Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord McNally and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 21st May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

I am very interested in that—perhaps we can debate procedure in this House another time. I do not think I am out of order, and I am within 30 seconds of finishing a very long debate, in which a number of people have asserted some rather hurtful things about those of us who have spoken about the freedom of the press.

I went into that little bit of history, because I do not think that in 30 years’ time Paul Dacre or Kelvin MacKenzie will be spoken of in the same breath as Cudlipp or Evans, or even Junor or Rees-Mogg. The Daily Mail is said to be the Prime Minister’s favourite newspaper, yet it is the embodiment of the nasty party that she once so rightly condemned. I think Matt Hancock will regret becoming Paul Dacre’s poodle, and I think the old print media will regret not protecting themselves within the strong walls of the royal charter, as the long shadow of court judgments and the growing power of the ICO come into play. On behalf of the victims of press criminality and malpractice, I express my admiration for the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, for ensuring that their voice has not gone unheard.

The Government will have their business, but I urge Ministers to accept this amendment as being in keeping with the arguments, which they themselves have used during the passage of the Bill, that major regulation should not be in the hands of politicians and regulators should be independent of both government and proprietors if real press freedom is to be safeguarded. In order, I beg to move.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (Non-Afl)]

I have voted against a three-line whip on earlier amendments of this kind, and will do so again today on this amendment, or any others like it. I entirely agree with the Minister in all respects. The Bill is now fit for purpose and represents a fair compromise. Without making a meal of it, I regard the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and similar ones, as unnecessary regulation, unprincipled, contrary to freedom of speech and unique in the democratic world. I know of no country that is a true democracy that has anything like this. I am surprised that it should be put forward by anyone who is a Liberal Democrat.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord McNally and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones indicated, I shall speak to Amendments 41 and 44, which were eloquently introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths. I had no idea that it was a maiden speech from the Front Bench, and it is to the discredit of the Labour Party that it has taken him so long to climb to the top of the greasy pole. Having got there, I hope that he enjoys the view.

As the noble Lord indicated, these amendments are inspired mainly by Thomson Reuters and others in the City. I attended a seminar in the City some weeks ago in which the corporation, the City of London Police and some leading companies talked about the challenges that data was bringing them. At the core of this is a concern that the Bill is loosely and poorly worded in preventing private companies doing work with data which will help them to keep best practice in line with the objectives for corporate governance and efforts to fight crime, terrorism, slavery, bribery and corruption.

I hope the Minister can give some comfort that the Bill will give cover to companies, financial institutions and others to carry out this kind of data activity and allow screening by private companies for the purposes of checking against non-UK laws on terrorist financing or money laundering. It should be amended to allow compliance with widely recognised guidelines such as those promulgated by the Financial Action Task Force. In the light of the Minister’s response and in consultation with those who have asked us to raise this matter, we would see whether we wanted to take it further. At the source of these amendments is a concern on the part of companies which I think genuinely want to help.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I want to raise an issue which I would be grateful if it were thought about, although I would not dream of asking the Minister to give an informed reply today. I am puzzled especially by Amendment 37, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, because I spent a good deal of my time developing the Equality Act 2010 and we were very concerned when doing so about issues of personal privacy and enforceability.

Obviously, one size does not fit all when it comes to equal opportunity and treatment. It is fairly easy to operate a policy measuring ethnicity, for example, without any problem about privacy; it is pretty easy to do so in respect of gender, although gender does not at the moment figure in the list for some reason, but it becomes terribly difficult when one is dealing with sexuality, religion or philosophical belief, which are for some reason in the list at the moment. I would be grateful if the Minister could reflect with people from the Government Equalities Office on whether this is an example of overlegislation, which it would be much better to prune down.

I am all in favour of affirmative action to promote equality between the sexes or people of different ethnicity, but when it comes to religion, philosophical belief and the other matters that are either there at the moment or would be there under Amendment 37, I get very worried. For example, I once represented the Church of Scientology—successfully—in establishing that scientology is a religion. I would not like these provisions to be the source of conflict and division between one kind of religion and another, or one kind of no religion and humanists, and so on. I think it is an example of overlegislation and underlegislation, and needs to be sorted.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord McNally and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

I was not discussing personalities, but what happened in the case in Strasbourg. I was about to say that, ironically, the Strasbourg court of human rights had regard to the editors’ code in the course of giving its judgment, so it certainly regarded the old editors’ code as relevant for that purpose.

The Explanatory Notes to the Bill state:

“Article 85 of the GDPR requires Member States to provide exemptions or derogations from certain rights and obligations in the context of processing personal data for journalistic purposes or the purpose of academic, artistic or literary expression”.


The notes go on to explain how that works. Article 10 is engaged, as there is an inherent tension between data protection and the right to freedom of expression. The Government were right to recognise those inherent tensions, which are not new. Personal data is about private information. I am reliably told that those public figures who wish to keep their private information away from inquiry now, as a matter of course, use data laws to protect publication in newspapers. If the correct balance is not struck, the ability of the press to act as a watchdog will be impaired to the detriment of democracy. Investigations, such as those into sex grooming, will become more difficult to publish.

The exemptions in Part 5 of Schedule 2 to the Bill are not new. They carry forward similar provisions in the Data Protection Act 1998. There is no good reason to amend them to the detriment of IPSO titles. It would be punitive to do so. Article 88 treats the majority of the print media, regulated by IPSO, less favourably than the BBC, broadcasters regulated by Ofcom and, if the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, is accepted, members of Impress. That would mean that members of IPSO would be unable to rely on their compliance with the editors’ code—to which they are bound by contract—in their defence. It is difficult to understand the justification for this form of discrimination against editors and journalists working for our national and regional newspapers.

[Lord McNally]

I do not know how many more pages my noble friend has of this. Somewhere in it must be the recognition that IPSO has not applied for recognition, which would have given it all the protections he is calling for. He does not do himself a service. One of the reasons why people get irritated by the lawyers in this House is that they think that if they make a long enough speech it must be so and only the wicked would disagree. The reason why IPSO would be under threat is that it has not sought recognition. He gave a long list of IPSO’s supposed strengths. It is a sweetheart organisation. It is run by the newspaper owners. That is what we are trying to move away from.

I have now found something on the independent overseas press regulation. David Wolfe QC has said that it is disappointing that there continue to be attempts to prevent the recognition system working and that it is frustrating that Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act has not been commenced. I would be a lot more impressed with my noble friend if he got behind that, or at least gave his friends in IPSO some really good advice and asked them to try to find a way forward with press regulation, instead of giving them an absolute veto on seeking a solution to this matter. I have finished—for the time being.

Space Industry Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord McNally and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 23rd October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, I will in due course also speak to Amendments 41 and 42 in this group.

We have heard a lot recently about Parliament taking back control, yet no Government have done more in recent times to weaken parliamentary scrutiny and strengthen the power of the Executive than this one. They load up Bills with powers to be enacted by secondary legislation, and then complain if either House of Parliament objects to the powers thus taken. The truth is that we ain’t seen nothing yet. The Bill is just a taster of what is to come. We are of course dealing with our old friends the Henry VIII powers. As the Select Committee said on the matter:

“The number of delegated powers granted by the Bill is notable —the Bill has 71 clauses and confers approximately 100 delegated powers. Some of those powers are very broad”.


These should be called the Conrad Russell amendments. During my early years in this House, the late Lord Russell would root out and oppose Henry VIII clauses in Bills from both Conservative and Labour Administrations. As a Minister, I may even have tried to push through the odd Henry VIII power myself. Parliament should be wary of them.

Amendment 40 leaves out the catch-all term “enactment” and inserts the more precise and narrow reference to “secondary legislation”, so that SIs cannot amend primary legislation and only secondary legislation made under Clause 66 can be amended, repealed or revoked by secondary legislation. Amendment 42 would ensure that if we cannot stop SIs amending primary legislation, any regulation under this clause which seeks to repeal primary legislation is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.

Whatever the outcome of Brexit, it is clear that the Government wish to find ways more easily to future-proof complex legislation. If we are to put the best gloss on these attempts at Henry VIII powers, this is about government trying to be more flexible as the impacts of legislation become clear. However, it involves weakening parliamentary scrutiny. Although this is a debate on the Space Industry Bill, it raises many important issues, which we should look at ways of dealing with in the long term. Certainly, the Select Committee has a good claim for taking this on as a broader issue, or perhaps the Lord Speaker and the Speaker could set up a Joint Committee. However, current parliamentary procedures are not adequate to deal with legislation such as immensely complex, technical Bills—we will soon have another one: the Data Protection Bill—which try to legislate for rapidly changing technologies. Henry VIII powers are not the solution, and although we put down these amendments in an attempt to proceed with this Bill, this is a longer-term problem that is a long way from being solved. I beg to move.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I will say few words in support of the general propositions that my noble friend Lord McNally has referred to. I have come to the sad conclusion that the Government do not believe in parliamentary democracy but in executive government, and that they use every means they can to avoid Parliament’s scrutiny. The particular example that I am concerned about is what has happened to the Joint Committee on Human Rights; that goes back many years to when the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, chaired it and I first joined it. Lords committees are relatively safe, because we can protect them within this House. However, a Joint Committee of both Houses depends upon co-operation by both Houses. The Joint Committee on Human Rights is a vital constitutional safeguard that looks at every Bill and some delegated legislation for its compatibility with human rights. It is quite unacceptable that on the Commons side, the places have not been filled and the committee has therefore not met or sat, not just for weeks but for months now. It is an outrage and I very much hope that the Minister will pass on that message to some of his colleagues. Without that public watchdog, parliamentary scrutiny is very much weakened, and therefore I support everything that my noble friend Lord McNally has said.