Speeches

Luciana Berger – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-11-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how much the Information Commissioner’s Office has spent on processing assessments pursuant to section 42 of the Data Protection Act 1998 in each of the last five financial years; how many such requests that Office has received in each of the those years; and what the recorded outcomes were of those requests.

Mr Edward Vaizey

Under section 42 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), any person who is, or believes that he is, directly affected by the processing of personal data, can ask the Information Commissioner to consider whether the processing is likely to comply with the law. On receiving such a request, the Commissioner is obliged to consider the concern and make an assessment. Any such request, and cases taken forward are dealt with by the ICO’s customer contact and performance improvement business areas. The ICO does not cost up S42 assessments separately from other data protection casework, but the total staffing costs for these two business areas for the last five financial years are set out below:

2015/16 (April-Nov)

£2,883,256.14

2014/15

£3,879,782.83

2013/14

£3,969,104.17

2012/13

£3,581,161.82

2011/12

£3,389,336.87

Numbers of assessments received and concluded for each of the past 5 years are set out below:

Financial years

2010-11

2011-12

2012-13

2013-14

2014-15

Number of assessments received under s42 DPA

13034

12980

13760

14738

14268

Number of assessments completed under s42 DPA

14276

12725

14280

15492

15052

The recorded outcomes of those assessments are set out below:

Financial years

Outcome of s42 assessment

2010-11

2011-12

2012-13

2013-14

2014-15

Not progressed

14%

11%

13%

14%

Compliance likely

22%

21%

22%

19%

Compliance unlikely

33%

31%

35%

34%

Ineligible/Made too early

27%

36%

30%

33%

Reopened – pending final outcome

4%

1%

No Action for Data Controller

35%

Data Controller Action required

22%

Concern to be raised with Data Controller

17%

compliance advice given to Data Controller

10%

Response needed from Data Controller

7%

Complaint not applicable under DPA

4%

General advice given to Data Controller

4%

Data Controller outside UK

1%

Improvement action plan agreed with Data Controller

1%