LOCKHEED MARTIN AND THE 2011 UK CENSUS

That this House notes with concern reports of the involvement of Lockheed Martin, a major US arms manufacturer, in gathering information for the 2011 Census; questions whether a company with the closest of commercial links to the US Department of Defense and involved in surveillance and data processing for a number of US administration agencies, including theCentral Intelligence Agency andthe Federal Bureau of Investigation, should have been allowed to tender for this contract and given the ultimate responsibility for processing this personal and sensitive national data about the UK's population; further notes that the Office for National Statistics claims that data will be safe even though all US companies are subject to the Patriot Act which allows the US administration to access any data in a company's possession; further notes the recent abysmal record of the Government in safeguarding personal data from a number of key departments; and calls on the Government to make public what safeguards are in place and to make a categorical assertion that this data, when it undergoes analysis, will not be passed through any US administration and non-administration databases now or at any stage in the future.