§ Mr. CohenTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement concerning508W progress towards agreement on the European Union's data protection directive; which are the areas where the United Kingdom Government still have major concerns; and which parts of the directive he expects to vote against at the meeting of the Council of Ministers in December.
§ Mr. Nicholas BakerThe United Kingdom has made clear that it disagrees both with the principle of a directive on data protection, and with the specific proposals put forward by the Commission—which are in many respects over–prescriptive, unnecessarily burdensome and very costly, especially in relation to manually held data. The Government will decide, in the light of all the relevant considerations, what stance to adopt when the directive comes up for discussion in the Council of Ministers.
§ Mr. CohenTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what plans he has to reverse the United Kingdom's policy towards the derogations entered against the first sentence of paragraph 2.4, the second sentence of paragraph 3.1 and from paragraph 3.3 of Council of Europe recommendation R(85)20; and what assessment he has made of the implications of the(a) European Union's proposals for a data protection directive and (b) decisions of the data protection tribunal for these derogations;
(2) what plans he has to reverse the United Kingdom's policy towards the derogations entered against principles 6.2 and 6.3 and paragraph 2 of Council of Europe recommendation R(91)10; and what assessment he has made of the implications of the (a) European Union's proposals for a data protection directive and (b) decisions of the data protection tribunal for these derogations;
(3) what plans he has to reverse the United Kingdom's policy towards the derogations entered against principals 2.2 and 2.4 of Council of Europe recommendation R(87)15; and what assessment he has made of the implications of the (a) European Union's proposals for a data protection directive and (b) decisions of the data protection tribunal for these derogations;
(4) what plans he has to reverse the United Kingdom's policy towards the derogations entered against the second sub-paragraph of paragraph 1.2, the second sentence of paragraph 3.3 and from paragraph 5 of Council of Europe recommendation R(86)1; and what assessment he has made of the implications of the (a) European Union's proposals for a data protection directive and (b) decisions of the data protection tribunal for these derogations;
(5) what plans he has to reverse the United Kingdom's policy towards the derogation entered against Council of Europe recommendation R(83)10; and what assessment he has made of the implications of the (a) European Union's proposals for a data protection directive and (b) decisions of the data protection tribunal for this derogation;
(6) what plans he has to reverse the United Kingdom's policy towards the derogations entered against paragraphs 3.3, 3.4, 5.16 and 7.1 of Council of Europe recommendation R(90)19; and what assessment he has made of the implications of the (a) European Union's proposals for a data protection directive and (b) decisions of the data protection tribunal for these derogations.
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§ Mr. Nicholas BakerThere are no current plans to amend any of the United Kingdom's derogations in regard to the Council of Europe recommendations mentioned.
It would be premature to consider the implications of the proposed data protection directive for these derogations, until the directive has been adopted. The implications—if any—of the jurisprudence of the data protection tribunal for the derogations remain under consideration.