As he steps away from the full glare of leading the Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak may not be able to bury his head in the sand straight away. He is now facing both political and legal pressure to urgently correct remarks he made in Parliament earlier this year.
Back in January, the Tories posted a link to their website, allowing people to see how an adjustment to National Insurance affected their finances. However, this tool served to illegally scrape data from users, and put ‘unwanted cookies’ on their devices.
Labour MP Dawn Butler challenged Rishi Sunak on this issue, to which he glibly responded; ‘our party follows all laws’. However, an investigation from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) concluded that this website DID violate British data laws.
Last week, Butler wrote to Mr. Sunak, compelling him to take urgent action to correct the Parliamentary record, and accept that his party got it wrong with their hap-hazard security features. She also states she is willing to ‘seek alternative options’ to receive said correction:
“An investigation has now concluded that the Conservatives did indeed violate data protection laws, concerning a now-deleted online tool that was published on the party website. It claimed to allow people to track changes to their National Insurance.”
“Will you now commit to taking urgent steps to correct the Parliamentary record? Otherwise, I reserve my right to seek alternative options to seek that correction. I hope that you agree to lead by example, and take proactive remedial action.” | Dawn Butler
The case has also been picked up by the Good Law Project. Over the weekend, they called the actions of the Conservative Party ‘damaging to democracy’. They have added their voice to the chorus calling for reticence from the former Prime Minister:
“After the former prime minister’s smug denial, we raised this data breach with the regulator. With elections increasingly being fought online, data misuse by political parties damages our democracy.”
“We will continue to call it out wherever we see it. But when politicians mess up at the despatch box, they need to fess up. It’s time for Sunak to come to parliament and come clean.” | Good Law Project
