UK Parliament / Open data

Data Protection Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that very helpful exposition. I shall return the compliment and read his contribution in Hansard with great care. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, if the Bill has already had a befuddling influence on me. It comes from looking along the Labour Benches too much in profile.

With this amendment, I feel somewhat caught between the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and a very hard place. Clearly, he wants flexibility in a public interest test, and I can well understand that. But there are issues to which we shall need to return. The idea of a specific code seems the way forward; the way forward is not by granting overmighty powers to the Government to change the definitions according to the circumstances. I think that that was the phrase that the Minister used—they wish to have that flexibility so that the public interest test could be varied according to circumstances. If there is a power to change, it has to be pretty circumscribed.

Obviously, we will come back to that in a later group. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

785 cc1235-6 

Session

2017-19

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
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