Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Maxton Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

Finally, I turn to recent Amendments 21A and 66A tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Paddick. As we have heard, article 9(1) of the GDPR prohibits the processing of sensitive categories of data, including biometric data which can be used to identify someone, unless the conditions in article 9(2) can be satisfied. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, explained, article 9(4) allows the UK to introduce further conditions with regard to the processing of biometric data. These amendments propose to do that by creating a new part in Schedule 1 dealing with the processing of biometric data to make it clear that biometric data can be processed where it is used as a security feature to access a service that the data subject has chosen to use. As the noble Lord explained, many of us are familiar with the verification devices on mobile phones and computers which allow the user to access the service using fingerprint recognition.

[Lord Maxton (Lab)]

I have fingerprint identification on my mini iPad, but I also have a password. Sometimes the fingerprint will not work, and you have to use the password.