Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in light of the recent ruling of the European Court of Justice, they plan to introduce legislation to clarify the law on the right to be forgotten.

The Government is continuing to assess the implications of the recent European Court of Justice ruling on the ‘right to be forgotten’. However, it is important to be clear that the ECJ judgment does not give individuals an unfettered right to have their personal data deleted from search engine results.

The Government is conscious of the possible unintended consequences of the judgment, such as the administrative burdens for search engines in complying with the judgment, a potential increase in caseload for the Information Commissioner’s Office in responding to complaints and ultimately the volume of cases that may end up in the Tribunal on appeal.

With this in mind, the Government welcomes the work being undertaken by the Committee of European data protection authorities to develop criteria to be used by search engine operators to consider requests for deletion. The guidance issued by this Committee will be of vital importance to search engines operators in striking the right balance between the privacy rights of individuals and other interests, including the public interest in retaining the information. Therefore as well as supporting search engine operators with the practical application of the ruling, the Government considers this guidance is the right mechanism for clarifying the rights and obligations provided by this judgment.

At the same time negotiations on a replacement General Data Protection Regulation are ongoing in the Council of the EU, including on proposed provisions which are in shorthand called the ‘right to be forgotten’ provisions. The Government does not support the ‘right to be forgotten’ as proposed by the European Commission. It is not technologically possible to remove all trace of data uploaded on the internet and we should be mindful of setting unrealistic expectations for data subjects which do not exist in practice. The Government also consider that an obligation to inform other controllers of a request under the so called ‘right to be forgotten’ should be made clearer and more realistic. Therefore, we will continue to make the case for greater clarity and a more proportionate approach to this measure.