Keep the safeguards in the Data Bill

The government’s Data (Use and Access) Bill has finished in the House of Lords and is now moving to the Commons for further debate and amendments.

It will establish the legal framework for digital verification services (DVS). This is a system for giving a government “trustmark” to apps and online services that allow people to prove their identity and facts about themselves.

The system will allow public authorities such as the DVLA, HM Passport Office and the NHS to share people’s personal identity data directly with the apps, as long as users consent (without relying on them scanning or showing paper documents). 

But the problem is that these public authorities provide unreliable, untrustworthy data when it comes to sex. Up to 100,000 people may have changed the information on some of the records held by these agencies. This does not relate to the Gender Recognition Act 2004. It is gender self-ID, and it has been done without any legislation or parliamentary oversight. 

So far the government has not recognised the problem, and nor has the Information Commissioner. They say that data from public bodies should be accurate and reliable, but they haven’t noticed that it isn’t. 

Digital identities will be reusable, which means people can use a single standardised digital identity across multiple platforms or services. Already many people are using apps to prove their age. These apps also say whether they are “male” or “female” without any warning that this official information cannot be trusted. 

Unless the problem is solved the government will be putting false and unreliable sex-verification apps into anyone’s pocket. Staff supervising women’s changing rooms, women’s sports and women’s refuges will face trans-identifying males brandishing government-endorsed digital IDs saying “female” and demanding to be let in. 

The House of Lords saw the issue and voted to put safeguards into the bill to fix this. The bill that is going to the House of Commons now has these three safeguards built in: 

• The Secretary of State must set rules based on a clear assessment of whether public authorities collect, record and share personal data accurately and reliably (clause 28).
• Public authorities can only share data that is accurate, and they must know what it refers to, which means in particular that they must not confuse sex and “gender identity” (clause 45).
• Clear definitions are needed: the Secretary of State may establish a “data dictionary” so that everyone knows what different categories mean (clause 139).

These measures will protect the private-sector service providers that are being invited to invest in building apps and online identity services, by ensuring that public bodies are held to the same standards of integrity and reliability as private service providers. 

They will protect transgender people, who have the same right as everyone else to have their biological sex accurately recorded wherever biological sex is needed, and to keep their sex private when that information is not needed. 

And they will ensure that everyone is able to verify their sex, and ensure it is recorded accurately and can be shared wherever this information is needed. 

The bill is now going to the House of Commons: MPs should vote to keep the safeguards in the bill.

Sex Matters has published a briefing for MPs.