From my recent discussions with the staff at the Office of the Information
Commissioner, I understand that anyone can act on behalf of anyone else if
(a) they are authorised to do so, and (b) they are acting in the clear
interest of the other person. (This question arises, not just in the
context of children but also, for example, where a spouse might give consent
on behalf of an absent or ill partner.)
In the case of children, I agree with the other responses concerning the age
question. Because children in Scotland are deemed capable of exercising
their Data Protection rights at the age of 12 (s. 66 of the Act), this must
be around the age at which one would expect a child in England and Wales to
have the capacity, but it does depend, in law, on the individual child.
Below that age, anyone with a legal power to make decisions on the child's
behalf - such as a parent - would be the best person to exercise rights on
their behalf, because anyone else would have a difficult job getting the
child's authorisation.
However, the parents still have to be acting in the child's interests. (I
think - lawyers please correct me if I'm wrong.) Which makes the example
given dubious at best, in my view.
Paul Ticher
Information Management
0116 273 8191
22 Stoughton Drive North, Leicester LE5 5UB
I hereby require any recipient of this message not to use my personal data
for direct marketing purposes.
----- Original Message -----
From: Emma Chilcott <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 23 May 2002 14:46
Subject: Children's consent to processing
> Thank you to those you responded to my last question. I greatly
> appreciated receiving your views. So now on to my next one . . .
>
> If, as part of our financial sales process, we want to gather information
> about customer's children (name, date of birth) for the purpose of rapport
> building with the customer in the future (arguably, we only really need to
> know the number of children and whether they are financially dependent for
> financial planning purposes), would this contravene DP as we are
collecting
> this information about an identifiable individual (the child) without
their
> consent? Would we need to get the child's permission or can the parent
> give consent on their behalf? I'd appreciate thoughts / views / comments
> on this?
>
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All archives of messages are stored permanently and are
available to the world wide web community at large at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/data-protection.html
If you wish to leave this list please send the command
leave data-protection to [log in to unmask]
All user commands can be found at : -
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/user-manual/summary-user-commands.htm
(all commands go to [log in to unmask] not the list please)
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