My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Kamall, Lord Davies of Brixton and Lord Bassam, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, for their support for a number of these amendments. Everybody made a common point about public trust, particularly in the context of health data.
As the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, said, we had a lot of conversations during the passage of the Health and Care Act and the noble Lord and his department increasingly got it: proper communication about the use of personal, patient data is absolutely crucial to public trust. We made quite a bit of progress with NHSE and the department starting to build in safeguards and develop the concept of access to, rather than sharing of, personal data. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said about a locked box and I think that having access for research, rather than sharing data around, is a powerful concept.
I found what the Minister said to be helpful. I am afraid that we will have to requisition a lot of wet towels during the passage of the Bill. There are a number of aspects to what he said, but the bottom line is that he is saying that there is no serious divergence from the current definition of personal data. The boot is on the other foot: where is the Brexit dividend? The Minister cannot have it both ways.
I am sure that, as we go through this and the Minister says, “It’s all in recital 26”, my response would be that the ICO could easily develop guidance based on that. That would be splendid; we would not have to go through the agony of contending with this data protection Bill. It raises all those issues and creates a great deal
of angst. There are 26 organisations, maybe more— 42, I think—writing to the Secretary of State about one aspect of it or another. The Government have really created a rod for their own back, when they could have created an awful lot of guidance, included a bit on digital identity in the Bill and done something on cookies. What else is there not to like? As I say, the Government have created a rod for their own back.
As regards pseudonymised data, that is also helpful. We will hold the Minister to that as we go through, if the Minister is saying that that is personal data. I am rather disappointed by the response to Amendment 5, but I will take a very close look at it with several wet towels.
We never know quite whether CJEU judgments will be treated as precedent by this Government or where we are under the REUL Act. I could not tell you at this moment. However, it seems that the Minister is again reassuring us that the CJEU’s judgments on personal data are valid and are treated as being part of UK law for this purpose, which is why there is no change to the definition of personal data as far as he is concerned. All he is doing is importing the recitals into Clause 1. I think I need to read the Minister’s speech pretty carefully if I am going to accept that. In the meantime, we move on. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.