Wednesday, December 12, 2007

More data protection evasiveness

As already noted here the Government has a stock response to any questions about data security or protection now to any questions from any memebers. Simply refer to the statement by the Prime Minister about the investigation across Whitehall. Occassionally, in those nutty moments, they have also referred to a response from Ed miliband at the Cabinet office which has then refers to Brown's statement.

Yesterday we had another permutation of this referral response. When asked how many data protection breaches there had been at DEFRA, the standard response was issued and then tagged on the end was this. "In addition to this I also refer the hon. Member to a previous response made on 13 June 2007, Official Report, column 1028W, regarding the number of breaches".

The response that he referred to is another standard consolidated non-answer which was being used across the departments in June to avoid answering the question which I posted about at the time here. For anyone sad like me that wants to read Hansard and the written question you will be amazed at how often "answers" will send you on back tracking wild goose chases into the oblivion of non-answer hell. Their evasiveness knows no bounds.

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