Member

On Amendment 63, also from the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, scientific research has a privileged position in the UK GDPR because it is generally considered to be in the public interest. Requiring individual researchers to spend time formally assessing the value of their research may lead to uncertainty and discourage new research, particularly as set out in the way I described earlier. The researchers may not know the route they want to take or the outcome; it is therefore quite difficult to say in beginning that research that it is definitely in the public interest. Conversely, all sorts of things that were carried out for completely different purposes turn out to be in the public interest, so it is not as clear cut as noble Lords have been trying to define.