Data Protection Act humbles Home Office

You may not have heard of Brian Reid Beetson Robertson, accountant (retired), from Pontefract, West Yorkshire. But on Friday afternoon he won a rather remarkable victory in the High Court.

Although 58-year-old Mr Robertson was too ill to be in the courtroom to hear it, he stood up like a modern-day David against the Goliath that is the Home Office.

In a nutshell, Robertson was angry that Wakefield City Council was forcing him to register to vote, but at the same time intended to sell those details for commercial use.

Robertson didn't want to receive junk mail so he didn't register. This meant that he (a) couldn't vote and (b) was breaking the law by not registering.

Now let's go back to 30 November 1999, and a speech by the then Home Secretary Jack Straw in the House of Commons. "...our proposal - subject to the House agreeing the Bill and, later, the Regulations - is that the full Register should not be commercially available for sale, and that is right and proper".

Say again Jack?

In fact, the Representations of the People Regulations 2001 which appeared later on contained no move in that direction - instead imposing a duty of sale on the local authorities managing each list.

And so local authorities have since charged marketers, credit reference agencies and just about anybody else for providing names, addresses and others reams of information which these basic details initiate. Even Posh and Becks fell foul when online directory 192.com bought and published their home address in February.

So how did Robertson manage to outplay the prince of football and his pop star wife?

His victory was down to two notorious pieces of legislation which have generated mountains of media coverage but little yet in terms of concrete goalposts - the Human Rights Act and the Data Protection Act 1998.

But if they carry on this way, we're going to be hearing a whole lot more about them in the future.