The Television Licences (Disclosure of Information) Act 2000 (Prescription of Information) Order 2000

Explanatory Note

(This note is not part of the Order)

This Order prescribes the descriptions of information that the Secretary of State (in practice, the Secretary of State for Social Security) and, in Northern Ireland, the Department for Social Development, can supply to the British Broadcasting Corporation (“BBC”).

The Order is made under the Television Licences (Disclosure of Information) Act 2000, section 1 of which permits the Secretary of State and the Department for Social Development to supply the BBC with “social security information”. Section 1(3) and (4) of the Act (read with section 5) provide that “social security information”, in relation to the Secretary of State and that Department respectively, means information of a description prescribed by order, being information held and obtained as a result, or for the purpose, of the exercise of his or (as the case may be) the Department’s functions in relation to social security or (in the case of the Secretary of State only) war pensions. By virtue of section 2 of the Act, information so supplied may be used only in connection with television licences for which no fee is payable, or reduced-fee licences. Since no licences have been prescribed as reduced-fee licences, the information will in practice be used in connection with free licences.

Article 2 provides that the information in question is the name, date of birth, address and national insurance number of a person aged 74 years or over, and in a case where such a person has died, that fact and the date when he died.