Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Damian Collins
Main Page: Damian Collins (Conservative - Folkestone and Hythe)Department Debates - View all Damian Collins's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Margot James
The hon. Gentleman will be reassured to know that had that breach occurred since the Data Protection Act was put into law, the Information Commissioner’s Office would have had substantially increased additional powers to take measures to address it. The Government are investing almost £2 billion in cyber-security, and the National Cyber Security Centre is there to help individuals, Members of Parliament and businesses.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Documents published last week by the Select Committee show that Facebook was offering privileged access to user data to some commercial partners without those users’ knowledge, and was cutting off some other companies’ access to data altogether. Does the Minister feel that this should be a matter of investigation not only for the Information Commissioner but for the competition authorities?
Margot James
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I congratulate him and his Committee on the work that they have done. His exposure of the information that Facebook engineers have reported the mass harvesting of data since 2014 is certainly worthy of continuing investigation.