Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hollins and Lord Black of Brentwood

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Blencathra, for supporting this group of amendments, which flow directly from three fundamental principles with which I believe the majority in your Lordships’ House will agree. First, we are entitled to the same rights over our personal private data as we are to our personal privacy and family life; secondly, a healthy democracy requires that journalists are free to expose corruption, incompetence or wrongdoing in high places; and thirdly, it is imperative that we protect citizens from those who might seek to abuse those protections and in doing so cause great personal distress.

Perhaps it would be helpful to offer some context here. Last week, several of the many foot soldiers who have assisted newspapers to obtain information illegally came into Parliament to describe the sheer scale of that abuse at a meeting for a group of parliamentarians. Two of them have written to noble Lords supporting these amendments. Their revelations were extraordinary, going far beyond what is in the public domain, and not just confined to tabloid newspapers. We heard how individuals of interest to the press were remorselessly targeted in the quest for stories—ordinary people, whose personal and private data was harvested and exploited, not to advance the democratic ideal of public interest journalism but to sell more newspapers. I do not know whether these practices have stopped, but new titles are still being implicated. Even if they have stopped, the competitive pressure on newspapers makes it possible that they will start again. We heard how hard it was for these whistleblowers to speak up and how others employed to engage in similar illegal practices have been silenced with money. I publicly applaud their courage and note the extraordinary stress and fear that they live under because of their positions. They were being employed to do illegal acts at the behest of newspaper proprietors and editors. It was not about freedom of speech—it was an abuse of power. The main perpetrators were not the foot soldiers, yet they are the most likely to be held to account. That is why we need adequate protection for the public, and for journalists, who may be prevented by the editors from speaking up.

The Bill quite properly imposes constraints on how businesses, institutions and even charities can use our private data, but it will allow the rules to be broken under certain circumstances. It is our responsibility to scrutinise the Bill to ensure that those who are permitted to break those laws—to breach the data privacy rights by which everyone else is bound—are in fact acting in the best interests of democracy and not simply on a journalistic whim: to put it crudely, a fishing trip, or something purely for personal or corporate gain.

In that spirit, this group of amendments would achieve a number of things: to address the current imbalance in the Bill whereby the newspaper’s right to publish overrides a citizen’s right to a private life; to enhance the protections in the Bill for public interest investigative journalism; to implement recommendations in the Leveson report in respect of data protection law; to protect the public from data misuse; and, finally, to provide an incentive for newspapers to sign up to an independent regulator so that the public can have faith that their interests are being safeguarded.

This group of amendments, working together, follows the recommendations of Sir Brian Leveson’s report in respect of data protection legislation, specifically the special purposes exemption and his recommendations to reform the Data Protection Act 1998 in line with public interest. When these recommendations were put to the Government in 2012, their response was to ask us to wait for the right legislation to be debated in Parliament. This is the right Bill.

Amendment 53 removes the existing clause in the Bill that gives the right to free expression precedence over the right to privacy. In Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, argued that removing the clause that elevates free expression above privacy would be incompatible with the GDPR. However, my advisers suggest that article 85 of the GDPR allows for exemptions only where they are necessary to reconcile the protection of personal data with the freedom of expression. There is no special importance for free expression; the rights must be balanced. Our default position must surely be compliance with the GDPR.

Amendments 54 and 56 are designed to ensure that when public interest is being considered for the purpose of the journalistic exemption, the codes assist journalists whether or not their publication is governed by one of the designated codes. The present wording would mean that, for example, a Guardian journalist—whose publication is not governed by any of the codes mentioned—would not have to consider any of them. Changing two of the words in the Bill—“must” to “may” and “relevant” to “appropriate”—provides more flexibility.

I move on to Amendments 59 and 64. Leveson said that, to protect investigative journalism and sources, all publishers should continue to enjoy several important exemptions. However, after hearing evidence from lawyers, newspapers and victims, Lord Justice Leveson concluded that a number of exemptions in the 1998 Act were superfluous to the purposes of investigative journalism and should be removed to protect the public from abuse, and could be done so at no risk whatever to genuine public interest journalism. These amendments offer a compromise.

Where Leveson recommended that certain exemptions be entirely removed—recommendation 49(a) to (f)—my amendments would retain them for newspapers that have demonstrated their commitment to accountability by joining an independent press self-regulator. Furthermore, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Black, in Committee, I have tried to reflect his wishes by including some new exemptions in Amendments 60, 62 and 63 for such newspapers. Belonging to a self-regulator that has been recognised under the Leveson system is the mark of a publication that understands the need for independent, effective and transparent accountability. Such publishers should be entitled to the full list of exemptions, because the public can have faith in their commitment to public interest journalism.

However, neither we nor the public can have faith in publishers that continue to insist on marking their own homework. These amendments would allow those publishers to keep the exemptions necessary for genuine investigative journalism in the public interest and to protect their sources. But they would lose access to those exemptions that Leveson deemed to be superfluous and open to abuse.

Publishers committed to genuine investigative journalism have nothing to fear from these amendments. If they wish to enjoy access to the longer list, they need only join a recognised independent self-regulator or bring their own self-regulator up to the minimum standards of effective, independent scrutiny and redress that the public have a right to demand. I will not go through each of the exemptions to which publishers would lose access should they reject independent regulation as it would detain your Lordships’ House for too long—they are listed in the amendment itself. Moreover, they are listed in the Leveson report, and cover such basic requirements as for data to be kept accurately.

Amendment 217 would ensure that these provisions would be passed into law on Royal Assent, so that the Government could not use the same tactics of executive non-commencement as they have done previously, going back on commitments on press reform.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, in speaking to Amendments 59 and 64 I remind the House of the declaration of interests that I made on the previous group of amendments.

It will not surprise noble Lords or the noble Baroness that I am wholly opposed to these amendments, which are pernicious in their effect. This is because they fly in the face of the GDPR, which under article 85, as I understand it, mandates us to ensure that there are exemptions for journalistic activities. The amendments set their face against a successful domestic legal regime established by the 1998 Act which, thanks to the work of Gareth Williams and his colleagues on the Labour Front Bench at the time, has worked so effectively for two decades to balance rights to privacy and free expression. They single out legitimate journalism for special punishment in breach of the Human Rights Act. Above all they are simply a crude form of bullying—that is the best word I can use—to force the press into a state-sponsored system of regulation.

It is not only the national press that would be affected by the noble Baroness’s amendments but the whole of the local press, from the Maidenhead Advertiser—a great newspaper—to the Barnsley Chronicle, and many thousands of magazines such as Reader’s Digest, Country Life and Angling Times. It would also stifle international media, including the Wall Street Journal and Huffington Post. What these many thousands of publications have in common is not that they have been intruding on individual privacy, harassing people or anything of that kind, but simply that they do not want to be part of a system of regulation established by the state and changeable by politicians. They want to be part of a system of self-regulation which has existed in this country for 300 years.

That judgment has not been entered into lightly; it is a matter of deep-seated belief. Even Sir Brian Leveson, whose name has been bandied around a great deal in these debates, expressly acknowledged it as principled. It is also a choice which is entirely lawful. If these amendments were passed they would wholly undermine a fundamental tenet of public law—that it is unlawful to punish someone who has done nothing wrong. Given that the choice of publishers to be part of the Independent Press Standards Organisation and not of Max Mosley’s regulator is both principled and lawful, it is impossible to see how singling them out for special treatment could ever be compatible with the ECHR and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. I do not believe this House would want to put itself in such a position.

Nor should this House—the defender of our democratic values—want to introduce a legal regime which would undermine legitimate investigative journalism, and that is what these amendments would do. As we heard with the last group of amendments, journalistic exemptions are absolutely vital to enable investigation to take place and to develop. The Telegraph’s exposure of MPs’ expenses, for example, would have been impossible without these protections because it relied on handling of data. Is the noble Baroness really saying that she wants to put on the statute book laws that would make it impossible to subject this House to such scrutiny? I do not expect so.

These are contentious issues which arouse great passion, as we saw with the last group of amendments, which is one reason among many why they should not be played out in a highly technical Bill about data protection and one which is rightly constrained both by the terms of the GDPR and the Human Rights Act. The Bill as amended in Committee—building on the successful operation of the 1998 Act and making it fit for purpose in a digital age—is carefully crafted and balances rights to privacy with the equally fundamental right of free expression. It protects both individuals and free speech. The House will interfere with that balance, which is the foundation stone of our democracy, at its peril.