My Lords, I am going to get rather used to introducing a smorgasbord of probing amendments and stand part notices throughout most of the groups of amendments as we go through them. Some of them try to find out the meaning of areas in the Bill and others are rather more serious and object to whole clauses.
I am extremely sympathetic to the use of personal data for research purposes, but Clause 2, which deals with research, is rather deceptive in many ways. That is because “scientific research” and “scientific research purposes” will now be defined to mean
“any research that can reasonably be described as scientific, whether publicly or privately funded and whether carried out as a commercial or non-commercial activity”.
The rub lies in the words “commercial or non-commercial activity”. A loosening of requirements on purpose limitation will assist commercial and non-commercial organisations in research and reusing personal data obtained from third parties but will do nothing to increase protection for individual data subjects in these circumstances. That is the real Pandora’s box that we are opening as regards commercial activity. It opens the door to Meta to use our personal data for its own purposes under the guise of research. That seems very much to be a backward step. That is why I tabled Amendment 6, which would require the public interest to apply to all uses under this clause, not just public health uses.
Then there is the question of consent under Clause 3. How is the lawful and moral right of patients, constituents or data subjects to dissent from medical research, for instance, enshrined in this clause? We have seen enough issues relating to health data, opt-outs and so on to begin to destroy public trust, if we are not careful. We have to be extremely advertent to the fact that the communications have to be right; there has to be the opportunity to opt out.
In these circumstances, Amendment 7 would provide that a data subject has been given the opportunity to express dissent or an objection and has not so expressed it. That is then repeated in Clause 26. Again, we are back to public trust: we are not going to gain it. I am very much a glass-half-full person as far as new technology, AI and the opportunities for the use of patient data in the health service are concerned. I am an enthusiast for that, but it has to be done in the right circumstances.
6.30 pm
We come to Clause 6. The Explanatory Notes say:
“Subsection (3) clarifies that meeting a condition under Article 8A for further processing does not permit controllers to continue relying on the same lawful basis under Article 6(1) that they relied on for their original purpose if that basis is no longer valid for the new purpose”.
“Clarifies” is a bit of a weasel word. Is the Minister going to tell me that everything is absolutely fine and all we have done is import the recital into the Bill? That tells me again that we could have done it through guidance and there was absolutely no need to have legislation.
You have to read the runes with this Bill. We will be saying to the Minister all the time, as we go through almost every single clause, “Really? Is that the position?” He will be horrified to hear this, but his words will be pored over by legions of data protection lawyers as we go through. I assure him that he will have bags of correspondence to contend with due to the technicalities of this Bill; I do not think that they are like any other Bill I have ever had to deal with, partly because the nature of the amendments being made in the Bill to the original Act and to the GDPR make it so complicated. I have followed and responded to the consultation, so I am not ignorant about what the Government have ostensibly said about the changes they want to make, but I really would like to know what the Minister thinks the purpose of Clause 6 is and whether it is simply a clarification or a body of new law in these circumstances.
I know that this is a bit like the prosecution: the Minister will protest his innocence throughout the passage of the Bill, with “Not me, guv” or something to that effect. I look forward to his reply, but I think we will really have to dig under the surface as we go through. I very much hope that the Minister can clarify whether this is new. I certainly believe that the addition of commercial purposes is potentially extremely dangerous, needs to be qualified and is novel. I beg to move.