Liz Truss is struggling to come to terms with being ousted from her uber-safe seat in South West Norfolk, with her successor claiming that she is refusing to hand over casework due to ‘data protection laws’.
The ex-PM took the Portillo moment of the 2024 UK General Election after she was defeated in East Anglia by Terry Jeremy in a humiliating blow to her already beleaguered political career.
Speaking to Byline Times, Jeremy said he has been unable to get a full handover from Truss on casework, as is convention. Instead, Truss is citing ‘data protection laws’ as means to keep important cases to herself.
“Nothing has been handed over to me. I have had residents forward previous emails independently, but that’s them being diligent. There’s been nothing from Truss’s team,” he said.
“So [her team] has either completed everything, which I don’t believe, or they’ve just closed all the cases. They might well have been doing stuff in the immediate aftermath of the election. But you’d have expected them to hand it over by now,” the Norfolk MP added.
Speaking on PoliticsHome‘s podcast this week, Jermy added: “I’ve not had any [handover]. I’ve had two press releases issued by the Liz Truss team having a go at me since the election.”
“The fact that I’m intending to hold surgeries, some residents find that shocking, because we’ve not had it,” he added.
But it was Liz Truss’ team’s response to the claims in Politico which intrigues the most.
A spokesperson for former South West Norfolk MP Truss told the online outlet on Friday: “Liz is diligently completing outstanding casework. Of course, due to data protection laws she cannot simply hand over constituents’ confidential information.”
Several political and data experts have questioned the claim that handing over casework would be a breach of data protection laws. In fact, it may be the exact opposite.
Data protection expert Mark Mossley replied: “I’ve implemented GDPR at several places. The data has been provided to ‘the MP for…’ rather than ‘Liz Truss the person’”.
He claimed that as Truss has now changed roles, she “no longer has any right to access it.”
“In doing so, and refusing to hand it over to the new custodian of the office and therefore the data, she’s committing an offence,” he alleged.
Political scientist Dr Nick Dickinson replied to Byline Times: “I highly doubt she’s still doing case work. But this is deeply irresponsible even if she was.”
Truss has been spending a lot of time in America as the US election campaign heats up.
It has allowed campaign group Led By Donkeys to orchestrate this rather wonderful stunt:
Related: Liz Truss ‘an unusual person’ who lacks emotional intelligence – Kwarteng
