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Information Commissioner

Answer

The Government are committed to both freedom of information and data protection. An important part of that commitment is ensuring that the Information Commissioner is adequately funded to fulfil all of his statutory responsibilities. The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) regularly review the resources available to the Commissioner and as part of that dialogue my Department provides constructive challenge to ensure that the ICO delivers maximum efficiency and secures best value for the public money allocated for those statutory responsibilities.The ICO's freedom of information work is funded by grant in aid paid through my department. In response to business cases presented by the ICO, in each of the last four financial years my Department has paid the ICO a larger sum in grant in aid than the amount in the original baseline for each year. In addition, my Department is promoting a secondment scheme to assist the ICO in tackling the outstanding backlog of freedom of information cases. Secondees from central Government Departments, paid for by their Departments, will work at the ICO on the outstanding freedom of information cases.The Commissioner's data protection work is funded separately through notification fees paid by data controllers under s.26 of the Data Protection Act 1998, which his office retains with the agreement of HM Treasury. In 2006-07, this was £10,200,000.As I made clear in my response to the Joint Committee of Human Rights' 22nd Report, the Government are currently considering the Commissioner's case for increased resources for his data protection work. This includes the recommendation of the House of Common's Justice Committee report ““Protection of Private Data”” (January 2008) that a graduated fee scale be introduced to replace the current flat fee that applies to all data controllers.My Department will continue to ensure that if the ICO is required to undertake additional or new responsibilities then these will be appropriately funded. For example, it was announced in November 2007 that the ICO would carry out spot checks of central Government Departments. The Departments being checked will pay the costs of the spot checks.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

214470; 478 c958W

Session

2007-08

Subjects

Information Commissioner's Office

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk