Alarmed by the growing number of cases of child leukaemia in the Scottish region of Dumfries and Galloway, Scottish Member of Parliament Chris Ballance requested electoral ward by electoral ward data from the UK Department of Health’s Common Services Agency (CSA) to see if there were any cancer hotspots in the area. There have long been suspicions that clusters of the potentially fatal blood cancer could have been caused by radioactive pollution:

• Plutonium from the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria washes up on the Solway coast
• Depleted uranium shells have been tested at the Dundrennan military range near Kirkcudbright
• Scotland's oldest nuclear station, which is now being decommissioned, is at Chapelcross, near Annan

The CSA refused to release the data, then went on to lose their appeal to the Scottish Information Officer that the data requested should be exempted from Freedom of Information Act regulations when Chris made a second request.

The CSA then took its case to the UK Court of Session but lost again. Despite this, they continue to reject Chris’s request and have now appealed to the highest court in the UK, England’s House of Lords.

Ed.- The CSA are arguing for exemption on the basis that, because the numbers are quite small, revealing the data would compromise the patients’ right to anonymity, but this does not hold water. The CSA database encrypts names and addresses precisely in order to preserve individuals’ right to confidentiality and the most ardent investigative reporter would find it nigh impossible to trace the identities of even ten cases of child leukaemia in an electoral ward of average size 11,365 citizens.

If the numbers are as small as claimed, perhaps the CSA should contact each one to see whether they did, in fact, wish to remain anonymous. Chances are the vast majority would be keen to help Chris’s inquiry.

Then of course, one wonders what other data, and which other identities, perhaps corporate, the CSA may have been asked to conceal.