Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Debate between Margot James and Anna Soubry

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his points. I want to reassure the small businesses that he mentions. I sympathise with businesses that are getting conflicting advice, and with those that are approached by firms of consultants who appear to be exaggerating the scale of the task of complying with the legislation. I am afraid that that always happens when there is change; people think that they can exaggerate the impact and the implications of a change and—who knows?—perhaps they will be remunerated for helping businesses to comply.

I also want to reassure my right hon. Friend about the specific case that he mentioned, in which companies were being advised that they needed to delete all the data for which they did not have consent. I want to reassure him that the vast majority of businesses will not have to delete the personal data that they hold. If they have gained the personal data lawfully, there are five, if not six, lawful bases on which they can process that personal data, of which consent is only one. I draw his attention particularly to legitimate interests, which is a lawful basis for processing data. For example, if a small firm has been supplying a much-needed service to people for a number of years, it is in the pursuit of its legitimate interests to communicate with its database of customers or new prospects, and it does not need to have consent. I would advise people not to delete their data without very careful consideration, or without consultation with the ICO website in particular.

[Anna Soubry]

Will the Minister give way?

[Margot James]

I will give way to my right hon. Friend in a second. I want to respond to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on the alleged discrimination involved in our taking steps to protect lawyers, parliamentarians, local councillors and so on but not to protect small businesses. The reason is that small businesses are less affected, in the sense that most of them do not process huge quantities of personal data. They therefore come under the purview of the ICO to a lesser extent, and enforcement is less likely to focus on organisations that do not process highly personal data. Those organisations do not need to appoint a data protection officer. I hope that I have gone some way towards allaying my right hon. Friend’s—

[Margot James]

I will come back to my right hon. Friend in a moment, but I did say that I would give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry).

[Anna Soubry]

I thank my hon. Friend for that information, but it was mainly complete news to me, as I suspect it was to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead too. We have a really serious problem here. I just cannot overestimate the amount of concern among small businesses. Medium-sized businesses with more than 250 employees have the benefit of a team of people, but this is a real crisis for small businesses and I am afraid that the lack of information is truly troubling. There are solutions, and perhaps we should discuss them in a different debate, but as a Government we have an absolute duty to get this right. There are devices available—HMRC sends out tax returns, for example—and there are many opportunities to get this information out there. At the moment, however, there is a lot of disinformation, and as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead says, these businesses are the lifeblood of our economy. They do not know what is happening, and they are worried.

[Margot James]

I sympathise with the points that my right hon. Friend has raised. In fact, we have secured almost £500,000 to launch an information campaign to bolster what the Information Commissioner’s Office is already doing for small businesses. I also draw her attention to the need for this legislation, and to the need for businesses and all of us in public life to respect people’s data rights. The landscape has changed. We now live in a digital world, and there is so much abuse of people’s privacy and data that I must bring her attention back to the need for the Bill. Of course she is right, however, to say that people need to be properly informed, and that is what the ICO is doing and what the Government campaign that we are about to launch will also do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Margot James and Anna Soubry

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

The simple answer is absolutely yes. My hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) has also raised this matter through parliamentary questions and the like. I am more than happy to have that meeting.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

11. What steps he is taking to improve the care of vulnerable older people.

111 Telephone Service

Debate between Margot James and Anna Soubry

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful for that intervention. I know that the university of Sheffield specifically examined the pilot and found that in most pilot areas, there was no impact. However, we also know that NHS England is monitoring the situation, reviewing the data and analysing all the different, complex problems causing pressure on A and E to ensure that we make the improvements that we want.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton—[Interruption.] Well, I am going to make her right hon. for the moment. It will not be put into Hansard, so no one will know; it is just between us. She made an important point about providing for people receiving palliative care, catheter treatment and so on. She said that perhaps they needed a different script. There is much merit in that. Again, I would hope that the commissioning services would put that aspect in the script. She asked specifically about the script. I am reliably informed that it has been written by clinicians at the highest levels, but I also know that there is concern at a senior level about the fact that it takes an average of 20 minutes to go through a prescriptive script.

There is a wider problem here. We live in an age in which it is increasingly difficult to rely on common sense. When somebody rings up and says, “My father is a retired GP. We’ve been here before, and he has all the symptoms of a urinary tract infection,” they should not be asked whether he is still breathing. A large dose of common sense would mean that that question would not be asked, nor would “Is he bleeding?” and so forth. That is the stuff of nonsense.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I apologise for not being here at the beginning of this excellent debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) on securing it. I have been in regular correspondence with the 111 service in the west midlands region, and with the other related services. I am satisfied that some of the teething problems will be resolved, but my local hospital asked me to raise one question with the Minister. Will she look into the treatment algorithms used by 111? There is a belief in the hospital that they are more likely to result in a referral to A and E than those used by the previous service.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful for that intervention, because I have heard that anecdotally as well. It is an important question. I cannot give my hon. Friend a full answer, but I will do all that I can to provide it in a letter if she will allow me. That concern has been raised with me on a constituency basis.

As I said from the outset, 111, which is a good service in theory and should be of considerable benefit to health professionals and, most importantly, to patients and all others concerned in the national health service, has not gone as smoothly as we had hoped. That is conceded, and one should not make party political points from it. However, the service has improved, it continues to improve and it is being monitored. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton for bringing this matter to the attention of the House, and I apologise to her for any questions that remain unanswered. I will reply to her and will address all the other points raised by hon. Members in this debate.