UK Information Commissioner says Conservative Party collected data on ethnicity of 10m voters 'illegally'

THE Information Commissioner in the UK has said that the ruling party in the country has collected data on the ethnic backgrounds of 10 million voters before the 2019 general election and later deleted it 'voluntarily'.

Elizabeth Denham told a digital, culture, media and sport select committee meeting  on Tuesday(26) that the Conservative Party's collection of data on voters’ ethnic origin, religion and country of birth had 'no legal basis', reported The Guardian. 

“We made the recommendation that they destroy the data because they didn’t have a legal basis to collect it. It was illegal to collect the ethnicity data," Denham said under sustained questioning from the SNP MP John Nicolson.

The breach was first highlighted in November in a report by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), assessing political parties’ compliance with data protection laws.

It reported that the Conservatives had purchased so-called estimated onomastic data – which attempts to identify individuals’ ethnic origin, religion, country of birth and other characteristics, based on their first and last names – and appended it to the records of 10 million people.

In 2016, Zac Goldsmith’s Conservative party campaign for London mayor was accused of trying to exploit anti-Muslim sentiment among Hindu, Sikh and Tamil voters as he competed for votes with Labour’s Sadiq Khan, which Goldsmith denied.

According to the report, no political party has been served an enforcement notice for its use of data, despite the ICO identifying a number of breaches by parties in its November report.

Denham claimed that enforcement had not been necessary after parties voluntary complied with her recommendations.

However, her comments contradicted a statement made in parliament by data minister John Whittingdale in December. According to him, the information commissioner examined the practices of all political parties but did not find any breaches of the law had occurred.

Jim Killock, the executive director of Open Rights Group, called for more clarity on the ICO’s role regarding political data collection.

“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," a Conservative Party spokesperson told The Guardian.