To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps have been, and are being, taken by the Information Commissioner’s Office to ensure that there is no underspend of income allocated for data protection activities by the end of the current financial year, and to ensure that the available income is used for data protection activities rather than being remitted to the Consolidated Fund.
Answered on
16 July 2015
The Information Commissioner’s Office’s (ICO) data protection activities are funded by fees from organisations that process personal data. The amount available to spend each year is dependent on the number of organisations that notify with the ICO but is currently profiled to be £18.5M in 2015/16. The ICO has spent £4.7M on data protection activities in the first quarter of 2015/16.
Any money collected but not spent by the ICO is remitted to the Consolidated Fund. The ICO did not remit any data protection income to the Consolidated Fund in 2014/15 and there is a similar expectation for 2015/16.