My Lords, I shall speak briefly about the Government’s motives in tabling this group of amendments. There are 27 amendments in the group, but fear not: I shall avoid the temptation to talk through them all, instead focusing on only a few which may be of interest. Also, noble Lords received letters from my noble friend on 20 October and 14 November addressing the issues in the amendments.
I start with Amendments 163, 164 and 168. Clause 139 provides a criminal offence of failure to comply with an information notice. This is a hangover from the 1998 Act but, on reflection, the Government consider that it is no longer required, as the Information Commissioner will now have access to a much broader range of administrative penalties. Removing the criminal offence would also align the maximum penalty with that for failure to comply with an enforcement notice, ensuring that the commissioner is not disincentivised from serving an enforcement notice if she considers that that is the most appropriate course of action.
Amendments 165, 166 and 167 amend Schedule 16. Where the commissioner intends to give an administrative penalty, she must give a notice of intent, to which the data controller may make representations. The commissioner has six months from the point at which the notice of intent is given to issue a penalty notice. In some complex cases, the data controller may need
more than six months to make their initial representations, or there may be a continuing technical dialogue between the parties. These amendments allow—but, importantly, do not compel—the commissioner and the controller to mutually agree to extend the six-month deadline to allow the process to reach its natural conclusion.
Finally among the many amendments in this group, Amendment 188A provides a list of consequential amendments. I mention it here for two reasons. First, as noble Lords will have noticed, it is a long list: references to the Data Protection Act appear in more than 50 other pieces of primary legislation. Secondly—this is a response to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on a previous day in Committee—it is testament to the importance that the Government attach to having a regime that is fully operational in time for 25 May 2018. Such a tight turnaround means that there is no time to take through secondary legislation after Royal Assent, which is the Government’s usual approach to consequential amendments. Instead, we must put everything that we need for 25 May in the Bill. Amendment 188A is another step towards that goal.
On that note, my Lords, I beg to move.
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