Ministers back web security position

A Lords committee is pressing for more regulation to aid security on the internet

Two prominent Labour ministers have defended the government’s stance on personal internet security in the face of criticism from the House of Lords that not enough is being done to protect individuals.

Baroness Vadera, parliamentary under-secretary of state for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) supported the government’s rejection of calls for a data breach notification law.

“The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has put out guidance on this, but a law would be very difficult to legislate,” she said.

And Vernon Coaker, under-secretary of state for the Home Office, stood by a decision to make banks the first port of call for reporting fraud.

“We have not had any problems raised at all about this, but we will have another look at it,” he said.

But Coaker said that the Home Office had adopted one recommendation of the Lords report on personal internet security: the funding of a new e-crime law enforcement body.

“There is a gap in policing e-crime, without a shadow of a doubt,” he said. “The Home Office will look to fund that law enforcement capability alongside the National Fraud Reporting Centre.”

The Lords Science and Technology Committee is undertaking a follow-up inquiry to its report, published last August, because of its disappointment at the government response, which included rejection of the data breach notification law proposal.

“The committee was disappointed with the government’s response to its report. We felt it had failed to address some of our key concerns about people’s security on the internet,” said committee chairman Lord Sutherland.

At the time the government specifically rejected calls by the Lords to give the ICO powers to spot-check government departments’ data protection policies, saying “the government believes that the current enforcement regime for data protection is fit for purpose”.

Less than a month later HM Revenue and Customs lost the personal details of 25 million families. The data included names, addresses and bank details.

The government has since backed down, and recently granted the information commissioner further powers to impose fines for negligent data loss.

The Lords committee felt that in the light of these events the government should look again at taking some of its other recommendations on board.

The committee will report again in the summer.