European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Vicky Ford Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

Yes, it will, and, as I was about to say, there will indeed be a Report stage. If my right hon. Friend, or any other Member, feels that our analysis is deficient, or that we have missed out a substantive right that risks being removed if the charter is not retained, once the memorandum has been considered I will be happy to sit down with my right hon. Friend—and any other Members—and discuss the issue again.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

This has been a long and complex legal argument, but let me summarise it. The issue of data protection is vital to many of my constituents, especially young people online, but it is also vital to our tech and financial services sectors. Can my hon. Friend assure me that there will be no risk of a legal challenge in relation to data protection because of the way in which these provisions are being brought into British law?

[Dominic Raab]

I know that my hon. Friend is an expert on these matters because of her time in the European Parliament. I shall be addressing data protection directly, but I shall be happy to give way to her again in due course.

The other argument that has been made about the charter is “If it does nothing wrong or does nothing by itself, where is the harm in keeping it?” However, as was pointed out by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe, the charter applies to member states only when they are acting within the scope of EU law. Indeed, it is a specific device intended to codify—not create—rights, and apply them to EU member states and other EU institutions operating within the framework of EU law. It would be curious, if not perverse, to incorporate that instrument directly in UK law, or implement it, at the very moment when we ceased to have the relevant obligations as a member of the EU.

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[Vicky Ford]

I thank the Minister for his words on the Data Protection Bill, which will give strong data protection in the UK. However, my understanding of general data protection regulation in Europe is that it is based on the fundamental principle that people own their own data, whereas the Data Protection Bill does not, as we have drafted it here, start with that fundamental principle. So we either need to amend that Bill or still recognise that principle in order for them to be equivalent; that is what we need to aim for if we want to achieve equivalence.

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend; she has made her point in a very careful way. I suggest that that is something for the passage of the Data Protection Bill in due course, if she feels there are gaps in it, and if, after having looked at the memorandum we are publishing, she is not persuaded that we will be reflecting in UK law after exit all the rights.

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[Vicky Ford]

I thank the Solicitor General for saying that he is going to look seriously at these points during the Committee stage. The point of bringing EU law into the UK law is to give certainty. Each of those European regulations has strict articles—the letter of the law—and the recitals, which give guidance as to how it is to be interpreted and implemented. Will he assure me that he will seek to ensure that our judges will look at not only the articles, but the recitals—the principles behind it?

[The Solicitor General]

I can assure my hon. Friend that that will be the case. We had a debate about this in a slightly different context earlier in Committee, but I can assure her that all that material is relevant for any court that might have to interpret it.

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[Vicky Ford]

It has been a huge honour to listen to the debate, and to hear so many contributions from so many wise colleagues.

I want to talk about the fundamental right to personal data protection, an issue that I have raised before in the House. It is a very important issue, because we are in the middle of a digital revolution—in the middle of the fourth industrial revolution. The ability to process vast quantities of data is vital to our tech and digital sectors, and is driving the future of medical research. If we want to continue to play a world-leading role, we must continue to be able to exchange data easily with other parts of the world.

In the history of our country privacy has largely been protected, but that has not always been the case in many European countries. Data protection—the right to have one’s personal data protected—is a treasured right. Let me point out to the Solicitor General that data equivalence will be not just a legal but a political issue, and we must therefore leave no one in any doubt that Britain intends to respect personal data.

It is excellent that the Government have agreed to implement the general data protection regulation. It is a highly complex directive, but it was not just agreed in some far-off place in Brussels. The process was led for the Liberals by a British Liberal who sits in the House of Lords and for the Conservatives by a British Conservative who also sits in the House of Lords, and was chaired by a British Labour MEP who is still chairing the relevant committee. So Britain was very much involved in the establishment of the GDPR.

There is a technical difference between the GDPR and the Data Protection Bill. The GDPR makes it clear that its first principle is to protect the right to personal data, and it is important that we too are seen to give that direct protection. It is in the interests of both sides to provide data adequacy. After all, Britain is responsible for more than 10% of world data flows, more than three quarters of which take place between Britain and the rest of Europe. Other European countries need to maintain that data flow, but the field is continually evolving: for instance, the European Commission is looking into ePrivacy law.

The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) seemed to suggest that the Government were somehow not treating data adequacy negotiation seriously—we are—and told us that the Government had said they might want something “akin to” a data adequacy agreement. That is because the current agreement, the EU-US data privacy shield, is not as stable as data adequacy might be as part of a free trade agreement. There are many different ways in which that could be agreed, so let us ensure that we keep all the options open.

I hope I have given an example of an area in which rights are continually evolving—and, in a rapidly changing world, the rights that each of us has will need to evolve continually. Having listened to the debate, I think that we should not cut and paste the charter into British law now, but that we should take the matter seriously. We have been promised today that within the next two weeks—by 5 December—the Government will go through every single one of those rights, will list the parts of British law in which they already exist, and, if there are parts where they do not yet exist, will show us the process whereby they will be introduced. I think that, on that basis, we will create a more stable agreement to protect not just the rights of today but the rights of tomorrow, which is why I will vote against the amendments.

[Mr Leslie]

The debate on new clause 16 and the myriad other amendments has been held in a collegiate atmosphere. We have focused on the specific rights and wrongs of a number of quite technical legal points, but the one thing that stood out for me was the debate on the charter of fundamental rights. I have to tell the Minister that I am not convinced by the Government’s case. We were sold the idea that this would be “copy and paste” legislation, but that turns out not to be so. We were told that there was no need for the charter of fundamental rights, but if that is the case, what is the harm in retaining it? Those rights are incredibly important. They include the rights to privacy, personal data, freedom of expression, education, data privacy and healthcare, as well as the rights of children and elderly people. There are many rights in that charter, and it is important that we keep it within our legislative framework.