Oral Answers to Questions

John Nicolson Excerpts
Thursday 10th December 2020

(3 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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John Whittingdale Portrait Mr Whittingdale
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The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the GDPR has ensured that we have high standards and, as I say, we are absolutely committed to maintaining them. We have no intention of diverging substantially from GDPR, but obviously we will be looking to see whether there are ways in which we can improve our regime while maintaining those high standards.

John Nicolson Portrait John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP) [V]
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The independent Information Commissioner recently revealed that the Conservative party had racially and religiously profiled 10 million voters at the last election. I was shocked to learn that it did this by buying data that

“identified a person’s…ethnic origin and religion based on their first and last name.”

Can the Minister explain to the House why his party does this?

John Whittingdale Portrait Mr Whittingdale
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As I recall, the Information Commissioner examined the practices of all political parties and made comments against all of them. However, it did not find that any breaches of the law had occurred.