Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-11-06
Topic: Civil Rights
Leslie John Griffiths (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it falls to me to speak to a sequence of amendments from Amendment 35 to Amendment 68. Whereas we have had complicated issues before us in previous discussions on the Bill, most of these are probing and of a much simpler substance. I will proceed with them as best I may Amendment 35 is to paragraph 5(1), which states that a condition for substantial public interest is met only when the processing is carried out by the controller, who has, "an appropriate policy document in place" The amendment we propose seems sensible and simple, which is that the policy document should be, "made available to the data subject without charge" We repeat that in Amendment 68 to Part 4 of Schedule 1, where there is discussion of an "appropriate" document Amendment 37 probes the protected characteristics of the Equality Act. Whereas in the Bill just a few are mentioned, our amendment asks why all those included in the Equality Act are not in that list. In the amendment we can see the proposed extra categories that would be placed there to complete that list. Once again it seems sensible, having started on that track, to complete that process We come next to preventing or detecting unlawful acts. Amendment 38 asks about "a serious" test. We have had conversations with Reuters and a number of amendments are consequent on some of the observations we made in that conversation. Thus with Amendment 39 we would ask the information commissioning officer to clarify that processing must be carried out without the consent of a data subject where, "a data subject is unlikely to give consent", for example to frustrate prevention or detection, where it would involve disproportionate effort to achieve consent or where the nature of the processing means that withdrawal of consent would prejudice prevention or detection of unlawful acts. That probes the extent to which these matters might apply Amendment 40 is again a probing amendment on the question of dishonesty, under the heading: "Protecting the public against dishonesty" Perhaps we need to work out how better to define dishonesty. We all know what telling a lie is, but in the days of fake news we can perhaps have different or varying views on this. Perhaps it needs to be tied down a bit more closely Amendment 41 refers to protecting members of the public. It is unclear in the schedule whether this extends to protecting businesses from doing business with other businesses that would cause them severe reputational harm because, for example, they engage in modern slavery, bribery or whatever. It might be good to frame the law so it is clear that it involves businesses and members of the public. To skip an amendment for the moment, that ties in with Amendment 44. Paragraph 12 does not expressly allow screening by private companies for the purpose of checking against non-UK terrorist financing or money-laundering laws. Nor does it allow screening to be undertaken to comply with widely recognised guidelines such as those promulgated by the Financial Action Task Force, in which the United Kingdom Government participate. It seems sensible to include that screening in the Bill. The amendment seeks to achieve that Amendment 43 is to paragraph 12, which says that the condition of expressing a public interest is met, "if the processing is necessary for the purposes of making a disclosure in good faith", under sections of the Terrorism Act and the Proceeds of Crime Act. Again, it would be nice to tie some of that down with further clarification. That might help us all. Amendment 45 asks about counselling That is the rather interesting daisy chain of amendments it falls to me to present. Since this is, for me, a maiden speech on a piece of legislation, nobody would expect it to be contentious, disputational or controversial. In that sense, I offer it for the consideration of the Committee.