HC Deb 14 January 1993 vol 216 c1042
3. Mr. Cohen

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement about the EC data protection directive.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Peter Lloyd)

The Government are seeking to achieve a directive as close as possible to the 1981 Council of Europe convention on data processing, on which our law is based. We consider that the convention preserves a proper balance between the rights and interests of data users, data subjects and others.

Mr. Cohen

Will the Government not be adopting double standards if later today they say that they support privacy protection from the press for individuals, from royals to plebians, but then spend their time watering it down for computer records? Why are the Government against the inclusion of manual data and data subject consent before records can be passed to others? Why do they expect France and Germany to have lower standards for their privacy protection than they already have?

Mr. Lloyd

We expect the Germans and the French to have the arrangements that they think best. Data users are well protected under the European convention. The fear is that their real interests will not be better looked after under the directive but rather that the data subjects will have extra expense and inconvenience as their banks, building societies and insurance companies will have to write to them more often to get written permission for routine transfers of information which most people want their banks to do automatically.

Mr. Matthew Banks

Does my hon. Friend agree that, contrary to the impression given by the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen), the United Kingdom is in the forefront of data protection? Does he further agree that United Kingdom law is based on the 1981 convention, which has not even been ratified by five of our EC partners?

Mr. Lloyd

That is right. Five of our EC friends have a long way to go. We signed the convention because, after long discussion, we believed that it provided the best protection for the data subjects as well as allowing business to be transacted by electronic means, which is in the interests of everyone, not merely businesses.