Data Protection Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-03-05
Topic: Immigration
Joanna Catherine Cherry (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Indeed it is ironic, and actions speak louder than words. I will certainly raise that matter with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who very decently has offered to meet me to discuss legislation that the Government have in mind about domestic abuse Those are just two examples of when it is very important for legal advisers to be able to make a subject access request to the Home Office and not to be met by the sort of brick wall that this immigration exemption, if enacted, would allow. I say "just two examples" because the Immigration Law Practitioners Association has produced, in an annexe to its briefing, a large number of real-life cases that illustrate the very wide range of circumstances in which subject access requests are used and are essential It is a sad fact that the Home Office has a well catalogued track record of making unlawful decisions. In a recent answer to a House of Lords question, the other place was told that in the 10 years to 2015, 250,000 appeals were allowed against the Home Office. Allowing the Home Office an exemption from subject access requests in immigration matters will have the effect of insulating the Government from challenges to unlawful decision making, and that is just not right. The Home Office does not apply the law as it has been mandated to by Parliament—or with the consistency that it should. That is why it loses so many cases in the courts We often come to the House to hear criticisms of Home Office procedures. While we cannot rectify those procedures under the auspices of the Bill, what we can do is not allow the status quo to get any worse. I exhort the Government to remove this exemption from the Bill, particularly as there are other exemptions in it that the immigration authorities can seek to rely on for the processing of personal data in accordance with their statutory duties and functions, or in the case of an offence having been committed This broad-ranging exemption will impact substantially on human rights, and it may also impact on an adequacy decision from the European Commission. Indeed, EU citizens today expressed their concern that these exemptions might have an impact on their ability to enforce their residency rights after Brexit, under the agreements currently being brokered. I urge the Government to look at this very carefully. They have yet to give any reasonable justification for the inclusion in the Bill of this very broad exemption, and I look forward to hearing one, if it is brought forward I share the concerns that led to amendments being passed by the Lords, and the cross-party concerns expressed in this House last week when the Government announced their decision to renege on the commitment to hold the second part of the Leveson inquiry. I was very glad to hear the points of order earlier on what Sir Brian Leveson actually said in his letter about his desire for Leveson part 2 to go forward I am not convinced by the reasons given by the Government for their decision to ditch any plans for Leveson 2. I endorse what the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said in this House last week: he said that Members "should be able to speak without fear or favour."—[Official Report, 1 March 2018; Vol. 636, c. 971.] That principle is as important as the freedom of the press, because the need for Members of Parliament to speak without fear or favour comes from the same right as the freedom of the press: the right to free speech and freedom of expression. I am sorry to have to say that I believe that the UK Government have acted out of fear of the press barons, and through favour, because so many of those press barons share their narrow right-wing agenda. There have been many genuine victims of press abuse, from grieving parents—everyone knows whom I am speaking about—to the relatives of those who died in the Hillsborough disaster, and they deserve better than this My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute made it very clear that it is not acceptable that the House of Lords should seek to legislate on matters devolved to Scotland; previously, section 40 applied only to England and Wales. As this is a devolved matter, what happens on press regulation in Scotland is for the Scottish Parliament. Although my colleagues in the Scottish Government have no plans to legislate in this area at the moment, there is debate within the SNP, as in the other political parties, about the best way to ensure that the terrible abuses uncovered by Leveson do not happen again In this House, promises were made by the UK Government to implement Leveson’s recommendations, and suspicions have rightly been raised about the motivation for the U-turn in the Conservative party manifesto—a U-turn that was completed with last week’s announcement. It is important to be clear that this is a volte-face on a previous cross-party agreement. I have yet to be convinced that there is not still the same need for the section 40 legislation, and I have previously tried to debunk some of the myths when I have spoken about it in this House Let us not sweep these issues under the carpet—let us have a full and frank debate about them—but we should not let the Leveson issues completely dominate the debate about the Data Protection Bill, because it covers very important issues beyond Leveson, of which I have mentioned only one: the immigration exemption. I look forward to debating these matters further as the Bill progresses through the House.