Councils are to get powers to cross-match their databases as part of a pilot scheme intended to increase the number of people registered to vote.

Data protection campaigners have raised concerns about data-matching without the permission of the people whose information it is.

NO2ID national coordinator Phil Booth said: "On the one hand the government have said they want to roll back the database state, but now they seem to be saying we are going to use this data just because we have it.

Any bets that once this is done that it will not be used for other purposes? At first it will be used to get people on the electoral roll, then they will use it to find people claiming single person discount on council tax that they are not entitled to. Then allow the tories to have another bash at a poll tax? Then stop abuses of the school admissions system.

and?


All this data is in the hands of the councils or on other publicly available databases

If by doing this they do stop people ripping off the state (so forcing me to pay extra) then good on them

Exactly. There's no indication that data is to be shared outside of the government. It's simply being used more efficiently. You might even call it "joined up thinking"; something I wish they'd do more often.

It's absolutely chuffing ridiculous the hoops departments in different councils have to go through at the moment. If someone moves about, surely it makes more sense for their records to be available everywhere rather than have a bunch of civil servants needlessly duplicating work that's already been done.

I'll give you an example. I reported a crime. It happened in London, but I reported it at a station local to my home. After 3 months I went to another station near my office to ask why there was no news. Apparently it takes over 3 months to transfer crime reports from one area to another which is done via printed documents and legal teams at huge expense. This particular station had absolutely no way of accessing the information which may well have been important to them! This was just 18 months ago; not back in the dark ages.

FFS, surely it should just be on a database? Fragmentation is simply inefficient and it's costing YOU money in the consequent bureaucracy. In some cases, it might cost you your life.