Data Protection Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2017-11-06
Topic: Mixed Topics
Graham Norman Tope (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it is a pleasure at last to move Amendment 26. I do not think that I will detain the Committee for very long on this relatively straightforward amendment. I was alerted to concerns about this matter by London Councils, which represents the 32 London borough councils and the City of London. London Councils operates services on behalf of the London boroughs on a non-statutory basis. It is concerned about the present wording of the Bill, particularly Schedule 1 and the part to which my amendment applies, which fails to consider non-statutory services in relation to the conditions that must be satisfied to meet the exemptions set out in Schedule 1 In particular, London Councils provides the Taxicard service, which is a non-statutory subsidised mobility service for people with severe sight and/or mobility impairments. The service currently provides around 70,000 disabled, and in many cases vulnerable, Londoners with subsidised transport, for which eligibility is determined at borough level When applying for the service, applicants provide special categories of data to demonstrate their eligibility. London Councils is therefore data controller and processor of such data. The Taxicard service falls within the definition of social protection and is a social protection scheme as set out in EU regulation 458/2007—however, it is delivered on a non-statutory basis. The current wording of the Bill is ambiguous as to whether services such as Taxicard would comply with the exemptions set out in the Bill. Despite fulfilling the definition of "social protection" set out in EU law it is a non-statutory service in respect of UK law. As the Bill refers to, "the law relating to social protection", there are concerns about the extent to which organisations such as London Councils can rely on the exemption Were the exemption not to apply to the scheme, London Councils would have to take measures to comply with the provisions of the GDPR. These would include periodically writing to all 70,000 members to ask their explicit consent to process their special categories of data. Given the particular cohort of members of Taxicard, it is likely that some will not understand or be sufficiently informed of the GDPR to know why they are being written to or, probably, not sufficiently capable or motivated to respond, given their underlying health conditions. In taking such measures there is a real risk that many disabled Londoners who currently benefit from the scheme would no longer be able to do so, because anyone who did not respond would have to be deemed to have withheld their consent. In such cases, London Councils would have to stop providing the Taxicard service I am quite certain that it is not the intention of the Government that that should happen; still less that the Bill should be the means by which it happens. I understand that London Councils met officials at the department some three weeks ago, so I hope that the Minister will be able to say, preferably, that he accepts my amendment this evening—victory is always pleasant, if unusual—but if he cannot, that he can at least give some comfort that the Government are cognisant of the problem, that they are working on it and that appropriate amendments will be made to this schedule to ensure that there is no question of any ambiguity. I beg to move.