except with the consent of the Commissioners.”

(6) After subsection (4) insert—

“(4A) In disclosing information under subsection (1), the Commissioners or an officer of Revenue and Customs must have regard to the following codes of practice issued by the Information Commissioner under section 51(3) of the Data Protection Act 1998, so far as they apply to the information in question—

(a) any code which makes provision about the identification and reduction of the risks to privacy of a proposal to disclose information;

(b) any code which makes provision about the information to be provided to data subjects (within the meaning of that Act) about the use to be made of information collected from them.

(4B) The duty in subsection (4A) to have regard to a code of practice does not affect any other requirement for the Commissioners or an officer of Revenue and Customs to have regard to a code of practice under the Data Protection Act 1998 in disclosing the information.

(4C) In determining how to comply with the duty in subsection (4A) the Commissioners or the officer of Revenue and Customs must have regard to any views of the Board which are communicated to the Commissioners or the officer.”

(7) Omit subsection (5) (which prevents the disclosure of personal information not relating to imports or exports).