From my MP:

Dear Mr Muffett

Thank you for writing in my absence regarding the Coroners and Justice Bill.
I completely share your objections to this section of the Bill. These proposals would have a truly dramatic impact, allowing Ministers to make an ‘information sharing order’, meaning that a whole range of public servants could access the public’s personal data. Data could be shared between officials across Whitehall, with local authorities and even with companies in the private sector, simply in order to meet a Government policy objective.

This threatens to open the floodgates to a continuous, uncontrolled and unchecked flow of personal data, and as is often the case with the Government, any safeguards will only be put in place after the Bill has already passed into law. This means that Parliament will be asked to vote on proposals which contain no safeguards and no serious sanctions for abuse of the new powers. This is simply unacceptable.

The Government has displayed its incompetence and complacency in relation to data time and time again – it is no wonder public trust in the ability of the Government to keep our personal details safe is at an all-time low. Last year, HMRC lost the personal data of almost half the population, leaving over 7 million families worried about the security of their bank accounts. More recently, the details of thousands of criminals, held on a memory stick, were lost by a government contractor. Countless other cases of lost data have occurred, including the details of thousands of driving test candidates, prospective military recruits and over 5,000 prison service staff. Now, even the Prime Minister has admitted that he “can’t promise that every single item of information will always be safe.”

In this context, I find it extraordinary that the Government has slipped these clauses into the Bill without any consultation or prior warning, and certainly without the case for them being made. I assure you that my Conservative colleagues and I will vigorously oppose this latest step towards creating a database state by stealth.

Yours sincerely

James Arbuthnot

Normally I would consider respecting the “this message is intended for the named recipient”-type clause at the bottom, but since the content of the e-mail is substantially the same as the one Alan Bell got from Jeremy Hunt, MP, (ah, Google, thou art so useful) – then I am betting it’s a form letter doing the rounds at Westminster.

So: do the Tories sense a passive victory – getting the desired result and taking credit without much effort – or is this going to flare up into something bigger?

[update: dratted wordpress lost a draft]