Data Protection Bill [HL]

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, this amendment has a lot of merit. For some time I have been discussing with certain people who know an awful lot about this, as has the noble Lord, the concept of agency: having control over your own information. It is a very important concept because the GDPR and the Bill are all about data processors looking after your stuff for you, but the real issue is having control over things that affect you. Why, if people are using it to make money out of you or on your behalf, should you not sell them that control in return for better access?

There are many issues around this that might suit a modern world in which your data can be useful, but to you, so that data processors do not just mine it and use it for their own purposes—you have control over it. This amendment has a lot of merit because it gives a foundation for us to start researching this. There is no compulsion here, but it could move us down a line whereby the data subject—the person in the street— suddenly gets some control over what happens when people research things for their own good. We are going to have to give away our location and other things to use most of these apps, so why can we not also control that and decide how to sell it to other people and benefit from it ourselves?

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I, too, support the amendment. I raised this issue at Second Reading and pointed to the work of the ethics committee of the IEEE, which has done a lot of work on this. This is not as blue sky as the noble Lord suggested; this is indeed the direction of travel.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I am inspired by the last two speeches to add some words here. This is a very imaginative amendment. There is a great debate about ownership or control of one’s personal data, and this may be an elegant solution to some of that in future, although I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, may be right in his prediction about the Government’s response at this stage. Again, it is a bit of future-proofing that we really should think about.

If the Government do not like this, how do they think portability will work? If portability is to be a substantive right that can be taken advantage of under the GDPR, this is a very good way to make sure that data can then be inserted into a vehicle as a result of it having been sought in a portable way. This could be a very imaginative way to give teeth to the right of portability. I shall be extremely interested to hear how, otherwise, the Government think it will take effect.