Part 5: Digital Government Chapter 3: Debt owed to the public sector Section 48: Disclosure of information to reduce debt owed to the public sector
Subsection (1) creates a permissive gateway enabling specified persons, listed in Schedule 7 (specified persons for the purposes of the debt provisions), to disclose information for the purposes of the taking of action in connection with debt owed to a public authority or to the Crown. The section provides a definition of a debt for the purposes of this power, and explains what "the taking of action in connection with debt owed to a public authority or to the Crown" is, namely, identifying and collecting debt, bringing civil proceedings, and taking administrative action as a result of that debt.
	Subsection (4) states that the "specified persons" permitted to make use of the power are set out in Schedule 7. Subsection (5) sets out a power for the appropriate national authority to add, remove or modify entries in the Schedule by regulations. Subsections (6) to (8) set out the conditions which a given body must meet before it can be added to Schedule 7. First, the body or type of body must be a public authority or a person providing services to a public authority. Second, the body must require information from a public authority or person providing services to a public authority to improve its ability to identify, manage or recover debt owed to a public authority or the Crown, or hold information that, if shared, would improve a public authority or person providing services to a public authority’s ability to do so. Alternatively, the body must have functions relating to the recovery or management of such debt, the exercise of which may be improved by the disclosure of information to or by that body. Where a specified person is a person providing services to a public authority, its power to disclose information is limited to the functions it exercises for that public authority.
	In deciding whether to make regulations under subsection (5) to amend Schedule 7, subsection (10) requires the appropriate national authority to consider the arrangements the persons in question have to ensure secure handling of information. In deciding whether to make regulations which remove a specified person from Schedule 7, the appropriate national authority must consider whether the person in question has had regard to the code of practice under section 52, which will set out best practice to be observed in exercising this power. Subsection (11) sets out consultation requirements in making regulations.