Background
3.“Digital switchover” is the process by which analogue television broadcasting signals will be phased out in favour of digital signals. A key part of the Government’s digital switchover policy is to ensure that adequate advice and assistance is available to those who need it to convert. In September 2005, the Government confirmed that the BBC would help establish a Digital Switchover Help Scheme to be funded by the television licence fee. Under the Scheme, a household will be entitled to be provided with suitable equipment to convert one TV set, help with setting it up and any work necessary to improve their TV aerial, if that household includes—
	a person aged 75 or over, or
	a person with a severe disability, i.e., if that person has an award of disability living allowance or attendance allowance, or an equivalent under the war pensions or industrial injuries disablement benefit legislation, or
	a person who is registered blind or registered partially sighted.
4.Assistance provided by the Help Scheme will be available free of charge for those who are eligible and in receipt of pension credit, income support or income-based jobseeker’s allowance; others will pay a contribution, currently set at £40, towards the cost of assistance.
5.The detailed eligibility rules and governance arrangements for the Help Scheme are set out in: The Digital Switchover Help Scheme: A Scheme Agreement Between Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and the British Broadcasting Corporation (CM 7118) made under the new (2006) BBC Charter and Agreement.
6.The Act will support the operation and effectiveness of the Help Scheme by allowing data held for social security purposes by the Department for Work and Pensions (“DWP”) and the Department for Social Development in Northern Ireland (“DSDNI”), for war pensions purposes by the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency within the Ministry of Defence, and in relation to people who are blind or partially sighted by local authorities or (in Northern Ireland) Health and Social Services Boards, to be disclosed to the administrator of the Scheme in order to enable the administrator to identify people in the eligible categories and write to them, inviting them to apply for help. This should help maximise take-up and (hence) help to vulnerable people, and minimise form-filling for recipients.
7.The disclosure of such data is constrained by a number of legal controls, such as the law of confidentiality (public authorities owe a duty of confidentiality to people who supply them with personal information) and statutory provisions. A public authority cannot disclose the information in question about a person without having legal authority to do so. There is extensive primary legislation setting out the purposes for which, and persons to whom, social security information about individuals may be disclosed. Section 123 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, for example, makes it an offence for a social security employee (amongst others) to disclose social security information without “lawful authority” (as defined in section 123(9)).
8.The Act gives the necessary legal authority for the disclosure of social security and war pensions information, and information about people who are blind or partially sighted: section 1(1), (2) and (3). Information falling into these categories and of a prescribed kind may be disclosed to a “relevant person” for use in connection with “switchover help functions”, such as identifying persons who may be eligible for help, contacting them and establishing their entitlement: section 1(5). A “relevant person” includes the BBC, certain companies controlled by the BBC or the Crown, and any person engaged by the BBC, the Secretary of State or such a company to provide services or carry out functions in connection with switchover help functions: section 1(4). It is an offence for a person who has received information by virtue of this power to disclose it without lawful authority: section 3.