The UK’s Information commissioner says that data was voluntarily deleted amid concerns about ‘weak’ enforcement
The Conservative party has acted illegally when collecting the data on ethnic backgrounds of 10 million British voters before the general election in 2019; the information commissioner has now told a committee of MPs.
Elizabeth Denham, However, insisted that there was no need to issue an official enforcement notice against the Conservative party, as it had voluntarily deleted the data it held following a “recommendation” from within her office.
Answering a series of questions at a digital, culture, media and sport select committee meeting that took place on Tuesday morning, Denham said that the Conservatives’ collection of estimated data on the ethnic origin, religion, and country of birth of voters in the UK had no legal basis.
“We made the recommendation that they destroy the data because they didn’t have a legal basis to collect it,” she said, adding, following sustained questioning coming from the SNP MP John Nicolson: “It was illegal to collect the ethnicity data.”
This comes after More than 30 on-duty police officers are set to be fined £200 each because they broke coronavirus rules while on duty, by having their hair cut. Scotland Yard said it had been informed that 31 officers had their hair trimmed by a professional barber at Bethnal Green police station in east London on Sunday the 17th of January.
The breach had first been highlighted in November in a report by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), assessing the political parties’ compliance with data protection laws. It reported that the Conservative Party had purchased so-called estimated onomastic data, which attempts to identify individuals’ ethnic origin, religion, country of birth, as well as other characteristics, based on their first and last names, and appended it to the records of 10 million British voters.
The executive director of Open Rights Group, Jim Killock, called for more clarity on the ICO’s role regarding political data collection.
He said: “Elizabeth Denham finally confirmed the unlawful nature of this profiling by the Conservative party under pressure from MPs on the DCMS committee. Yet the ICO still has not explained what parties can and can not do. Mass profiling of voters continues, even if this data has been removed. The ICO needs to act to stop unlawful profiling practices. That’s their job.”
Denham’s comments had also seemingly contradicted a statement made in parliament by the data minister, John Whittingdale, last month.
When questioned by Nicolson in a Commons debate on data protection on the 10th of December, Whittingdale said of the ICO’s report: “As I recall, the information commissioner examined the practices of all political parties and made comments against all of them. However, it did not find that any breaches of the law had occurred.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be discussing proposals for a hotel quarantine plan with ministers later, but a decision could potentially not be announced until this Wednesday. Most foreign nationals from high-risk countries are currently already denied UK entry, so the new rules will mainly be affecting any returning UK citizens and residents.
The shadow voter engagement minister, Cat Smith, said:
“The Conservative party’s illegal misuse of ethnic race data – a characteristic protected by law – is deeply concerning.”
“With the government’s discriminatory voter ID laws due to come into law this year, such racial profiling by the party that is in charge of upholding our data protection laws raises serious alarm bells.”
A Conservative party spokesperson said: “The Conservative party complies with all prevailing electoral, data protection and electronic marketing legislation.”
“The party has assisted the Information Commissioner in its review of political parties’ practices and have taken on board the constructive feedback from the review.”
