I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. Deputies will no doubt be aware that the Principal Act which it is proposed to amend by this Bill, the Statistics Act of 1926, enabled the Minister for Industry and Commerce to collect, compile and publish statistics relating to any matter affecting the general economic and other activities of the State. In the Act of 1926 certain matters were particularised. Deputies are no doubt familiar with the matters concerning which statistics procured under the Act have been published. Section 5 of the 1926 Act provided that the Minister for Industry and Commerce could arrange for the collection of statistics by civil servants. Every officer of the Civil Service performing duties under that section was deemed to be an officer of statistics. Under Section 13 of the Act, however, no individual or other forms furnished by any person under the Act could be shown to any person other than the officers of statistics concerned therewith, in the course of their duty as such officers. The only exception to that absolute prohibition of the disclosure of individual forms to any other person other than an officer of statistics was in the case of a prosecution under the Act. It has been found that considerable administrative inconvenience has been caused by that absolute prohibition. On many occasions during the course of the emergency when it was desired to get information from traders concerning stocks, sales and other matters of that kind, it was necessary to go to these traders and ask that they furnish a second time information which they had already furnished under the Statistics Act because we could not avail for the purposes of administration of the information furnished under the Statistics Act, even if the trader were quite willing that the information should be available for general administrative purposes.
The amendment which we are proposing to make in the Act, to enable the Minister for Industry and Commerce to authorise the disclosure of that information to any specified officer of a State Department requiring it for the purposes of his official duties, is in accordance with the provisions of similar legislation in other countries. A similar change in the British Act, the Census of Production Act, 1906, was made recently. The effect of the amendment will be to authorise the Minister for Industry and Commerce to sanction the disclosure of statistical information furnished in returns obtained under the Principal Act to specified persons who must be officers of a State authority or members or officers of a committee, commission or tribunal of inquiry set up by the Government or by a State authority. It is intended that the disclosure of the statistical information procured in that way can be made only to specified persons and any disclosure by a specified person to another person would involve him in substantial penalties. From the viewpoint of the concerns or the persons furnishing particulars, the effect of the change is merely to widen the classes of persons who can be described as officers of statistics in accordance with the meaning given to that term under the Principal Act of 1926. It is unnecessary to stress that the powers given by this amending Bill will be used only in circumstances in which it is considered essential for the proper performance of public duties to do so. They will be used with due regard to the natural desire of business concerns and private individuals that their affairs, as revealed in the returns made under the Statistics Act, will not be disclosed otherwise than to official persons and under the usual conditions of secrecy.
The change is a minor one. The need for the change was emphasised by experience during the emergency, but I think the fact that a similar change has been effected in the law of other countries, and particularly in the law of Great Britain, would have brought to attention the need for effecting the change here also. The persons who give information in returns made under the Statistics Act required for the preparation of the census of production or some other similar statistical abstract will be convenienced by the change, in so far as they may not be in future approached twice by the same Department for the same information. That has been the position in the past and it has caused a great deal of misunderstanding and some annoyance, as Deputies will readily understand. When a firm was asked to give certain information by the statistics branch of the Department of Industry and Commerce and gave it, they could not understand the Department of Industry and Commerce asking, a week or a month later, for the same information to be furnished to another section of the Department which could not, however, get that information from the statistics branch as will be possible in future, provided the Minister is satisfied that it is required for the performance of official duties and makes the necessary order specifying the persons to whom the information is to be disclosed.