Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Smith of Finsbury Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 11th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (LD)]

As the Minister knows, I put my name to the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, to which this amendment is a response. I am grateful to the Minister for meeting a group of us to discuss this issue, for bringing forward this amendment, and particularly for the clear way in which she has indicated one of its purposes, which is that when universities are not acting in the public interest in the exercise of their official functions they will be permitted and empowered to rely upon the legitimate-interest condition, which was our original concern. I believe this amendment meets that concern, and I am very grateful.

[Lord Smith of Finsbury (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interest as master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. I give a warm welcome to Amendments 3, 4 and 5, and I am grateful that Ministers have listened to the concerns of universities and colleges and very helpfully addressed them in these amendments. I know I speak also for the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, in this respect.

The two most important issues that have been of concern to universities and colleges have been, first, maintaining good relationships with alumni and the way in which that can lead to successful fundraising for universities and, secondly, the need constantly to improve what we do in outreach work to schools and the widening of participation from the broadest base of potential students to draw them into the best of our universities. In both these respects, relying on legitimate interests, as we do at the moment, is going to be extremely helpful. I very much hope that that is the Government’s understanding of the purpose and effect of the amendments.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I hope to be as brief as the Minister, who I thought was admirably so in introducing the government amendments. However, there are some issues that arise. I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and others who have been so instrumental in persuading the Government on this. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, indicated in various ways, there are ambiguities; the particular way in which the Government have chosen to amend the Bill potentially leaves a gap. I wonder, for instance, whether alumni fundraising for, say, a research institute can never be in the public interest. Is there not a possibility that it might fall outside the exemptions as a result? Perhaps the Minister can give me the correct interpretation. It is very important that this is on the record and that it is very clear what the formulation means. It would have been much more straightforward to have approached the subject directly in the Freedom of Information Act, but that is not the way the Government have chosen to help alumni fundraising in universities. In talking about universities, I should declare an interest as chairman of the council of Queen Mary University as well.

Another question arises. By and large there is nothing particularly controversial in the remainder of the amendments, but I do not quite understand why new Section 76C of the Freedom of Information Act, which was introduced in the original version of the Bill, is now being taken out by Amendment 198. Is it because Clause 127 already provides the necessary duty of confidentiality of information by the commissioner and employees of the Information Commissioner’s Office? The Minister might have given us a bit of explanation about that, which would have been extremely helpful.

Otherwise, many of the other provisions are welcome. Amendments 119, 182 and 197 demonstrate that it would be a good idea to have prompt enactment or implementation of legislation, so that weird and wonderful new clauses such as are introduced by those amendments would be unnecessary.