Search Results for “adequacy”

On Adequacy after Brexit

I attended the Home Affairs Committee on Europol and the European Arrest Warrant yesterday. Don’t say I don’t know how to have a good time. One of the members, suggested that since we have passed a new Data Protection Law, we will be compliant from Day 1, or Day 0 as we engineers call it. I think not and here’s why. In short, the Government say they’ve implemented the GDPR into British Law, but once we’re a third country, it’s the Commission that has the last word, and they have questions we need to answer. …

Firstly, I don’t think the Commission would act that quickly and they’d need to issue an adequacy decision and there are four questions of substance that the Commission would need to consider.

The European Data Protection Supervisory Board’s predecessor, the Article 29 Working Party and the Commission had outstanding issues with the UK’s implementation of 95 Directive, to the extent that it seems the Commission had started infraction proceedings. (I find it very hard to get explicit data on this, and much of what is available reads like conspiracy theories, but the most vocal campaigner published his views in the Register, here. The author argues that the infraction process proposes to carry forward to the 2018 DPA. ) The author checkpointed his findings in a 2011 blog article, called “European Commission explains why UK’s Data Protection Act is deficient”, he also points to an Out-law Article, “Europe claims UK botched one third of Data Protection Directive” 17 Sep 2007.
The House of Lords Committee on Data Protection found that as a 3rd Country we may be required to meet a higher standard than as a member state. (This is because we will lose the powers granted to member states under Article 23 Restrictions of the GDPR. These powers relate to the exemption of national security organisations and the courts (and others) from some aspects of the GDPR). This is why there is concern with the Investigatory Powers Act, already declared deficient by the UK Courts and the DPA immigration service exception will jeopardise any attempt to obtain an adequacy finding. i.e. a member state might be able to have these laws but a 3rd country may not.
The loss of member state status and privilege means that our intelligence sharing arrangements with the US, a country which still has the death penalty, and operates under a different military legal doctrine may be deemed to be a critical problem in granting adequacy. (We should note that Tom Watson MP, obtained a barrister’s opinion on the legality of sharing intelligence and wrote to the Prime Minister at the time on the legality of this activity; it was taken up by Rights Watch who are pursuing this through the courts.)
Depending on the withdrawal agreement, and it seems that no-one is thinking about this, we may cease to be covered by the US Privacy Shield agreement, and thus will be prohibited from transferring EU citizens personal data to the USA, and they to us. (Actually prohibited is a bit strong, participants in cross border data transfer would need to be covered by model clauses, or binding corporate rules and both of these are under judicial review (Schrems II) and create a barrier to entry because of cost to SMEs).

It should be noted that the ECJ has required the US Safe Harbour agreement to be re-negotiated; its successor allows US corporate self assessment, but also requires EU citizen access to the US Court system. The important thing here is that the Commission consider protections of EU citizens’ personal data, and the establishment of rights against the State’s intelligence, security and police services to be part of an adequacy findings and since the EU is not frightened of a row with the US; it wont be with us. …

Adequacy

I am looking at the GDPR, and considering the issue that post-Brexit, the UK will probably have to seek an “adequacy ruling” to allow IT services trade and trade dependent on cross border IT between the UK & the EU to continue. If we adopt the GDPR as part of the so-called “Great Repeal Bill”, then there should be no problem. In the unlikely event that the fUK-EW legislates for greater data subject privacy then the EU may object because it breaks their single market rules; all jurisdictions must treat entities and citizens of the EU equally, whereas if we were to weaken the privacy provisions then the Commission would deny us an adequacy ruling. Today’s insight is that it works both ways. …

On public debt, yields and its affordability

The government and Labour MPs seem fascinated by bond yields. They present the fact that UK yields are high is seen as a short cut to arguing that the Government can’t afford the interest rates on bonds and arguing that the last word on the deficit has to be held by the markets.

This article looks at what the ‘yield’ actually is, argues it is the outcome of policy decisions, that rising yields have no effect or at least very little effect on public finances. It also argues that quantitative tightening makes the affordability of the deficit worse and that alternative debt management operations would ease the situation. It also suggests that the credit default swap price is a better indicator of the market assessment of the viability of public finances. …

A breeze in Downing Street

Are we moving closer to joining the EU? It's been quite an eventful month, culminating in Wes Streeting’s call for the UK to join the EU’s Customs Union. This article looks at the current state of thinking of HMG on negotiations with the EU, comments on the velocity and direction of travel, contrasting the red lines vs the numerous programme adoptions, recent polling evidence that a majority of people in the UK now want to rejoin, the House of Commons vote on rejoining the customs union, and the announcement of the UK’s rejoining Erasmus+, the EU’s student exchange scheme. It concludes looking at a Guardian EB piece questioning if British Politics is fit to survive the current challenges and the Labour Party’s abysmal response. The full article, is overleaf, use the "Read More" to see it ...

Ralph Miliband on Labour’s last year in opposition

But that was in 1963, sixty years ago. Due to some personal reappraisals of my politics, I have been looking at the writing of Ralph Miliband and was pointed at an article he wrote in the run up to the 1964 election, called “If Labour wins”, republished in the New Left Review. I found it worth reading to observe the parallels between then and now. Wilson’s Labour were leading in the polls, the Tories had suffered the setbacks of Suez, and the Profumo affair and replaced a popular and powerful leader with a patrician land owner who was not even an MP arguable a stalemate choice between the then two leading Tory candidates.

This article contains a number of quotes from the article, as they speak for themselves, although of course I can’t help but comment. I have collected the quotes and comments into pieces on culture and comedy, economics, foreign affairs, corruption, campaigning and hope and the Labour left. … …

GMB23: defending a new deal for workers

Congress Composite C11 concerned Labour’s “A new deal for working people”. Hours before, Starmer had promised that this would be legislated for in the first 100 days. The motion, or the part of it that comes from London Region was designed to make it clear that there must be no backtracking and that the weaknesses in the proposals must be remedied. You can find Labour’s Policy statement here., the new deal for workers starts on P18 and cross references the green paper.

In my speech, see below or watch the video, I said,

The best defence against poor working conditions and low wages is a strong union movement, it has been since the Labour Party’s foundation that political and legislative programmes are also needed. There are many wrongs in UK employment protection law, and those members whose cases I help manage are often deeply upset that Britain the home of “fair play” has so few remedies for the poor treatment that they are suffering.

These are good documents but we need to ensure that the promises make it into a manifesto and into Government.

Apart from the failure to promise the repeal of pre-2016 trade union laws, the major disappointment is that the New Deal document promise on the minimum wage is unlikely to increase it. GMB policy is that this must be £15 per hour, we must reiterate this. The document is also sadly silent on statutory sick pay and redundancy compensation. It is necessary to rectify these injustices. The motion was carried, with qualification.

As in my other reports on GMB Congress, I have reproduced the motion, the qualification and the notes for my speech, which are below/overleaf. … …

What does ‘system update required’ say about Labour’s IT?

As part of the ‘drains up’ undertaken after the 2019 General Election, a coalition calling itself Labour Together undertook a review of what went wrong and as part of that review commissioned an organisation called the "common knowledge co-op" to look at Labour’s IT and its management. They produced a report called “System update required”. (original | mirror ) What did it say? I think this is important, but like so many learning opportunities that challenge power and the bad behaviour of the powerful it seems to me to be dramatically under-valued.

When I first read it, I was outraged. I hoped to summarise it in a sensationalist fashion to see if I could interest someone who might pick it and make things better. What I have written is not that exciting and I suspect little will change because the Party doesn’t have the knowledge and experience and today is led by people who care more about their control and position within the Party than they do in winning an election and becoming a government. I mean they’d be happy to be in Government but it’s more important to them that they control the Party.

In summary, the report says, portfolio management was unacceptably poor and not accountable to the highest levels of management although they too didn’t have clue. There weren’t enough IT staff and the more numerous IT management layer wasn’t good enough. The report makes no mention of ‘requirements management’, nor of any benefits analysis tools to allow an understanding the effectiveness of the software applications provided. Labour’s voter ID/GOTV software is no longer the best. Local adoption of the IT tools is low, partly because of poor commitment to training, partly due to a high turnover of local activists and partly because the Labour machine didn’t care.

In the rest of the article, overleaf, these failings are explored in more detail. ...

Can ‘boring’ win elections and deliver good policy?

I am provoked by Chris Grey’s article, “Making Brexit Boring”; it’s long and covers a number of dimensions of the consequences of Starmer’s speech on Labour’s new approach to the EU. Much of his Brexit blog I agree with and find informative, but I have a couple of things to say on this article.

He writes,

Yet that answer [i.e. Labour’s differences with the Government] is a disappointing one, and in some key respects an ambiguous one. It could hardly have given less to erstwhile remainers without being indistinguishable from the government’s policy. It offered the bare minimum of an alternative, and no one could call it an inspiring vision for Britain’s future. But it wasn’t altogether empty, and its critics should be careful not to fall into the age-old political trap of ‘making the perfect the enemy of the good’.
Chris Grey – Brexit & Beyond

This I feel summarises what Grey thinks of Labour’s position but I hope I don’t fall into the trap he identifies. He also disagrees with those who describe Starmer’s position as cakeism,

It’s also misguided to suggest, as some claimed following the speech, that Starmer’s proposals are ‘cakeist’ (i.e. calling for the benefits of EU membership without belonging).
Chris Grey – Brexit & Beyond

I had not realised that Peston had described the trade barrier proposals as cakeism and I comment on his article below. I believe that arguing for enhanced business visas, mutual recognition of professional qualifications while rejecting free movement of presumably unqualified labour is ‘cakeist’ , unlikely to be agreed by the EU and fails to recognise the UK economy’s labour shortage crisis. It’s pandering to the racism inherent in the objection to free movement and the only way to put this right is to agree to the EU’s freedom of labour and reverse the hostile environment. Many of those who’ve left the UK have done so because they feel unwelcome due to the racism enabled and encouraged by the referendum result.

While Grey welcomes Starmer’s embrace of a Security deal, both he and Stramer fail to recognise that this will entail agreeing to CJEU supervision/jurisdiction of wide areas of our administration of justice. While I have no problem with this, if he is prepared to have the CJEU rule on civil liberties, what’s the problem with having them adjudicate trade issues. Starmer’s line on security co-operation is thus also arguably ‘cakeist’, although the number of people on top of this seems very limited. Although yesterday, the government published its plans for the Data Reform Bill which ORG describes as gutting the GDPR and if so may jeopardise the UK’s ‘adequacy agreement which was another point in Starmer’s plan to retain regulatory alignment with he EU on data and financial services.

Peston in his article also accuses Starmer of cakeism, albeit before I did. His article focuses on the trade aspects of Starmer’s five point plan, I take the alleviation of trade friction as a given in any policy, although I am less sanguine that easing trade friction between NI and Great Britain will have any benefit in calming the political friction in Northern Ireland and Starmer’s plan focuses on that specific trade flow and not cross-channel trade.

Peston avoids looking at how Labour’s remainers/rejoiners will react to the brutal policy outlined by Starmer and Lammy. As I note elsewhere, the tide is flowing against them. …

Lammy on the EU/FTC

Two days ago, David Lammy, Labour’s Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs made a speech (mirrored) to a seminar hosted by “UK in a changing Europe”, in which he makes a searing attack on Johnson’s Govt, highlighting the myopia of the defence white papers, and the sectarianism of their approach towards Northern Ireland, and towards the EU. He concludes by stating that Brexit is over, we’re out but that a Labour Government will seek to improve the terms of the Trade & Co-operation agreement, albeit without renegotiating the deal, and without rejoining either the customs union or the single market.

Overleaf, the article includes my statement that Brexit is not over, it also talks of Labour's five points and its inherent 'cakeism' on freedom of movement, it notes the cowardice still within the Labour Front bench and it also looks at the security implications of Brexit, I conclude, 'It looks as if the right of the Labour Party have not read this and are still playing triangulation within the Overton window. There is an uber-Remainer vote to win, it’s young, it works and is often not white. The policy goals are insufficient and they are chasing the wrong votes.' I link to a video of the speech. ...

The 7 Principles

When evaluating Data Protection laws and enforcement appetite, one sometimes needs to refer to the 7 principles. These were agreed by the OECD in 1980 and I summarise them below.

Notice, Data subjects should be given notice when their data is being collected.
Purpose, Data should only be used for the purpose stated
Consent, Data should not be disclosed without the data subject’s consent
Security, Collected data should be kept secure from potential abuses
Disclosure, Data subjects should be informed as to who is collecting their data
Access, Data subjects should be allowed to access their data and make corrections to any inaccurate data.
Accountability, Data subjects should have a method available to them to hold data collectors accountable to the above principles.

Europe’s privacy laws are constructed by building legislative infrastructure based on treaties and then the creation of law. This diagram below shows the time line of European infrastructure (above the line) and law (below the line), it was made in a year or so ago and thus does not have the UK’s departure from the EU, nor the assignment of “Adequacy” by the Commission.

While much focus today is on the EU’s GDPR, the principles that underpin it, are more broadly accepted than that law, and in some areas, the GDPR maybe found wanting.

This blog post originally appeared on my LinkedIn blog. …

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