European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-11-21
Topic: Civil Rights
Victoria Grace Ford (Conservative, Centre-right): It has been a huge honour to listen to the debate, and to hear so many contributions from so many wise colleagues I want to talk about the fundamental right to personal data protection, an issue that I have raised before in the House. It is a very important issue, because we are in the middle of a digital revolution—in the middle of the fourth industrial revolution. The ability to process vast quantities of data is vital to our tech and digital sectors, and is driving the future of medical research. If we want to continue to play a world-leading role, we must continue to be able to exchange data easily with other parts of the world In the history of our country privacy has largely been protected, but that has not always been the case in many European countries. Data protection—the right to have one’s personal data protected—is a treasured right. Let me point out to the Solicitor General that data equivalence will be not just a legal but a political issue, and we must therefore leave no one in any doubt that Britain intends to respect personal data It is excellent that the Government have agreed to implement the general data protection regulation. It is a highly complex directive, but it was not just agreed in some far-off place in Brussels. The process was led for the Liberals by a British Liberal who sits in the House of Lords and for the Conservatives by a British Conservative who also sits in the House of Lords, and was chaired by a British Labour MEP who is still chairing the relevant committee. So Britain was very much involved in the establishment of the GDPR There is a technical difference between the GDPR and the Data Protection Bill. The GDPR makes it clear that its first principle is to protect the right to personal data, and it is important that we too are seen to give that direct protection. It is in the interests of both sides to provide data adequacy. After all, Britain is responsible for more than 10% of world data flows, more than three quarters of which take place between Britain and the rest of Europe. Other European countries need to maintain that data flow, but the field is continually evolving: for instance, the European Commission is looking into ePrivacy law The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) seemed to suggest that the Government were somehow not treating data adequacy negotiation seriously—we are—and told us that the Government had said they might want something "akin to" a data adequacy agreement. That is because the current agreement, the EU-US data privacy shield, is not as stable as data adequacy might be as part of a free trade agreement. There are many different ways in which that could be agreed, so let us ensure that we keep all the options open I hope I have given an example of an area in which rights are continually evolving—and, in a rapidly changing world, the rights that each of us has will need to evolve continually. Having listened to the debate, I think that we should not cut and paste the charter into British law now, but that we should take the matter seriously. We have been promised today that within the next two weeks—by 5 December—the Government will go through every single one of those rights, will list the parts of British law in which they already exist, and, if there are parts where they do not yet exist, will show us the process whereby they will be introduced. I think that, on that basis, we will create a more stable agreement to protect not just the rights of today but the rights of tomorrow, which is why I will vote against the amendments.