DWP punishes 20 staff for data-protection breaches
Kablenet.com
Published: 04 Jun 2008 15:38 BST
The Department for Work and Pensions took disciplinary action against 20 staff in the last financial year for disclosure of information.
The staff were disciplined for either "breaches of data-protection requirements" or "inappropriate use of personal or sensitive data" between April 2007 and March 2008. Twelve were from Jobcentre Plus, four from the Disability and Carers Service, two from the Pension Service, one from the Child Support Agency and one from the department's corporate centre.
Stephen Timms, the employment minister, said in a written parliamentary answer on Monday that the department's personnel system has no records of staff being dismissed on the grounds of information disclosure. Timms did not provide records from previous financial years, giving disproportionate cost as his reason.
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) disciplined 192 staff in 2007-08, and 610 over the last three years, the Treasury revealed on 30 April. The two organisations are broadly comparable, as both process very large amounts of personal data and have similar staff sizes: more than 100,000 people work for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), compared with 95,000 working for HMRC.
James Brokenshire, the shadow home affairs minister, put the same parliamentary question to a number of departments. The Department for International Development replied that it had disciplined or dismissed "fewer than five staff for inappropriate use of personal or sensitive data, with all action taking place in 2006-07," according to minister Gillian Merron on 21 May.
On 20 May, the Ministry of Justice said that members of staff within both the former Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Prison Service have been disciplined and dismissed for inappropriate use of personal or sensitive data. There were no recorded cases within the National Offender Management Service or the Office for Criminal Justice Reform.
The Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform refused to provide data on the grounds this would identify individuals involved, suggesting that the department has had a case or cases of this nature.
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On Monday, health minister Ben Bradshaw said that no departmental officials had been disciplined in the last two years, although figures were not available previously.
Bradshaw added that similar data on NHS trusts has not previously been collected centrally "but we believe that there should be greater transparency about these matters and have, therefore, instructed trusts to publish details of disciplinary action taken against staff for these reasons in their annual reports".
Other departments that said they had not disciplined any staff over the last three years on these grounds, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; the Department for Children, School and Families; Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; the Department of Communities and Local Government; and the Cabinet Office. The Ministry of Defence said it did not hold such data centrally.
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