Part 2 – use of information
312.Part 2 of Schedule 2 makes modifications to the terms of various provisions that authorise the supply of information to and by the existing Commissioners and their officers (provisions termed “statutory gateways”), so that they can be applied to the new department. In most cases the information to be supplied is itself specified by the gateway provision, or is in practice specific to the functions of one or other of the predecessor departments. Most gateway provisions, therefore, fall to be converted for use by the new department by a simple change of name of the body authorised to supply or receive it, as the case may be, and that is achieved by the working of section 50 (1) and (2). So, for example, the reference to the Commissioners of Customs and Excise in section 8 Finance Act 1988 (power for those Commissioners to disclose to interested parties the consignee and description of imported goods) becomes a reference to the Commissioners for HMRC, and the power thereby devolves on them, without any change in subject matter.
313.But there are a few gateway provisions, such as section 20 Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, where the information to be supplied to the Home Secretary is described at large only as “information held” by the Commissioners of Customs and Excise. By contrast, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue are authorised under section 130 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 to supply only address details of persons thought to be present or working in the United Kingdom in breach of immigration control. To prevent an inadvertent widening of the scope of these gateways by the integration of the predecessor departments, specific provision is made by paragraphs 15 to 20 to limit the scope of six outward gateway provisions where this might be an issue. In paragraphs 15, 16, 18, and 20, the gateways are inherited from the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, and the limitation is to information obtained or held in exercise of functions related to former Revenue matters, as defined in section 7. In paragraphs 17 and 19, the gateways in question are inherited from the Commissioners of Customs and Excise, and the limitation is to information other than that held solely in the exercise of functions related to former Revenue matters. This reflects the fact that information may now be held for multiple purposes, such as an address held on a common name and address file used for a number of functions, and updated from any of them.
