Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between John Penrose and Kate Osborne

Report stage
Wednesday 29th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osborne]

I thank my hon. Friend for that.

I have been contacted by many people and organisations about issues with the Bill. The British Medical Association and the National AIDS Trust have serious concerns, which I share, about the sharing of healthcare data and the failure to consider the negative impact of losing public trust in how the healthcare system manages data.

The Bill is an opportunity to adapt the UK’s data laws to strengthen accountability and data processing, but it currently fails to do so. It provides multiple Henry VIII powers that will enable future Secretaries of State to avoid parliamentary scrutiny and write their own rules. It undermines the independence of the Information Commissioner’s Office in a way that provides less protection to individuals and gives more power to the Government to restrict and interfere with the role of the commissioner.

The Government’s last-minute amendments to their own Bill, to change the rules on direct marketing in elections and give themselves extensive access to the bank accounts of benefit claimants, risk alienating people even further. I hope the House tells Ministers that it is entirely improper—in fact, it is completely unacceptable—for the Government to make those amendments, which require full parliamentary scrutiny, at this late stage.

We know people already do not trust the Government with NHS health data. The Bill must not erode public trust even more. We have seen concerns about data with GP surgeries and the recent decision to award Palantir the contract for the NHS’s federated data platform. A 2019 YouGov survey showed that only 30% of people trust the Government to use data about them ethically. I imagine that figure is much lower now. How do the Government plan to establish trust with the millions of people on pension credit, state pension, universal credit, child benefit and others whose bank accounts—millions of bank accounts—they will be able to access under the Bill? As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) and others have asked, legislative powers already exist where benefit fraud is suspected, so why is the amendment necessary?

My amendment 11 seeks to ensure that special category data, such as that relating to a person’s health, is adequately protected in workplace settings. As the Bill is currently worded, it could allow employers to share an employee’s personal data within their organisation without a justifiable reason. The health data of all workers will be at risk if the amendment falls. We must ensure that employees’ personal data, including health data, is adequately protected in workplace settings and not shared with individuals who do not need to process it.

The National AIDS Trust is concerned that the Bill’s current wording could mean that people’s HIV status can be shared without their consent in the workplace, using the justification that it is “necessary for administrative purposes”. That could put people living with HIV at risk of harassment and discrimination in the workplace. The sharing of individuals’ HIV status can lead to people living with HIV experiencing further discrimination and increase their risk of harassment or even violence.

I am concerned about the removal of checks on the police processing of an individual’s personal data. We must have such checks. The House has heard of previous incidents involving people living with HIV whose HIV status was shared without their consent by police officers, both internally within their police station and in the wider communities they serve. Ensuring that police officers must justify why they have accessed an individual’s personal data is vital for evidence in cases of police misconduct, including where a person’s HIV status is shared inappropriately by the police or when not relevant to an investigation into criminal activity.

The Bill is not robust enough on the transfer of data internationally. We need to ensure that there is a mandated annual review of the data protection test for each country so that the data protection regime is secure, and that people’s personal data, such as their LGBTQ+ identity or HIV status, will not be shared inappropriately. LGBTQ+ identities are criminalised in many countries, and the transfer of personal data to those countries could put an individual, their partner or their family members at real risk of harm.

I have tabled six amendments, which would clarify what an “administrative purpose” is when organisations process employees’ personal data; retain the duty on police forces to justify why they have accessed an individual’s personal data; ensure that third countries’ data protection tests are reviewed annually; and ensure that the Secretary of State seeks the views of the Information Commissioner when assessing other countries’ suitability for the international transfer of data. I urge all Members to vote for amendment 11, and I urge the Government and the other place to take on board all the points raised in today’s debate and in amendments 12 to 16 in my name.

[John Penrose]

I rise to speak to new clause 2, which, given its low number, everyone will realise I tabled pretty early in the Bill’s passage. It addresses the smart data clauses that sit as a block in the middle of the Bill.

It is wonderful to see the degree of cross-party support for the smart data measures. The shadow Minister’s remarks show that the Labour Front Bench have drunk deeply from the Kool-Aid, in the same way as the rest of us. It is vital that the measures move forward as fast and as safely as possible, because they have huge potential for our economy and our GDP growth. As the Minister rightly said, they seek to build on the undoubted world-leading success of our existing position in open banking.

My new clause is fairly straightforward, and I hope that the Minister will elaborate in his closing remarks on the two further measures that it seeks, which I and a number of other people urged the Secretary of State to take in a letter back in July. To underline the breadth of support for the measures, the letter was signed by the chief data and analytics officer of the NatWest Group, leading figures in the Financial Data and Technology Association, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Ozone API, the director general of the Payments Association, the founder and chief executive of Icebreaker One—who is, incidentally, now also chair of the Smart Data Council—the founder of Open Banking Excellence, and the CEO of the Investing and Saving Alliance. I am making not only a cross-party point, but a point that has widespread support among the very organisations involved in smart data, and particularly the open banking success that we all seek to replicate.

If we are to replicate our success in open banking across other parts of our economy, we need two things to be true. First, we must make sure that all data standards applied in other sectors are interoperable with the data standards that already exist in open banking. The point is that data standards will be different in each sector, because each sector’s data is held in different ways, in different places and by different people, under different foundational legal powers, but they must all converge on a set of standards that means that health data can safely and securely talk to, say, energy data or banking data.

Following on from my earlier intervention, when the Minister was talking about Government new clause 27, if we are to have data standards that allow different bits of data to be exchanged safely and securely, it is essential that we do not end up with siloed standards that do not interoperate and that cannot talk to each other, between the different sectors. Otherwise, we will completely fail to leverage our existing lead in open banking, and we will effectively have to reinvent the wheel from scratch every time we open up a new sector.

I hope that, by the time the Minister responds to the various points raised in this debate, inspiration will have struck and he will be able to confirm that, although we might have different data standards, it is the Government’s intention that those standards will all be interoperable so that we avoid the problem of balkanisation, if I can put it that way. I hope he will be able to provide us with a strong reassurance in that direction.