Leaving the EU: Data Protection

Debate between Darren Jones and Alison Thewliss

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

I declare my interest as set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) for the excellent curry in his constituency. As one of the few vegan MPs, I will happily visit and partake of the curried tofu if there is a vegan option; perhaps it will be better than that served in the Members’ Tea Room, grateful though I am for the option.

I was somewhat confused when I saw this debate on the Order Paper, not least because the Data Protection Bill is in the other place and scheduled to arrive here in due course, as the title was, “Exiting the European Union and Data Protection”. I therefore came with great hope—indeed, hope is the watchword of today—that the debate might be about some updates on how we will seek an agreement on adequacy with the European Union. Given that we are relying on hope and on some form of adequacy agreement—to proceed without an adequacy agreement would be, much like the rest of the Brexit policy, completely incoherent—I hope that the Minister will keep us posted on the progress that is being made towards an agreement, the timelines for doing so and the headway made in conversations about it.

We have a very short period in which to implement complicated and wide-ranging new laws. The Data Protection Bill, as we have heard today, incorporates not just GDPR issues for non-EU areas of competency, but matters of law enforcement and other things that have wide-ranging implications for our country and our laws. Those things must fit around the GDPR, which, as I said in my earlier intervention, will probably become law through a statutory instrument under the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. I restate my ask of the Government that we should have the opportunity to debate that statutory instrument in substance in this House, not least because some of its important provisions require debate to guide businesses in my constituency and across the country on their application. An example concerns the right to human intervention when a decision has been made using profiling and automated processes—things such as algorithms. Many of my hon. Friends and other members of the Select Committee on Science and Technology will be looking at that issue, but some have grave concern about whether, when we bring in machine learning and changing algorithms, it is even possible to deliver the right to human intervention.

The Bill, which already covers many areas of law, is the start of a wider conversation that includes the network and information security directive and—to go to the important question of marketing, which my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) spoke about—the e-privacy regulation. How will those fit together? How will businesses, charities and other organisations, many of which do not have rooms full of lawyers and compliance specialists to help them to implement the law, know how everything fits together?

The Prime Minister and—dare I say?—her most ill-informed Brexiteer MPs seem happy with the idea of a no-deal hard Brexit. Many people can visualise lorries on the border, unable to export British goods to the continent. The same would be true for data. With a hard Brexit, there would be a standstill, and there would be blockages on the border for data. Much as with the goods in those trucks in Dover and in the port of Avonmouth in Bristol North West, that would be a disaster for business, consumers and importantly, as we have heard, for policing and the prevention of criminal activity.

[Alison Thewliss]

The issues that the hon. Gentleman is setting out are crucial to the whole Brexit debate. Would he agree that one of the major inadequacies of the debate until the referendum was that such issues were not debated and that they were not well understood?

[Darren Jones]

I agree with that sentiment. Dare I say it, but very few Government Members are present? Although my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham said this may be an anorak issue, it is in fact crucial to our economy, our new civil liberties and the type of country we want to live in. We should be having such a debate, and I again restate our request that we should do so in this House not only on the Data Protection Bill, but on the GDPR statutory instrument.

I am looking forward to the Data Protection Bill and I am excited about the Committee stage, but I will take this opportunity to address some of the strategic issues that many Members have mentioned: first, the basis of data protection law in the European charter of fundamental rights, on which I will not revisit the arguments already made but will, I hope, add something interesting and new to the debate; secondly, the incoherence between the necessity to mirror EU law and the Government’s illogical policy approach on Brexit; and lastly, the rights and protections of children.

First, as we have heard in this debate, the Government have made it clear that the European charter of fundamental rights will be revoked under the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. The Minister said that the GDPR in effect says the same thing, but article 8 of the charter, which underpins the GDPR, is referenced in article 45 of the GDPR. If the GDPR is referencing out to statutory, fundamental rights and we take that anchor away, we must replace it elsewhere. I will therefore support the amendment to the Bill proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, to ensure that that happens.