Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Falconer of Thoroton and Viscount Hailsham

Report: 3rd sitting Hansard: House of Lords
Wednesday 10th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords, I came intending to support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, asking in effect for Leveson 2, and the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, in effect introducing Section 40 for data protection. The more I have listened to the debate, the more I am absolutely convinced that both those amendments are correct.

I have found it appalling to listen to the smug reassurances of the apologists for the media that everything is now fine as far as data protection is concerned. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, drew our attention to the experience of the Bowles family when their son was killed in an accident. While Leveson 1 was going on—the latest moment at which it was alleged that the media had reformed—they were breaking the Bowles family’s data protection rights, to publish whatever they liked.

I do not know the extent to which the media were tricking or are continuing to trick people into giving out medical records, banking information and private photographs, or taking photographs from sources they should not, or going to the police and getting information from them. I am pretty sure that it is still going on, but I do not know the extent of it. The thing that will reveal the extent of it and the extent to which media owners are involved would be Leveson 2. That is what we as politicians promised at the time. The assertion, made in particular by the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Black, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, that we should just stop now because everything in the garden is rosy flies absolutely in the face of the evidence. We would look like politicians who are continuing to collude with the media.

[Viscount Hailsham]

The point is not that everything is right. We accept that it is not, but the facts are already known. What now needs to happen is that the policy needs to be formulated and brought to Parliament. An inquiry would postpone the day when that could happen.

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I disagree with what the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, says—namely, that the facts are already known—because the apologists are saying that everything is okay now; I do not include him as an apologist because he has a slightly different position. I point to the case of the Bowles family, which indicates that things were not okay when the first Leveson inquiry was going on. The basis on which it has been asserted by the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Black, along with others, that we should not go ahead is because everything is okay. Well, it is not.