Leaving the EU: Data Protection

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to follow the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara). He is a near neighbour of mine geographically, although on political issues we seem to be streets apart. I was pleased to hear him say—I assume he was speaking for the SNP as well as for himself—that he wants a deal. We all want a deal—[Interruption.] From the way SNP Members sometimes conduct themselves, we would think they take some perverse delight from the fact that we might not get a deal. We all want a deal, but I must tell him that, frankly, leaving the European Union means leaving the single market and the customs union. We cannot divorce those two things—it is the same thing. That was well rehearsed during the debate that led up to the vote last June.

[Stephen Timms]

Of course Norway is not a member of the European Union, but is a member of the single market.

[Stephen Kerr]

That is the worse-case scenario of being on the receiving end of a flow of regulation with no input or influence over that at all. No, leaving the European Union means leaving the single market and the customs union.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that leaving the single market and the customs union was not on the ballot paper when the British people voted?

[Stephen Kerr]

I do not think that there is much virtue in rerunning the Brexit debate today, when we are discussing data, but I will say that it was well rehearsed, especially by the remain side, that leaving the European Union meant leaving the single market.

I am grateful for the opportunity to make a short contribution to this debate, and I do so from the perspective of having spent the past 30 years of my life in the world of sales. I should declare at the outset that I am a fellow of the Association of Professional Sales, a UK institution with a fast-growing global reputation. Its primary purpose is to raise the standard of sales professionalism, ethical sales conduct, and the overall talent and capability of sales professionals.

I recognise that this debate is about data protection as we leave the European Union, but let me be absolutely crystal clear: I am optimistic about the future of our country outside the European Union. I am not blind to the challenges that lie ahead, but I encourage Opposition Members who have a decided propensity to take a dim view of our future to brighten up. We have a great deal going for us in this country, and rather than cowering at the prospect of a global Britain, we should now embrace the opportunity.

So much of our national sales capability, which will be key to our global success, will hinge on our commitment to embracing new technologies. We in this country are driving the fourth industrial revolution, and I want our country, by which I mean—before my SNP colleagues shout, “Which country?”—the United Kingdom and Scotland—

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

They are separate things.

[Stephen Kerr]

No, they are not separate things. I want our country to be at the forefront of this revolution, because it represents a massive competitive advantage and can be the primary means of unlocking the perplexing conundrum of Britain’s productivity gap.

The fourth industrial revolution is powered by data. It has already been said a number of times in this debate—perhaps it is a cliché—that data is the new oil. Increasingly, data makes the world go around. I am grateful to Guy Lloyd, a fellow of the Association of Professional Sales, for his graphic description of the digital age we live in, which is creating new information exponentially. Incredibly, 90% of data in the world today has been created in the past two years alone. Our current daily output of data is about the equivalent of 10 million Blu-ray discs which, if stacked, would be as high as four Eiffel towers. It does not take a genius to predict that, as the world becomes more connected and individuals become more empowered through technology, the data deluge will only increase.

Digital tools, fuelled by big data, are making it increasingly easy for business organisations to profile the marketplace they operate in, to identify the best potential customers for their business and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their lead generation activities. Using artificial intelligence search engines, businesses trawl company reports, social presence and analyst commentaries to find companies that are likely to have a problem suited to their offering, and then identify who to talk to and how to connect with them based on their prospects’ employee social profiles. Artificial intelligence will also identify problems in the prospect journey through the opportunity pipeline, even predicting possible issues before an initial engagement and suggesting workable solutions. The algorithmic examination of large amounts of data collected across the complex interactions of customers, and employees of customers, supports the design of much-improved customer experience. This is the world we are already living in.

Data protection should be about providing assurance that the data each of us provides to public bodies and private organisations is safe. The foundation principle of data protection must be trust. Each individual citizen must feel that their rights are protected in law, and they should also know that their rights are protected in law. The true focus of any data protection regime must be to provide reassurance to the individual citizen that their personal data is theirs to own, control and share as they choose and that they can make decisions to share their data on an informed basis. Public and private corporations must be accountable for how they use that information, and they must collect it ethically and transparently.

There is no argument from me about the fact that the data protection regime within the European Union is a robust system that has been designed to provide significantly enhanced rights and protections for individual EU citizens. My concern, however, is that data protection can also be a carefully constructed protectionist measure that works to the commercial advantage and convenience of some of the largest multinational companies. So often the voices of lobbyists and corporations drown out the better nature of our policymakers and, more often than not, that is certainly true of the European Union. EU regulations can become so complex and byzantine that new entrants to the field—I am talking from a commercial perspective—from emerging markets are crowded out. I seek assurances from the Minister in that regard.

Some Members will undoubtedly be in favour of protectionist policies, but I believe in free trade. The EU has built a wall from such regulations—a wall that we must be ready occasionally to breach. From my own point of view, the idea of being able to interact with the 3.7 billion humans who are on the internet is not only desirable but vital for the growth of many companies beyond the relatively small numbers within the European Union. We can position Britain at the heart of this global data processing industry. We have a proud history of this—from the Babbage engine to Skyscanner, via the work at Bletchley Park and Manchester 1. In my constituency of Stirling, superb IT companies are already expert in the field of data processing, and CodeBase Stirling, an organisation for supporting emerging companies, many of which will be developing new applications in this field, has recently located there. Students at Stirling University are learning about big data in a master’s programme, and the work carried out there on big data analytics as well as machine learning will bear fruit long into the future.

We in this country have the skills and the knowledge. Members who think that we will sink without the EU have little faith in the spirit of the British entrepreneur. Brexit gives us the opportunity to think globally, and think globally we shall. Rather than the existing adequacy model of the EU, we need to consider partnerships based on shared understanding of privacy rights and a shared goal of ensuring that consumers give informed consent to their data being used. A shared international framework would give surety to companies operating globally that there are common standards to adhere to, at the same time as protecting consumers.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am listening with great interest to the hon. Gentleman’s speech. If he is saying that we should not participate in the adequacy arrangements, is he disagreeing with the Minister’s comments that we should have an arrangement akin to the adequacy requirements?

[Stephen Kerr]

No, I did not actually say we should not participate. I am saying that we should think further afield and establish relationships that involve agreements on a shared understanding of what privacy rights are, and we should ensure that consumers outside the EU, too, give informed consent to their data being used. A shared international framework would give surety to companies operating globally.

Many people of my generation will be disappointed that instead of personal rocket packs we have mobile phones and Twitter, but there is something about our modern life that fills me with hope. We can come closer together as a world community of individuals living together, with more respect for our fellow beings, as we see the barriers of culture, language and custom fall around us. But we need to be prepared for the times in which we live. We owe it to the people of our country and to our companies to keep our regulatory regime up to date as technology changes and emerges. Our laws should be responsive to change and adaptive to the social and economic changes that technology brings about. I believe we can achieve that far more readily in our own Parliament and that we can make the UK a world class data-safe partner.

Privacy and the protection of our data are vital, given the way we live today. We create footsteps and tracks in all aspects of our life, whether through the purchase of a product at an online shop, the presence of our mobile phone accessing a public wi-fi, or the use of a social media platforms. Every aspect of our lives can be and is recorded by companies that use complex algorithms to profit from this information. Let us be honest: this can often lead to greater convenience for us as consumers. The way we surrender our personal data can be considered transactional. We surrender some of our personal freedom to get access to a product or service that we want. This needs to be made clear to people who often access services without knowing the sacrifices that are being made to their privacy. People might think they are getting things for free when in fact they are paying with their valuable personal data. Sometimes this is a good deal but sometimes it is not, and it is for informed consumers to make that choice. Rights enshrined in law should be clear and easy to understand. The use of personal information should be subject to regulation, but not in such a restrictive way as to make it impossible to handle. Informed consent should be our watchword. 

The internet is the best vehicle for economic growth that we have, and with data being produced at a rate of 2.5 billion gigabytes per day, it is not going away. It is also a tremendous opportunity. Our responsibility as lawmakers is to anticipate and follow technological change, and to understand how the technologies and habits that our people form require new protections in law. It is also our responsibility to ensure that the laws that we make are proportionate and do not generate a protectionist climate for our companies, but instead protect our citizens.

I believe that this is another area of public policy where the opportunities presented to us by Brexit are substantial. We can make our laws more responsive; we can break down barriers to trade with consumers around the world; and we can build a proper data protection regime that protects our citizens.