There was, for want of a better word, an 'interesting' juxtaposition of subjects in the House of Lords debates on the Criminal Justice & Immigration Bill last Wednesday.
Just short of 4.45pm the Lib Dem's Baroness Miller introduced amendment 129, the purpose of which - as recommended by the Information Commissioner and others - was to increase the current penalties for unlawfully obtaining data. Perhaps more importantly, amendments 146 (from the Lib Dems) and 148A (from the Conservatives) were coupled with this, both of which aimed at introducing the new offence - again recommended by the Information Commissioner - of "knowingly or recklessly causing the loss of personal data".
Now, as regular readers (if there are any) will now, I've blogged about this a fair few times in the past (e.g. here). I also reckon that, because it increasingly feeds into pretty much every aspect of all of our lives, this is the single most important policy area facing our legislators at the moment. With that in mind, I still hold to the view that, while undoubtedly the new offence is a stop-gap measure (until such time as our 'dear leaders' can get their heads round the imperative for a radical overhaul of the whole area of data privacy and security), it is nevertheless both urgent and essential in the short-term that the new offence appear on the statute book (if only, as it were, pour encourager les autres).
Having got that sales-pitch out of the way, what was the Government's response to these proposals? Well, reading between the lines of Lord Hunt's comments, it looks like they want to kick them into the long grass. Apparently the Government have run into serious difficulty with this particular Bill in that - I paraphrase here - they have to get it passed by mid-May at the latest in order to avert a strike by Prison Officers. As a result a bunch of shabby deals are being negotiated behind closed doors by the respective front benches to try and eliminate potential areas of conflict/controversy that might delay the Bill. One such clause touted for this process - Lord Hunt admitted it openly - are these data protection provisions. As Baroness Miller put it: "We have just debated a clause on self-defence that I heard the noble and learned Lord say is not really necessary and now the Government are considering dropping not that but a clause that the public really believe in." Bluntly this is no way to legislate.
Be that as it may, debate on this substantive and essential issue lasted for about 20-25 minutes. And in fact all the respective front-bench spokesmen (Baroness Miller, Lord Henley and Lord Hunt) opened their remarks with direct/indirect apologies for detaining the House from its next business. What subject was so important that, in their minds, it outweighed data protection and security? Why, the arcana of blasphemy of course!?! Debate on this went on for over two hours and culminated in a vote.
Now I'm sure the Lords are have considerable expertise in this field. And for sure it is a subject that attracts the interest of many of the members. Of course it's entirely up to them to decide what they think is important. So call me a cynical old goat if you will but I can't feeling that, as my title says, this demonstrates a decidedly strange, if not warped, sense of priorities amongst the Lords and Ladies. Surely in the world in which we live 'data privacy/security' versus 'blasphemy' is a no-brainer?
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