If pressed, Sandra would probably describe herself as ordinary. She has two
children, lives in the West Country and works for a small catering business.
At 19, after the collapse of a relationship, she had a breakdown that she
never mentions even to close friends. She is happily married to David - a
former hospital administrator, currently unemployed - and they share their
home with his father, who suffers from dementia.
Sometimes she feels exhausted by the end of the day. Daniel, her younger
child, who is three and still in nappies, is always taking tumbles and seems
far more demanding than his sister. His grandmother says: “That’s boys for
you - he’ll grow out of it.”
The duty doctor at Sandra’s local A&E was less laidback: when she
took Daniel there for the third time in a year, he started asking about her
childcare arrangements and her relationship with David. Which made Sandra
feel uncomfortable.
As he is at home at the moment, David looks after the children. “Not bak til
7, cn u gv kids pzza for T?” Sandra texted him from work last week. On the
nights that she does a late shift, he puts the children to bed. When they
are asleep, he sometimes logs on to lads’ mag websites - a habit that he
keeps secret from his wife.
There are thousands of women whose lives are not dissimilar to Sandra’s;
thousands who might be surprised to learn that some of their families’
private details and secrets are being squirrelled away on databases around
the country. After all, who would want to spy on the decent and hard-working
Sandras of the world?
Well, it seems that her local council does. Conservative-run Plymouth council
is about to send a wheelie-bin information form to everyone’s home, with the
threat of a fine for noncompletion. Among the questions are: “Do you have
children in your home who use disposable nappies?” and “Are there any other
reasons why a member of your household generates more rubbish than average?”
Soon, anyone with access to the Plymouth council database will be able to see
just how many nappies Sandra’s son gets through and whether her
father-in-law has incontinence problems.
That’s not all. The Home Office recently admitted it was talking to mobile
phone companies and internet service providers about a plan to record every
text message sent in the UK and every website visited. So Sandra’s text to
her husband could soon be gracing yet another database, as could his
interest in FHM online. What conclusions might a snooper reach: that Sandra
is a bad mother who buys her children junk food? That her husband is a bit
of a lad with a roving eye?
On the whole, Sandra and David are too busy to worry about such things.
However, Sandra is a bit uneasy about government plans to give personal
details of pensioners and poorer families to private energy firms. She has
read in her local paper that the idea is to target anyone who spends more
than 10% of their income on heating and lighting so the power companies can
let them know what help is available. But her hackles are up. Why should a
gas or electricity supplier be allowed to know how much money is coming into
her household? She has never even told her mother how much she earns.
Last week Sandra heard that local councils have been looking at people’s
private telephone and e-mail records, using laws that were designed to
combat terrorism. One council spied for weeks on a family thought to be
abusing the rules on school catchment areas; another suspected someone of
being a litter lout. When she discussed this with David last night, Sandra
got quite heated. “They should be using those laws to catch terrorists,” she
said, “rather than targeting people like us.”
She is also worried about all the people who will be able to get access to her
National Health Service records via a giant database, because she doesn’t
want anyone but her GP to know about her breakdown. If that suspicious A&E
doctor can see her file, she thinks it might be best to avoid taking Daniel
to hospital again. Going to the chemist to buy something for his cuts and
bruises has also become less appealing - apparently, pharmacists are being
given access to medical files too.
On the whole she is quite pleased that the NHS database is already four years
behind schedule. And she isn’t the only one with reservations about it: more
than 90% of doctors surveyed by the British Medical Association in February
said they were not confident that patient data would be secure. Even the
director of IT implementa-tion at the health department admitted that there
are occasions when staff “misuse their privileges” with data. Not
surprisingly, many patients are already trying to find out whether they can
opt out of having their medical history put online.
However, there is little prospect that the government will water down or
abandon the scheme. Gordon Brown’s plans for the “personalisa-tion” of
public services depends upon a massive expansion of data collection through
national IT schemes, including data-sharing across government departments
and agencies.
Already the work and pensions department has a “customer information system”
that holds information on every benefit claimant - including Sandra’s
husband and father-in-law. This is accessible by 80,000 department staff, by
60,000 from other government departments and by 400 local authorities.
Furthermore, from next year details of bereavements, changes of address and
birth information will also be shared by various departments. Meanwhile,
there is another plan for three different departments to share information
about school records, educational achievement and eligibility for benefits.
Later this year ContactPoint, the new child database, is expected to provide
an “online identity” for every child.
Why have these databases at all? The government says it wants to provide every
citizen with a package of services to suit his or her needs - which sounds
modern and attractive. But to Sandra it also sounds intrusive, even menacing.
Nor is she much placated by the fact that many of the new systems don’t even
work properly. Indeed, it’s estimated that government-commissioned databases
have a 70% failure rate, compared with about 30% in the private sector. The
bigger the database, the more scope there is for failure. According to Toby
Stevens of the Enterprise Privacy Group, “huge amounts of information are
gathered without a clear outcome in mind”.
Sandra and David think they lead fairly blameless lives; they don’t see why
they should have to share private information with thousands of government
officials, or why it should be passed on to private companies. So they have
decided to chuck the wheelie-bin questionnaires in the recycling box and
risk being fined. They will also be trying to opt out of any database that
is not compulsory.
Unless the government is prepared to encrypt our data, render it anonymous and
strictly limit access to it, thousands of us are likely to follow their
example.
Jill Kirby is director of the Centre for Policy Studies
