Amendment 48 is in my name and the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe. It concerns the law of trusts, and I should mention, as the noble and learned Lord is unlikely to do so, that for many years he was the leading trusts practitioner at the Bar. During his career on the Bench, including in the Appellate Committee of this House, in the Supreme Court and in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, he gave many of the leading judgments that define the modern law of trusts.
I declare a much more modest interest as a practising barrister. I am not a specialist in the law of trusts but, as I explained in Committee, I know that the law has long recognised that a trustee is not obliged to disclose to a beneficiary the trustee’s confidential reasons for exercising or not exercising a discretionary power. The law recognises that if the trustee were to have such a duty of disclosure it would impede the trustee’s ability to perform his or her function, the effective exercise of which depends on confidentiality. The public interest is protected because the court has an inherent jurisdiction to supervise and, where appropriate, to intervene in the administration of trusts.
A recent Court of Appeal judgment, Dawson-Damer v Taylor Wessing, has prompted a concern of trust practitioners about the applicability of data protection law in this context. I have received powerful representations on this subject from the Trust Law Committee, which is a group of leading academics and practising lawyers. One of its concerns is that in other jurisdictions, such as Jersey, the data protection legislation contains express statutory restrictions on the right of a data subject to make a subject access request where that would intrude on the principle of confidentiality. Those who practise in this area are very concerned that offshore trusts, and offshore professionals providing trust services, are already actively encouraging the transfer of trusts business away from this jurisdiction because of data protection concerns. The irony in this is that data protection law may be driving trust business towards less transparent offshore jurisdictions.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Walker, and I, accompanied by other trusts lawyers, had the benefit of a very helpful meeting with the Minister—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen—and members of the Bill team. I am extremely grateful to them for the very constructive discussions we had. I very much hope that the Minister, when he replies to this short debate—I hope it will be short—will be able to confirm three matters.
The first is that the Government understand and are sympathetic to the concerns raised by the Trust Law Committee, which I have just summarised. The second matter, which I hope the Minister can confirm, is that the Government’s view is that article 15(4) of the GDPR, which states that the right of access,
“shall not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others”,
applies in this context to protect the confidentiality principle. The third matter, to which I hope the Minister will be able to respond, is that if that view is shown to
be erroneous in future litigation—I anticipate the Government do not believe this will be the case, but if it were to occur—I hope the Government would consider using the delegated powers conferred by this Bill to enact a specific and express exemption. I recognise, of course, that the Minister will be unable to commit the Government to any future course of action. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively on those three matters. They would go a long way to alleviating the concerns of trusts lawyers. I beg to move.