According to The Guardian (18 April 2014), Treasury minister David Gauke is overseeing controversial plans to allow HMRC to sell taxpayers’ details to private companies, a move that has been criticised as ‘borderline insane’ by senior Conservative MP David Davis.
According to The Guardian (18 April 2014), Treasury minister David Gauke is overseeing controversial plans to allow HMRC to sell taxpayers’ details to private companies, a move that has been criticised as ‘borderline insane’ by senior Conservative MP David Davis.
‘The Treasury lists no credible benefits and offers a justification based on an international agreement that does not lead other governments to open up their tax database,’ Mr Davis told the paper. ‘The officials who drew this up clearly have no idea of the risks to data in an electronic age. Our forefathers put these checks and balances in place when the information was kept in cardboard files, and data was therefore difficult to appropriate and misuse. It defies logic that we would remove those restraints at a time when data can be collected by the gigabyte, processed in milliseconds and transported around the world almost instantaneously.’
A spokesman for HMRC said: ‘No final decisions have been taken, but HMRC remains committed to safeguarding taxpayer confidentiality. HMRC would only share data where this would generate clear public benefits, and where there are robust safeguards in place.
‘There would be a rigorous accreditation process for anyone wanting access to the data and that any access would take place in a secure environment. Those accessing data would be subject to the same confidentiality provisions as HMRC staff, including a criminal sanction for unlawful disclosure of taxpayer information.
‘HMRC will be consulting further and will ask for views on whether to charge to cover the costs of processing and providing anonymised data. This would not be charging for the data itself, purely covering the costs of providing it.’
According to The Guardian (18 April 2014), Treasury minister David Gauke is overseeing controversial plans to allow HMRC to sell taxpayers’ details to private companies, a move that has been criticised as ‘borderline insane’ by senior Conservative MP David Davis.
According to The Guardian (18 April 2014), Treasury minister David Gauke is overseeing controversial plans to allow HMRC to sell taxpayers’ details to private companies, a move that has been criticised as ‘borderline insane’ by senior Conservative MP David Davis.
‘The Treasury lists no credible benefits and offers a justification based on an international agreement that does not lead other governments to open up their tax database,’ Mr Davis told the paper. ‘The officials who drew this up clearly have no idea of the risks to data in an electronic age. Our forefathers put these checks and balances in place when the information was kept in cardboard files, and data was therefore difficult to appropriate and misuse. It defies logic that we would remove those restraints at a time when data can be collected by the gigabyte, processed in milliseconds and transported around the world almost instantaneously.’
A spokesman for HMRC said: ‘No final decisions have been taken, but HMRC remains committed to safeguarding taxpayer confidentiality. HMRC would only share data where this would generate clear public benefits, and where there are robust safeguards in place.
‘There would be a rigorous accreditation process for anyone wanting access to the data and that any access would take place in a secure environment. Those accessing data would be subject to the same confidentiality provisions as HMRC staff, including a criminal sanction for unlawful disclosure of taxpayer information.
‘HMRC will be consulting further and will ask for views on whether to charge to cover the costs of processing and providing anonymised data. This would not be charging for the data itself, purely covering the costs of providing it.’
