Elections: Personal Data

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I begin by endorsing what the noble Lord has just said and deploring any language that incites racial hatred or, indeed, any other form of hatred in this country. He will know that the Information Commissioner is investigating exactly this issue of whether information has been improperly used to seek to influence the outcome of an election or a referendum. I made it clear in response to the noble Lord that we are in active dialogue with the Information Commissioner. We have already accepted some amendments to the Data Protection Bill which is currently in another place. We are prepared to do so again if it is necessary to deal with any inadequacies in the legislation.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that this is a global problem that cannot be resolved on a one-country basis? If the Electoral Commission is to have additional powers, which I am sure it is going to need, how are the Government going to approach the broader issue and try to reach international agreement to tackle this extremely grave issue? There really is a threat to our democracy, I believe.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Of course, we can have our own rules governing how elections are conducted in this country, and any outside organisation would have to comply with the law here. However, to respond to the good point that the noble Lord makes, we are actively engaged with the commission on its public consultation on the back of its recommendation for measures to effectively tackle illegal content online that it published in March this year. We are going to play a full and active part in shaping the ongoing commission work that follows publication of the voluntary guidance. I return to what I said right at the beginning: regardless of what is happening in the rest of the world, we can have a robust electoral system in this country, not least because we have manual counting and, on the whole, manual voting, which are less vulnerable to corruption.