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11KBW Webinar – Thursday 20 May 2021 – 10:00-11:00

Presented by Anya Proops QC & Rupert Paines Continue reading →

The first major GDPR penalty notice appeal – Ticketmaster UK Ltd v Information Commissioner (EA/2020/0359/FP) – has been stayed by order of the First-tier Tribunal until 28 days after the handing down of judgment in civil litigation brought against Ticketmaster by some 795 Ticketmaster customers: Collins & Others v Ticketmaster UK Ltd (BL-2019-LIV-000007). Continue reading →

The Court of Justice recently gave guidance on the “internal communications” exception in the Environmental Information Directive 2003/4/EC. It gave its views on the principle that exceptions should be interpreted restrictively and the relevance of the Aarhus Convention Implementation Guide (tl;dr – internal is the opposite of external, to be a communication information has to be shared, there is no time limit on the exception, and neither the principle nor the Guide makes any difference to the outcome in the end).

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A potentially interesting judgment was handed down orally this morning by Tipples J, rejecting an application from a former Labour Party official to force the Labour Party to disclose the identity of those it believed leaked an internal report concerning the Party’s approach to antisemitism and the conduct of various officials. The Applicant, Ms Oldknow, whose data was contained in the leaked report, wished to uncover the identities of those individuals in order to bring proceedings against them. Continue reading →

Those who are keen observers of information law (who isn’t?) may be interested to know that the Court of Appeal will be live-streaming the hearing of Ms Newman’s appeal in this case on Thursday 4 March 2021. Proceedings may be observed here.

The Court of Appeal does not live-stream all appeal hearings, but only those in cases that it deems to be high profile and legally significant. This particular case is likely to be of special interest to media lawyers and those interested in the reconciliation of children’s and parents’ rights to (among other things) privacy.

For more background on the case, see our earlier posts on the original High Court decision and on the Court of Appeal’s decision on permission. In the latter decision, the Court of Appeal stated that:

‘The appeal raises a matter of significant public interest, namely the balance as between Article 8 and Article 10 where a responsible journalist seeks access to court papers; this includes consideration of the approach of the court to the Article 8 interests of a young child where a person with parental responsibility wishes to consent to full disclosure of all the court papers on behalf of the child, the subject of the proceedings.’

Anya Proops QC (of 11KBW) acts for the Appellant, Ms Newman, together with Zac Sammour (of 11KBW) and Kate Temple-Mabe (of 7BR). They are instructed by Elizabeth Morley of Howard Kennedy.

Michael White

As had been trailed for a couple of days, on 19 February 2021, the European Commission formally announced that it had launched the procedure for the adoption of two adequacy decisions for transfers of personal data to the United Kingdom, under the GDPR and the Law Enforcement Directive. The draft decisions have been published here. The draft decisions will be considered by the European Data Protection Board, and then a committee of Member State representatives. The European Parliament has plays an active role in scrutinising the Commission’s approach and, of course, any decision adopted can (and doubtless will) be the subject of legal challenge, ultimately before the CJEU. There is some way to go yet, but at this first stage the Commission has accepted the general proposition that as the UK has retained EU data protection law, it provides in principle an adequate level of protection (albeit over 88 and 51 pages respectively). Much food for thought.

Christopher Knight