Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Anna Soubry Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, I will. My hon. Friend makes a very important point. We are discussing the rules around the disclosure of the names of people who are under investigation before arrest. This is a sensitive area, and we have got to get it right. I want to work with colleagues and others to explore the reporting restriction rules further, and I look forward to meeting him and any others who share those concerns.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way; it is very generous of him. Some years ago, I put forward a private Member’s Bill calling for anyone who was accused to keep their anonymity until they were charged. It is all there—it is effectively good to go. I too would very much like to meet the Secretary of State, because this is the right thing to do. People should not be named before they are even charged, unless a judge orders otherwise.

[Matt Hancock]

I am aware of my right hon. Friend’s proposals, and I look forward to meeting her. Getting the details of this right is incredibly important, and I am happy to take that forward.

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[Edward Miliband]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman’s constitutional knowledge, but I do not give way to him on morality—and this is a question of morality and of promises we made. Remember the furore about all these events? Remember how people looked at us? Remember how all of us—Labour Governments too—were too close to the press, and how we said we would learn lessons? I take my responsibility too. We should have acted earlier. All Governments should take responsibility. To break this promise would be contemptible.

[Anna Soubry]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case, and he is right about morality and the promises made, most importantly, to victims. I am struggling to support him, however, because while those are powerful arguments, I am actually more interested in the outcome. Is there a genuine purpose that can be achieved other than—and it is a strong argument—keeping a promise to victims? It will be a hollow promise if it is nothing more than a talking shop.

[Edward Miliband]

Other people have asked, “Why can’t the police just do it?” That suggests that whenever there is a police inquiry there cannot be a public inquiry. My answer is this: there is no substitute for the breadth of a public inquiry and its ability to see what happened. A lot has emerged even since Leveson 1. At that time, people said the hacking and improper behaviour were just at the News of the World. There have now been revelations at The Sun, allegations about The Sunday Times and a decade of blagging by John Ford—a whole range of allegations that we need to get to the bottom of. Crucially, we need to learn lessons for the future. The useful thing that can come out of this is to prevent there being future victims like the McCanns and the Dowlers. That is why so many victims have written to the Prime Minister, saying it is important to get to the truth—not just for them but to prevent it from ever happening again.

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[Margot James]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his points. I want to reassure the small businesses that he mentions. I sympathise with businesses that are getting conflicting advice, and with those that are approached by firms of consultants who appear to be exaggerating the scale of the task of complying with the legislation. I am afraid that that always happens when there is change; people think that they can exaggerate the impact and the implications of a change and—who knows?—perhaps they will be remunerated for helping businesses to comply.

I also want to reassure my right hon. Friend about the specific case that he mentioned, in which companies were being advised that they needed to delete all the data for which they did not have consent. I want to reassure him that the vast majority of businesses will not have to delete the personal data that they hold. If they have gained the personal data lawfully, there are five, if not six, lawful bases on which they can process that personal data, of which consent is only one. I draw his attention particularly to legitimate interests, which is a lawful basis for processing data. For example, if a small firm has been supplying a much-needed service to people for a number of years, it is in the pursuit of its legitimate interests to communicate with its database of customers or new prospects, and it does not need to have consent. I would advise people not to delete their data without very careful consideration, or without consultation with the ICO website in particular.

[Anna Soubry]

Will the Minister give way?

[Margot James]

I will give way to my right hon. Friend in a second. I want to respond to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on the alleged discrimination involved in our taking steps to protect lawyers, parliamentarians, local councillors and so on but not to protect small businesses. The reason is that small businesses are less affected, in the sense that most of them do not process huge quantities of personal data. They therefore come under the purview of the ICO to a lesser extent, and enforcement is less likely to focus on organisations that do not process highly personal data. Those organisations do not need to appoint a data protection officer. I hope that I have gone some way towards allaying my right hon. Friend’s—

[Margot James]

I will come back to my right hon. Friend in a moment, but I did say that I would give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry).

[Anna Soubry]

I thank my hon. Friend for that information, but it was mainly complete news to me, as I suspect it was to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead too. We have a really serious problem here. I just cannot overestimate the amount of concern among small businesses. Medium-sized businesses with more than 250 employees have the benefit of a team of people, but this is a real crisis for small businesses and I am afraid that the lack of information is truly troubling. There are solutions, and perhaps we should discuss them in a different debate, but as a Government we have an absolute duty to get this right. There are devices available—HMRC sends out tax returns, for example—and there are many opportunities to get this information out there. At the moment, however, there is a lot of disinformation, and as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead says, these businesses are the lifeblood of our economy. They do not know what is happening, and they are worried.

[Margot James]

I sympathise with the points that my right hon. Friend has raised. In fact, we have secured almost £500,000 to launch an information campaign to bolster what the Information Commissioner’s Office is already doing for small businesses. I also draw her attention to the need for this legislation, and to the need for businesses and all of us in public life to respect people’s data rights. The landscape has changed. We now live in a digital world, and there is so much abuse of people’s privacy and data that I must bring her attention back to the need for the Bill. Of course she is right, however, to say that people need to be properly informed, and that is what the ICO is doing and what the Government campaign that we are about to launch will also do.