Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-11-13
Topic: Civil Rights
Tom McNally (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, when the famous French long-serving Foreign Minister Talleyrand died and the news was taken to his long-term rival Prince Metternich of Austria, Metternich looked at the telegram and said, "What does he mean by this?". Some of my friends have a similar reaction to any amendments that carry the name of the noble Lord, Lord Black, but I am not among them. I think that we share a common belief in a free and a vigorous and independent press. He knows that when at Second Reading he referred to the Defamation Act 2013, my ears pricked up, because it is one of the things that I am most proud of from my time as a Minister. With my noble friend Lord Lester as my mentor, we piloted that Bill into legislation. I am certainly very interested in any amendment that would prevent this Bill becoming a backdoor to getting around the protections that the Defamation Act gave to free comment and academic freedom to have peer comment, and so on. The Act has worked—we are no longer considered the libel capital of the world—and there is a great deal more freedom in the academic world for peer comments and criticisms, without the threat of libel actions, which had a chilling effect The problem is that this is an alphabet soup of amendments, which the noble Lord, Lord Black, has put forward with great clarity, so we will be able to study what exactly he wants to do and how he wants to do it. I am interested in a number of things; I am interested in the idea, which he quite rightly pointed out, of investigative journalists having to give prior notice of what they are doing, which seems rather counterintuitive to the idea of investigative journalism. I have certainly received that point of view from the BBC and other forms of journal about the effect of that proposal. The noble Lord, Lord Black, is quite right. We have seen only recently the Paradise papers as another example of investigative journalism exposing things that people would rather keep quiet, which is massively in the public interest. He also referred to the number of exposés of care homes, prisons and young offender institutions, all of which are massively in the public interest. It would be wrong to allow the Bill to bring into law provisions that would chill, prevent or curb the great traditions of a free and vigorous press. In the spirit of Committee stage, I would like to look carefully at what the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Black, seek to do. As he knows, after Second Reading I offered to collaborate with him on amendments but that would probably have been too great a shock to both our constitutions. However, I would certainly be interested to see where we can work together on the broad aim of ensuring that the Bill contains no accidental curbs on the activities of a vigorous and free press and media As I have said before, the noble Lord, Lord Black, and his friends would be in a stronger position if the background to this was not one of previous criminality and invasion of the privacy of people who had every right to see their privacy protected. Therefore, there is bound to be a certain scepticism about whether these proposals give overgenerous access to overbroad exemptions. But let us have a look at them and at some of the issues that have been raised in other quarters—as I say, by the BBC and journals that are not members of IPSO that have expressed the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Black. Following that and what the Minister is about to tell us, we can then make judgments about how we shall approach these issues on Report.