Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Davey]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right, and it is the Windrush generation who should be in our minds above all.

The right hon. Lady mentioned the need—this will be dependent on the EU negotiations—to ensure that we have access to data for national security and for fighting crime. That is in the Government’s interests as they negotiate Brexit, in particular with respect to the rights of EU citizens. I am fairly convinced that when the Commission really wakes up to the implications of paragraph 4 in schedule 2, it will say that this is acting in bad faith. The Government have agreed a settlement for the 3 million EU citizens in this country and the EU citizens who may wish to come to this country in the years ahead. The Bill will take away the rights they thought they would have. I therefore say to Ministers on the Front Bench and those on the Back Benches that they have just a few minutes or so to think again before it is too late.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I want to endorse new clause 4, which was so ably set out my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) from the Opposition Front Bench. I went on the Bill Committee with a sense of optimism and excitement, perhaps naively, because it seemed that so much needed to be done at the moment. Almost every day new issues arise—I hardly need to say that for me, “Cambridge” and “analytics” is an unfortunate combination. In the past few days, there have been facial recognition issues in the Welsh police and Amnesty International has raised the issue of gang lists. I hoped that we could rise to the challenge. However, I fear that although the Bill is hundreds and hundreds of pages long—in the pre-digital age, it would probably have been described as being the size of a telephone book—as Members have observed, does anyone really know what it means? That is why we needed a simple set of rights that people could understand. The sad thing is that people in the wider world are doing such good work and we should be looking at it. Look at what Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt are doing to try to transfer the data away from the big tech companies to make it our data. That is key, and it is the underlying principle of the GDPR, but I am not sure that we have been able to translate it into legislation.

I make two final observations. First, the golden thread running through much of this is data adequacy, which was referred to by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford. In too many places there are genuine concerns, not just from Opposition Members but from Members in the other place, about our being tripped up on data adequacy, which is so important.

Finally, on the Information Commissioner’s role, a huge amount is being passed to her. We can have every confidence in her, but does she really have the resources, power and expertise? Most importantly, we are outsourcing some huge, really important judgments to the Information Commissioner, but I think it should be the role of this place to make those judgements in future, and I fear that we will come back to those points later in the day.

[Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner). I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who is an extremely capable Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee and has shown real resolution and persistence on new clause 12.

In the sanctity of the consulting room, patients tell doctors, nurses and NHS staff all kinds of things. I have had all kinds of private and confidential issues disclosed to me in the 22 years that I have worked as a doctor, but the protection that the NHS gives to this information is absolutely fundamental. For years, the NHS has, on request from the Home Office, been sharing the address details of some patients that have ultimately been used to deport an unknown number of people over many years.

I recently visited a clinic run by the excellent charity, Doctors of the World, in Bethnal Green. I heard stories there of vulnerable people being afraid to approach NHS services because they cannot be certain that the information that they are asked to give will be treated confidentially. I heard about pregnant women not going for antenatal care, people with HIV not getting treatment and people who are afraid to take their children to the GP. The bond of trust between the NHS and its patients relies on the truth being told in both directions. Sadly, people have been avoiding the NHS because they do not trust it. That is bad for the reputation of the NHS, bad for the health of individual patients and bad for public health.

Doctors, nurses and other health professionals do not want information that is given to the NHS by patients to be shared except in the most extreme cases, when there is a significant risk to individuals or to the public. I am pleased that the Government have found a way to assure the House this evening that NHS information will be shared only in the event of a conviction or an investigation for a serious crime. This is the only way to preserve the integrity of the NHS and the immeasurable, vital and precious bond of trust between NHS staff and their patients.