Big Brother Britain

Every town hall has been ordered to send out surveys demanding local residents' personal information and opinions. The forms will ask householders to give details of their children, mortgage, ethnic background, religion and sexual orientation. Civil rights campaigners called the survey 'intrusive and very sinister', pointing out that any information handed over will not be kept confidential. Ministers have even given instructions that local councils must try to disguise their involvement in the survey to avoid attracting criticism. And they have ruled that the questioning must be paid for out of council tax and carried out every two years. The New Place Survey - which is expected to be launched next autumn after trials in the spring - is likely to cost at least £15million by 2012. Communities Secretary Hazel Blears distributed the consultation paper on the 'intrusive' survey. According to a consultation paper distributed by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, the justification for the survey is that it will let the Government know if councils are hitting scores of new targets imposed on them in the last six months. But the questionnaire does not ask about householders' attitudes to libraries, rubbish collections or schools - all of which are the responsibility of councils. Instead, it solicits information on whether people think local parents are controlling their children's behaviour properly and whether different ethnic communities in the area are getting on with each other. Questions on ethnicity and sexuality are intended to be used in Government initiatives to promote greater numbers of local councillors from minority groups. But the demand that individuals and families supply a huge raft of personal details for the survey comes at a time of deepening concern about the State's thirst for ever-greater amounts of private information - and worries over how that information is stored and used.