Part 2: Prevention, investigation and prosecution of crime Chapter 1: Functions relating to serious violence Section 10: Power to authorise collaboration etc. with other persons
Subsection (1) creates a power for the Secretary of State to make regulations to confer powers on specified authorities to collaborate with prescribed persons or bodies (which could be in the public, voluntary or private sectors) for the purposes of preventing or reducing serious violence in a prescribed area; and a reciprocal power for persons and bodies so prescribed to collaborate with a specified body for these purposes.
	Subsection (2) supports such collaborative working by conferring a power on the Secretary of State, by regulations, to create information sharing gateways that permits prescribed persons to disclose information to any person listed in subsection (3), for the purposes of preventing and reducing serious violence in a prescribed area. This would be a permissive gateway. It would permit but would not require the sharing of information. For example, a prescribed voluntary organisation could share management information about the characteristics of its clients and beneficiaries, which could support the development of a local problem profile / needs assessment.
	Subsections (4) to (10) make further provision about the scope of the regulation-making power in subsection (2). They provide that any information sharing gateway created by such regulations could enable information to be shared notwithstanding any obligation of confidence or any other restriction on the disclosure of the information. However, any such regulations must provide that a disclosure would not be permitted if it would contravene data protection legislation and the prohibitions on disclosure provided for in any of Parts 1 to 7 or Chapter 1 of Part 9 of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. Nor may any such regulations authorise the disclosure of patient information, or the disclosure of personal information by a health or social care authority. An example of a case in which confidential information could be so disclosed might arise where a prescribed voluntary organisation has been mapping incidents of serious violence reported to it by its clients and beneficiaries. It may wish to share this map with a specified authority, to support the development of a local problem profile / needs assessment.
	Subsection (10) defines for the purposes of Chapter 1 of Part 2 the data protection legislation as having the same meaning as in section 3 of the Data Protection Act; "health or social care authority" as meaning a specified authority listed in the first column of the table headed "Health and social care" in Schedule 1; "patient information" as meaning personal information (however recorded) which relates to an individual’s physical or mental health or condition, their diagnosis or care or treatment, or is to (to any extent) derived directly or indirectly from information relating to any of those matters and "personal information" as meaning information which is in a form that identifies any individual or enables any individual to be identified (either by itself or in combination with other information).
	Any new information sharing gateway created by regulations made under subsection (2) is intended to augment rather than replace existing powers to collaborate or disclose information for the purpose of preventing or reducing serious violence, accordingly subsection (7) preserves such existing powers.