Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Lord Rooker and Lord Adonis

Monday 18th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

I was not suggesting that they were his personal expensive lawyers, just expensive lawyers who have chosen to brief him; I know that he could not possibly afford expensive lawyers. When he said that it depends on what happens as time goes on, he put his finger on a very important point. The whole point of no deal, with a separate regime under our ICO, is that we could quite quickly find ourselves diverging, and as we diverge, that will quickly impose burdens over and above those that would apply even if we left the EU with a deal.

I am also not sure it is true to say that there would be no burdens as a result of the regulations even at the outset. I am a lay man in this business, and trying to understand what is going on is very difficult, particularly because there has been no consultation and we do not have the opportunity to assess what people who are expert and directly affected have said. The reason I intervened on the Minister in his opening remarks is that, having been a company director who has had to deal with the implementation of the GDPR, I know that having a representative dealing with data matters inside the EEA is very important. Many companies have offshored a lot of their data-control activities, and the requirement of the GDPR that they must have a representative inside the EEA—which I think is the correct thing to do—is a definite burden. It means that companies not only have to employ additional individuals but have to set up additional offices, in essence, to cope with those flows in many cases, particularly if they are dealing with significant data-handling exercises which are outside the EEA at the moment. This happens all the time with call centres in India; many companies are in this territory.

My understanding of what the Minister said in our earlier exchange is that if we leave with no deal and therefore must set up our own UK data-monitoring regime immediately, there will be a requirement for every company operating outside the EEA—which must, under the GDPR, have a representative inside the EEA—to have a representative in the United Kingdom. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that because if it is true, that is an immediate and potentially significant burden.

The other important point is that people need to understand that these arrangements are reciprocal. One reason why we as a country have such a good services industry is that a lot of companies based in the UK do substantial business in the EEA and beyond. That is great. My assumption, although it is not spelled out in the Explanatory Memorandum, is that in a no-deal scenario, data controllers who are based in the UK but do substantial business in the EEA will be required by the European Union to have representatives in the European Union over and above their data controllers in the UK; these are not currently needed. I would be grateful if the Minister could address that point. This flows logically from the new regime being set up. I would be astonished if that is not the case because I do not think that the European Union would regard having a data controller in the United Kingdom as meeting its standards of data adequacy. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that.

On that point, it is apparent that this immediately imposes a burden, potentially a significant one, on every company that handles data in the European Union or the EEA, as opposed to just in the UK. That represents a substantial proportion of our companies. If we had had an impact assessment, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, suggested, this issue would have been brought out and we would know its effect. If there had been public consultation, we would know, but there has been none—and we have had no impact assessment. To my surprise, the Select Committees of this House that oversee instruments and put them to us have not raised these issues, which seem substantial and should have been raised before these instruments came to this House.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I think my noble friend has not quite got it. I assure him that, as the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, said earlier, Sub-Committee B is in the process of sending a letter to the Treasury complaining about the national policy it laid down on not having impact assessments for these instruments. Every week, we are seeing dozens of instruments with references to both informal consultation and none, but now it has been picked up that there is a national policy not to have impact assessments.

[Lord Adonis]

Is my noble friend saying that the Select Committee did raise these concerns?

[Lord Rooker]

Yes. As I speak, a letter is winging its way from Sub-Committee B to the Treasury. It was agreed at our meeting last week, the committee having discussed it in previous weeks.

[Lord Adonis]

That raises the issue of why that is not in any of the information before your Lordships. I was not aware of that at all. It is not flagged up in any of the documentation. Like other noble Lords, I appreciate hugely the work done by our Select Committees but the committee’s view is not always completely clear to the House when these instruments come before it, unless the committee has issued a formal report. We do not get full value from our Select Committees in the way that their work is presented. For instance, I am surprised that the chairs of these Select Committees do not comment on these instruments based on the committees’ work. I see that one of the chairs is sitting opposite; perhaps he would like to intervene.

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

All I can say at the moment is that the letter to which the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred has not gone quite yet.

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[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I appear to be flushing out an important dispute that is taking place between the chairs of Sub-Committee A and Sub-Committee B.

[Lord Rooker]

You are.

[Lord Adonis]

I have to say that this for me is a black box. Because of my other duties I have not been able to spend time analysing what is going on in Sub-Committees A and B, but this is very important because hundreds of these instruments are coming to us.

I turn to the issue of there being no consultation, which my noble friend Lord Rooker referred to. I have been going on about it for weeks. This has been true of every single no-deal instrument that has come to your Lordships. It is deeply and profoundly unsatisfactory. In my view this ought to have been flagged up for each of these instruments from the beginning and ought to have been a reason for them not to come before the House. How can we possibly conduct the proper business of the nation in terms of changing the law when we do not have any public consultation with any of the sectors that are affected by these instruments? We are dependent on the expensive lawyers of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, even to spell out the most basic features of these regulations—which, first, will not be apparent to those of us who are lay people and, secondly, which those people who are affected have had no opportunity to present except through the agency of expensive lawyers who seek to make a living. Of course, the expensive lawyers referred to by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will now advertise their wares to companies, telling them what the impact of these things is going to be because they did not have a chance to engage with them earlier and make their views known, particularly if they start being adversely affected.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Rooker and Lord Adonis

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 7th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I have been in the Labour Party for 24 years and I have voted against the Whip less often than my noble friend has in recent Divisions on European Union legislation. I do not take any lectures from my noble friend about party loyalty. He said to me earlier that he thought I was sitting in the wrong place in the House because I supported Labour Party policy. My noble friend appears to support an extreme version of the Conservative Party’s policy, which is for a nominated House in perpetuity. Maybe he would wish to cross the Floor. Let us keep this debate in proportion. We are talking about very specific amendments—I am drawing my remarks to a conclusion—to very minor legislation, but which would have a very major impact: it would entrench in perpetuity a nominated House, whereas the right reform is not to tinker with second-order issues of this kind but to engage in a proper democratic reform of the House of Lords, which happens to be the policy of the party which my noble friend Lord Grocott and I support.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

If my noble friend will allow me, what it would entrench in perpetuity is the sovereignty and superiority of the elected House of Commons, because that will get undermined the minute this place starts getting elected. It is as simple as that.

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[Lord Adonis]

I completely respect my noble friend’s point of view but it is not the policy of the Labour Party.

[Lord Rooker]

I do not care about that.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Rooker may not care and my noble friend Lord Grocott may say that he has complete licence to disagree with the party’s policy. I respect that but it is not the policy of the party, which is for a democratically elected House. Anything else is a departure from that policy. I respect it but it cannot claim any moral or political virtue at all.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Rooker and Lord Adonis

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, since this is my noble friend’s last speech in Committee on the Bill and as we are so distressed at the thought of not getting his further advice on our procedures, has he detected any advantage whatever, on any substantial issue relating to food protection or standards, from us leaving the European Union?

[Lord Rooker]

The short answer to that is no. I will give the evidence as my final point. In 2013, the coalition Government set up the balance of competences review of 32 areas of government. At the time I chaired the Food Standards Agency, a non-ministerial department, so I was part of the coalition in a way. It was a bit of shock when I turned up to a Cabinet sub-committee one day. There was a separate review on animal health and food safety. We consulted and did a lot of research work. As I said, people thought that the EU does not do much and that they were not very secure. We consulted widely on food standards and safety. The balance of views from the Food Standards Agency and Defra—it was a joint report in the end—was that we were better off being in this system of regulations. I am a Brussels sceptic but I believe that, on balance, UK customers are better protected in terms of food and feed in this system. I have not spent much time on feed, but it is the Achilles heel of all this. But the short answer to my noble friend is no. The balance of competences review, which can be found in the Library, is there for everybody to read. We have been through all this before.

I will finish on this point. What happened to the 32 reports on the balance of competences? They were buried, because they all came out with roughly the same idea: by and large we are better off being in the EU arguing our case than being out. So we never heard any more about them until we had the barmy idea to have a referendum.