I was in the UK last week and could observe from close quarters the national discussion on proposed new legislation regarding data sharing. The government is receiving harsh criticism about a Bill which will give ministers the right to allow all public bodies to exchange sensitive data. Thus, it is said, such personal data will be shared by government entities to improve public service.

Having just left behind me the data-sharing issue between party and government here, I obviously wondered what the British would say if the government data is not only shared between government entities but with a political party. Newspaper headlines such as The Big Brother State - By Stealth: Thousands of Unaccountable Civil Servants Given Access To Our Most Intimate Personal Information were all over and newscasts reported in a similar tone.

Unaccountable civil servants? And that's bad? In our case it's unaccountable party activists. Unthinkable.

Would you go to a government customer care department if you knew that data regarding you and your grievance will end up at the PN headquarters? I know many people who wouldn't. The PN sees it differently. After having used this data-sharing system with success in the last election, they now want - as revealed in the e-mail that accidentally ended in the inbox of the Labour Party's (PL) secretary general - to fine-tune it by working on it years in advance. In this way, by the time the election comes, the PN will know the trials and tribulations of every citizen who approaches any government department, authority, corporation, commission, ministry, the lot. To me, that's power of incumbency and big brother rolled into one.

No wonder the PN tried to do all it could in order to contain this formal confirmation of how the party and the government are one and the same. I have it from a good source that there were attempts to cajole secretary general Jason Micallef into not revealing the details of the damning e-mail sent by the PN secretary general to ministers and parliamentary secretaries, ordering them to forward details of people who go to their customer care departments and about their case. The effort to stop the disclosure, was, of course, lost on Mr Micallef.

This matter is simply the confirmation that if I go to a government customer care department, as I have a right to do, then data about me and my personal problem - be it regarding health, education, tax, Mepa, whatever - is sent to the PN headquarters. If this is not the institutionalisation of Big Brother for the PN's benefit I don't know what it is.

What is also disquieting is the fact that the PN is beefing up a system whereby it plans to try and win the next election again by doing favours to people on a personal basis while implementing programmes for the welfare of all citizens seems less important. The PN's plan is to continue securing votes by clientelism and political patronage. We saw it happen in the last election, it worked and the PN wants to build on that success.

And what did a phlegmatic PN secretary general have to say on all this? According to this newspaper (December 4) "the PN secretary general insisted that the PN had not requested the government to forward to it the names and details of persons who submitted complaints at ministries and departments".

Now let's see what the notorious e-mail says. The subject of the meeting was: data sharing. The recipients were informed that there had been a meeting between party officials - some of them from the PN's electoral commission - and public officers in charge of ministries' customer care departments. The aim of the meeting was to see how customer care may be better integrated particularly so that together (the party and the government) they can create a strong web of communication, of collective synergy, so that together (the party and the government) they will be more effective in their work with all those who approach the PN and the government. The idea is that this time "the pre-election process is spread over the whole legislature".

So? What does this mean? Does it mean that the PN is not requesting the personal data available to government departments? What will this strong web of communication consist of then? Surely the data will come in very handy in the period before an election, be it general, local or for the European Parliament.

And, why is the PN secretary general acting as an intermediary between the Office of the Prime Minister (where the data will be collated) and the ministries? Surely this business is not a matter for a party secretary general to take care of.

Improving customer care was the weak justification for this strategy. Not quite. In this case people who have already resorted to a government customer care department are reported to the PN general headquarters and information about them is stored in the records of this political party so that its vote-harvesting "customer care" machine is strengthened.

It is interesting how unusually taciturn our usually verbose Prime Minister has been on this matter.

The author is a Labour member of Parliament.