Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps she is taking to help protect employees from (a) tracking surveillance and (b) covert monitoring.

Monitoring of employees by employers must not breach the duty of trust and confidence implied into an employee's contract of employment and must comply with the European Convention of Human Rights, Data Protection legislation and Equality Act 2010. Employers are neither expressly permitted to monitor employees, nor are they prohibited from doing so.

Organisations that process workers’ personal data for the purposes of monitoring their activities or surveillance must comply with the requirements of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (‘UK GDPR’) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (‘DPA’). This means that the data processing must be fair, lawful and transparent.

The UK GDPR and the DPA are administered and enforced independently of the government by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO publishes a range of advice and guidance for organisations on their data protection obligations.

The ICO have been consulting on draft guidance on the data protection considerations which are likely to be relevant if an employer is minded to use tracking or surveillance technologies to monitor the activities of employees. The draft guidance discusses the need for employers to make workers aware of the nature, extent and reasons for the monitoring unless exceptional circumstances mean that covert monitoring is necessary. The draft guidance, entitled Employment practices: monitoring at work can be viewed on the ICO’s website.