Government admits that passports are not reliable
Yesterday afternoon the House of Lords debated safeguards to ensure accurate sex data in digital identity services. These rely on public bodies providing “authoritative” sources of information.
The Science Minister, Sir Patrick Vallance, admitted that passports do not contain accurate, reliable information about whether someone is male or female, and should not be used as proof of sex for any purposes where that data is needed.
Asked how this could be in line with data-protection principles he said the data had been accurate, but was now muddled.
During the debate Vallance put down some important markers. He said that:
- Accurate data is essential.
- Sex data should be accurate when processed by public authorities.
- Data must be accurate for its purpose and must not be misleading.
- It should be clear to digital verification service (DVS) providers what information shared with them by public authorities means.
- When information is shared from public authorities to digital verification services it will be clear what that information represents, including in relation to sex.
But he argued against amendments to establish a clear definition of sex for digital-identity service providers and a process of quality control for public authorities providing information, saying that these basic measures were “inappropriate and disproportionate”.
Instead he tried to pass responsibility to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and to existing data-protection laws. But his colleagues were not adequately reassured by this, and they voted for the amendments.
The bill will quickly go back to the Commons, where the government is likely to argue to remove the amendments.
But the ball is now in the court of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s ministerial team to propose an appropriate and proportionate way to ensure that people are able to use digital identities to prove their sex, and are not able to use them to mislead.
Making sure the DVS system only verifies sex accurately is not a difficult technical question (you just link it to the birth register and ignore unreliable data sources like passports and driving-licence data). Nor does it go anywhere near interfering with their privacy rights as protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, since the data is only ever shared with consent.
The problem is that the government has made two incompatible pledges. It says that it will make sure that digital identities provide accurate facts but also that they will replicate what people can prove about themselves with documents.
Now it has admitted the problem with this in relation to “passport sex”. But there are similar problems with “DVLA sex”, “NHS sex” and “HMRC sex”, and most other public data sources, as evidenced in the Sullivan Review.
We have written to Sir Patrick Vallance, following last night’s debate, setting out the problems with the excuses and conflicting pledges the government is making.
The government has a simple question to address on digital identities: will the DVS system continue to enable people to “prove” that they are the opposite sex or will it enable people to prove their sex accurately?
It cannot do both.