Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a chairman of a charity and of a not-for-profit organisation, and as a director of some small businesses. Having said that, I agree with every word that my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe said.

The Association of Accounting Technicians has said that the notion that the GDPR will lead to a €2.3 billion cost saving for the European Union is absurd. I agree. The Federation of Small Businesses has said how a sole trader might have to pay £1,500 for the work needed, and someone with 25 employees might have to pay £20,000. In the Second Reading debate my noble friend Lord Marlesford talked about his parish council rather poignantly. It might be impossible to exempt organisations such as those from European Union regulations. But if that is so, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will say, first, why it is impossible; and, secondly, what we can do to get round and to ameliorate the various different issues raised.

On the duty to advise Parliament of the consequences of the Bill, I said at Second Reading that the regulator cannot issue guidance until the European Data Protection Board issues its guidance. That may not be until spring next year. This leaves businesses, charities and parish councils very little time, first, to make representations to Parliament; secondly, to bring in new procedures; and thirdly, to train the staff they will need. In that short time, organisations will all be competing for very skilled staff. That must push the price of those skilled staff up at a time when these small businesses will find it very difficult to pay.

I look forward with interest to hearing what my noble friend says, and I hope that he will be able to agree to the meeting that my noble friend asked for.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the editor of the Good Schools Guide. We have three employees and we certainly should come under this Act in terms of the data on people and schools that we have in our charge. It is very difficult to find any measure that describes the importance of data that a business holds other than, “How important is the data that you hold?”. Therefore, I look to my noble friend to explain how the Information Commissioner will not take sledgehammers to crack nuts and how they will genuinely look at how important the data you have under your control is and, given that, what efforts you ought to have made. That seems the right criterion to get a system that operates in a human way, where there is a wide element of giving people time to get up to speed and being human in the way you approach people, rather than immediately reaching for the fine.

However, this is important. This is our data. Just because I am dealing with someone small, I do not want them to be free from this. I want to be secure in the thought that if I am dealing with a small company my data is just as safe as if I had been dealing with someone big. I want to encourage small businesses to grow and to be able to reassure their customers that they are every bit as good. They would have terrible trouble having contracts with the NHS and others if they are not up to speed on this.

I do not think that is the way, but I do think we have to understand that this will be very difficult for small businesses. We have to look at how we might construct a set of resources that small businesses can use not only to get up to speed but to stay up to speed, because this is a constant issue. I draw your Lordships’ attention again to what is going on in Plymouth, where both universities, the FE colleges, the schools and the local authority, and a lot of the big businesses, have got together to construct apprenticeships in cybersecurity tailored to small businesses. Expert cybersecurity advice has been made available to small businesses in small chunks, while young people are trained in how to take the right path in cybersecurity rather than wandering off to the point where they get arrested if they visit the United States. There is scope for extending that in areas such as social marketing but also in data protection, where expertise tends to be concentrated in large organisations and a structure is needed that enables small businesses to have ready access to it. We could greatly enhance the employment prospects of a lot of young people, and improve life for our small businesses, if we talked to BEIS and the DfE about tweaking the requirements for apprenticeships to make it rather easier to run them in small businesses.

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[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I suspect that if you scratched half the Members of this House, they would have to declare an interest. I will just add a bit of non-Oxford variety as chair of the council of Queen Mary University of London. I express Front Bench support for my noble friend’s amendment and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall.

There is no doubt about the interaction of article 6 and the unfortunate inclusion of universities in the Freedom of Information Act definition, and there is no reason that I can see—we have heard about the alumni issues and the importance of fundraising to universities—why universities should not be put on all fours with charities, which can take advantage of the exemption in article 6. I very much hope that the Minister, who was nodding vigorously throughout most of the speeches, is prepared to state that he will come forward with an amendment, or accept this one, which would be gratefully received.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, perhaps I may say a word on behalf of the victims. I very much hope that we will be given the right to ask the college to cross our name off.

I very much enjoyed my time at Oxford. It took Oxford 37 years to cotton on to the idea that, having spent three years doing physics there, perhaps I was interested in physics and it might offer me something in continued involvement other than students being pestered into asking me for money twice a year. That is not a relationship; that is not a community; that is a one-way suck. It is a Dyson vacuum cleaner designed to hoover money in on the basis of creating some sort of obligation. It was a contract 40 years ago, for goodness’ sake: create something now or keep something going.

Fundamentally, I have very little sympathy with the idea—

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

The noble Lord could not have gone to the colleges that we all represent.

[Lord Lucas]

I am absolutely content that universities should be put on a par with charities, because I know that we will be looking after the interests of those whom charities approach just as much as we look after the interests of charities. I hope that is the solution that my noble friend will afford, but it is welcome that there are limitations in the Bill on the random approaches that can be made by organisations. To the extent that we allow exemptions, we should not privilege universities in any particular way. Yes, they are often worthy causes, but they are very fond of money.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I have no interests whatever to declare in this debate.

Amendment 10, moved by my noble friend Lady Royall of Blaisdon and signed up to by the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, raises the important issue of legitimate fundraising and alumni relations undertaken by schools, colleges and universities being at risk due to the changes being brought in by GDPR. My noble friend referred to various conditions and mentioned the lawfulness condition, specifically on the issue of consent.

As we have heard, GDPR sets a very high bar in requiring a positive opt in, and it is likely that existing consents will not reach the required standard. So educational institutions would have to take on the enormous task of rebuilding their databases from scratch to meet the condition, as my noble friend referred to.

The public interest condition does not really work, for various reasons. The legitimate-interest condition may provide a route for the justification of data processing for fundraising purposes but, as we have heard in this debate, there are issues here as well. To make that a realistic solution to this unintended consequence of the new regulations—I think we all agree that it is unintended—my noble friend is seeking to put in the Bill a subsection in Clause 6 that, for the purposes of GDPR, would make it clear that schools, colleges and universities are not public bodies.

I note that Clause 6(2) provides the Secretary of State with the power to designate those public bodies that are not regarded as public bodies for GDPR. I am not sure what the general attitude of the Minister is, although he seems to have indicated that he is broadly sympathetic, but if he is going to rely on subsection (2) then he is going to have to do a bit more. As I mentioned previously, when Governments tell us it will all be sorted out in regulations, that is often not the solution and things can take a very long time. I mention the Housing and Planning Act again.

This is not something that educational institutions can wait months or years for; it would cost them considerably in terms of their fundraising plans. I hope the Minister can deliver some positive news to my noble friend, who has raised an important issue. It is fair to say that if she pressed this or a similar amendment to a vote on Report, she would be likely to win the day because it is an issue that many noble Lords are very concerned about.