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Leaving the EU: Data Protection

No, certainly not. I am delighted that my Labour colleagues in the European Parliament have retained their place in the Socialist group and therefore their influence. The problem for Britain has been that, by leaving the EPP, Conservative MEPs have had much less influence. I am not saying that they have not had any influence—that is not at all the point I am making—but they have had a great deal less. Therefore, the British Government have been much less able to get their way in Brussels than previous Conservative and Labour Governments, and that is what inexorably led to the referendum result.

The key foundation stone for data protection regulation in Britain has been article 8 of the European charter of fundamental rights, which states:

“Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.”

The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill—the Minister and I had an exchange about this earlier in the debate—removes the charter of fundamental rights from UK law,

so article 8 will no longer apply. The Select Committee on Exiting the European Union took evidence on that point from lawyers yesterday. Sir Stephen Laws, former first parliamentary counsel, argued that the removal of article 8 was a good thing because nobody can quite know exactly what it really means, so that we end up with judges deciding in appeal cases, which makes the law uncertain. He made a very reasonable case. Far better, he said, for Parliament to decide the detailed law and regulations, so that everyone knows where they stand.

However, Dr Charlotte O’Brien of York Law School pointed out that in practice, judges deciding points of data protection law in Britain often refer explicitly to article 8. A reading of their judgments suggests that article 8 frequently sways the decisions that they reach, so it is likely that its removal will mean that their future judgments will be different from those that they have made up until now. We can have an interesting debate about which arrangement is better, and, as I have said, I think that Sir Stephen Laws made a perfectly good case. Our problem, however, is that we have to achieve a declaration from the European Commission that UK data protection law is adequate. That is crucial for the future of our economy.