Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords, one of my many character defects is party loyalty. That has led me in the past even to vote against my own amendment, which I will never do again. Today, I have the misfortune to disagree with my party. I will explain briefly why I cannot possibly support the original amendment, which is constitutionally illiterate, or the attempt to rescue it in the manuscript amendment.

The Minister has rightly put on the front page of the Bill his opinion that the Bill is compatible with the convention rights. Those rights include the right to free speech in Article 10 and the right to respect for privacy in Article 8. The Minister could certify in that way because the Bill rightly carries forward from the previous Act journalists’ rights—for example, to protect their sources—which you can find buried away in Schedule 2(5). The Minister was able to do that because we have the Human Rights Act, which requires him to do so, and the European convention, which strikes a balance between free speech and privacy.

I do not understand what on earth the charter has to do with that. As the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, rightly explained in the better part of his speech—the first part—the charter is there as a shield against the abuse of power by EU institutions. Maybe he did not say that, but he would like to have done, I am sure. It is not intended to be a source of rights in parallel with the European convention. The amendment in its original form, and its amended form, seeks to give legal force to one bit of the charter. It squints. It looks at Article 8 of the charter on privacy and data protection, but it does not look at the other bit of the charter that deals with free speech. Then, because it is obvious that the original version was constitutionally illiterate, the manuscript amendment seeks to repair that by saying that it is subject to the exceptions and derogations in the Bill. That is not good enough because it then seeks to give fundamental importance to the right of data protection, as though it were in the Human Rights Act and the European convention, and then it completely fails to explain how on earth any court is meant to reconcile the amendment, if it became law, or the amended amendment, if that became law, with what we already have in the European convention.

I agree with every word of my noble friend Lord Pannick’s speech, and I agree with the first part of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. I am afraid I cannot possibly support this amendment. I very much hope that it will be a probe and nothing more at this stage. We are at the beginning of Committee stage. We need to think about some of these issues carefully. If we were now to divide the House and vote to incorporate either version, we would be doing an injustice to the arguments and intelligence of the House.

When I first joined the House, I remember Lord Alexander of Weedon saying to me, “Anthony, you must remember that the House of Lords is not a Court of Appeal; it is essentially a jury”. He was right about that. Most noble Lords, including me, will have understood only half of what was said in some of the original speeches. What is surely clear is that we would be failing in our duty today if we were to amend the very beginning of the Bill at this stage, rather than consider it properly and come back to it at Report.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, it is a daunting thing to have to follow such an enjoyable speech. I simply say that, as I read Amendment 4 alongside Amendment 4A, it appears that the original opposition amendment had the unintended consequence that it destroyed all the exemptions already contained in the Bill. So Amendment 4A must be an improvement, but I am unclear precisely what is the purpose of Amendment 4A, because it expressly adds the principle of its being subject to all the general provisions of the Bill, so it adds nothing. I hope that we will not be pressed to a Division.