Straw bends on Coroners amp; Justice data-sharing proposals
Comment Justice Minister Jack Straw has bowed to the inevitable and announced the withdrawal of provisions for data-sharing from the Coroners’ and Justice Bill, presently before parliament.
This occured at some point in the last seven days. Lack of a precise date for this act of Ministerial euthanasia may be attributed to the lack of a formal statement, and the government’s grudging, foot-dragging approach to disengagement from this measure.
It has been a long time dying, but concerted opposition over the last few weeks from bodies such as the British Medical Association (BMA) and British Computer Society (BCS), not to mention large numbers of Labour backbenchers and the Scottish Government, finally saw it off.
Like so many of this government’s scarier schemes, there are some positive arguments for data-sharing. The Cabinet Office’s e-governance unit noted some years back that the complexity of modern government meant that many people spent a disproportionate amount of their lives giving the same data many times over to different government departments.
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