European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. My understanding is that the shortest period in which a data adequacy agreement has ever been achieved is 12 months, in the case of Japan. Very often, these things take a good deal longer.

By exactly the same token, and precisely because it may be a source of satisfaction to Home Office Ministers, excluding article 8 will constitute an invitation to the European Commission and the European Parliament to find fault with UK data privacy regulation. The cases brought by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden and others would not have succeeded if they had not been able to rely on article 8. Those who look at these matters on behalf of the European Union will have no doubt in their minds, as far as I can see, that that is the case.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent case on a very complicated set of issues. Does he agree that the conclusion we should draw from the points he has made and from the observation I am about to make, which is that this has so far been a very lawyerly discussion, is that this will end up being a highly political decision? Whatever the rights and wrongs as expressed by the lawyers today, we are politicians who face a political set of choices, and we are absolutely offering those who do not have our best interests at heart the opportunity to frustrate us in future. It is a very risky endeavour, and it would be much easier to keep the charter.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is such an invitation, and it is a terrible risk to take. Frankly, I think it is playing fast and loose with a very important part of the UK economy.

Let me finish by quoting the industry body representing this part of the UK economy, techUK, which is very deeply concerned about this issue and supports amendment 151. It makes the point that

“the Government must do all it can to ensure that we are in the best possible position to secure adequacy, and this includes making clear, at every opportunity, that the UK’s data protection framework is equivalent to the one we have operated as an EU Member State.”

Leaving article 8 off the statute book seriously imperils the future achievement of such an adequacy determination. We will of course argue that our arrangements are adequate, but for data exchanges with EU countries, it will not be our call; it will be their call. They will make the decision: the call will be made by officials and politicians in the European Union and by the European Court of Justice. It is running too great a risk for our digital economy—at 10% of GDP, it is proportionately the biggest digital economy anywhere in the G20—and I urge the Committee not to run that risk or to play fast and loose with the UK economy, but to accept amendment 151.