Elections: Personal Data

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord will know that the Data Protection Bill is at the moment in another place, having passed through your Lordships’ House. That Bill gives extra powers to the Information Commissioner to safeguard the integrity of our democratic process, as he indicated. For example, once the legislation is on the statute book, the maximum fine for an organisation such as Facebook would rise to £1 billion. New criminal offences are being created and the Information Commissioner is being given extra powers. As I said a moment ago, there is a dialogue with the Information Commissioner and if at any point she feels that she needs additional powers, over and above those in the current legislation, we are more than ready to consider them.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, how many desk officers are dealing with this problem?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

Quite a few!