Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-11-15
Topic: Law and Crime
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): Okay, I will carry on to Amendment 133ZC, which seeks to require that further processing for law enforcement purposes must have a statutory basis. This would prevent further processing in circumstances that are lawful but not provided in statute. It cannot be in the public interest to unduly restrict the use of data that could assist law enforcement to carry out its legitimate functions Amendment 133ZF would remove the law enforcement qualification from Clause 36(4). Its purpose appears to be to ensure that inaccurate data cannot be processed irrespective of whether it is for a law enforcement purpose. For processing other than for a law enforcement purpose, the controller must apply Part 2 of the Bill. Also with reference to Clause 36, Amendment 133ZG would insert a requirement that inaccurate data must be erased if it is not corrected. I understand exactly why this might be a fitting addition. However, it will not always be appropriate for law enforcement where data may form part of a criminal case. For instance, it may be important for evidential reasons for data to be kept unaltered. Inaccurate information could also be evidence of perjury or perverting the course of justice Amendment 133ZH would require the controller to have in place a document outlining their retention policy, which would have to be made available to the Information Commissioner on request. Clause 42 already provides safeguards, including a duty to inform the subject about the period for which the data will be stored or the criteria used to determine the period. Moreover, in the policing context, there are policy documents already published that cover this ground, such as the College of Policing manual on the management of police information Finally, I will deal briefly with the three government amendments in this group, Amendments 131, 139 and 140, for which the noble Lord has stated his support. They relate to Schedules 8, 9 and 10, which set out a number of conditions, at least one of which must be met, where a law enforcement agency processes sensitive personal data, or one of the intelligence services processes any personal data. They clarify that any processing is lawful for the purposes of the exercise of a function conferred on a person by a rule of law as well as by an enactment. This is consistent with the existing scheme under the Data Protection Act 1998 In the case of the police, the processing of personal data is, in some instances, undertaken utilising common-law powers in pursuit of their function to prevent crime. One such example is the operation of the domestic violence disclosure scheme, or Clare’s law. Under that scheme, a police force may disclose information to a person about a previous violent and abusive offending behaviour of their partner when he or she was in a previous relationship. It is vital that the police can continue to protect people by disclosing sensitive personal information using their common-law powers Amendments 139 and 140 to Schedules 9 and 10 respectively ensure consistency of approach across Parts 3 and 4 of the Bill To go back to the point about retention of data and the noble Lord’s point about reviewing whether data are still required, appropriate action should follow such a review. The fifth data protection principle makes this clear. If data are no longer required they should be deleted. I am not entirely sure which amendment that refers to, but I hope some of the explanations I have given will ensure that noble Lords and the noble Baroness are content not to press their amendments.