Gove complains about a lack of basic information on children's homes, such as where they are, who is responsible for them, and how good they are.
"To my astonishment," he wrote, "when I tried to find out more, I was met with a wall of silence. The only responsible body with the information we needed was Ofsted, which registers children’s homes – yet Ofsted was prevented by 'data protection' rules, 'child protection' concerns and other bewildering regulations from sharing that data with us, or even with the police. Local authorities could only access information via a complex and time-consuming application process – and some simply did not bother."
Surprisingly, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO -- the body charged with administering the Data Protection Act and effectively interpreting those 'data protection rules') is not mentioned by name, nor was consulted.
This has led to an immediate response from Information Commissioner Christopher Graham. "Ensuring that vulnerable young people are properly protected in care homes is essential," he said in a statement this morning. "There is nothing in data protection legislation that is a barrier to this happening. This law covers information about people so it has no bearing on the disclosure of non-personal information like the location of care homes."
The reality is that the Data Protection Act is sometimes used as an excuse for either not giving, or not being able to obtain, information. In a separate document titled Data Protection myths and realities the ICO commented, "Unfortunately, some organisations continue to use the Data Protection Act 1998 as an excuse not to do something, rather than seeing it as good business sense to treat their customers and their information with respect."
Elsewhere the ICO "urges organisations not to hide behind the Data Protection Act unnecessarily when dealing with requests from members of the public. The ICO has dubbed these situations ‘Data Protection duck outs’ – situations arising from a belief by some organisations that data protection stops them giving out any personal information..."
It is worrying, however, when government ministers (Michael Gove) and government financed bodies (Ofsted) either do not seem to understand government legislation, or use it for political expediency. In today's statement, Graham says, "The Commissioner’s advice has not been sought on any perceived difficulties about sharing care home information so we are writing to both Michael Gove and Sir Michael Wilshaw at Ofsted today to clarify the concerns and set straight any misunderstandings."