Paul Bettison, Conservative leader of Bracknell Forest Borough Council in Berkshire, has a solution to the council tax issue. Abolish it. He reckons that the council could make up the shortfall by selling mailing lists drawn from its databases of residents.
Companies such as Land-Rover, says Bettison, would be prepared to pay for lists of families with two children, living in homes in tax band G and above, whose choice of library books suggests an interest in country sports.
Bettison stresses that the scheme would be voluntary - but people who opted out would have to pay council tax instead. He doesn't expect many objectors.
Although Bettison says that he has been bending ministers' ears with the idea, there is little chance of it becoming reality. For a start, it would need primary legislation. Ministers are already walking on hot coals to assure the public that we have nothing to fear from the National Identity Register, which David Blunkett announced on Tuesday. Any suggestion that government registers may be sold to junk mail firms will not be seen as helpful.
On the other hand, according to research published last week, a fair section of the population seems to think this goes on anyway. A Mori poll of public perception of privacy and data sharing, sponsored by the Department for Constitutional Affairs, found that nearly one respondent in 10 thinks that the reason public services share data is "to sell off the information for marketing purposes".
The survey is interesting because its findings seem to undermine an assumption in government that the public, apart from a few pointy-headed cypherpunks, is relaxed about official sharing of personal data. The survey found that only 12% were "not at all concerned" about public services sharing personal information.
When faced with nine specific scenarios, however, people did see the point. Most were happy with the idea of the Inland Revenue passing on details to the Benefits Agency and the NHS giving medical records to social services.
However, of the nine scenarios, the one that caused the greatest concern was the idea of a local authority putting personal details "into a central database for use by all its services to speed up response to your enquiries". Only 32% of respondents described themselves as "not at all concerned". This compared with 49% "not at all concerned" about NHS records being passed to social care.
This is awkward, because one of the most pressing issues in e-government is the need to clarify the law to allow local authorities to share information between departments. The Department for Constitutional Affairs is due to publish a clarification of the position shortly.
The poll confirms predecessors in indicating that, of all the arms of government, the least trusted are local authorities. At Bracknell Forest, Paul Bettison says that one way to rebuild trust is to "convince people that we know what we're doing". Whether or not selling databases falls into that category is an interesting question.
