Labour bought personal data of 1million mums
LABOUR bought data on a million new and expectant mothers and their children from a parenting publication before last year’s election, it was revealed yesterday.
The Information Commissioner’s Office plans to fine Emma’s Diary £140,000 for the infraction.
Emma’s Diary describes itself as the ‘most widely circulated mother-and-baby publication’, distributing 870,000 copies each year.
Steve Wood, deputy information commissioner, said the ICO had ‘really significant concerns about how Emma’s Diary was gathering the data, particularly involving mothers in hospital’.
In May last year, a month before the general election, the company provided one million records to the data-broking firm Experian, according to the ICO.
Each record gave the mother’s name, address, date of birth of mother and child and how many children under five were present in the home.
Experian loaded this into a database used by Labour for direct marketing in 106 different parliamentary seats. It was deleted after the election. Emma’s Diary works with organisations such as the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Midwives to hand out advice and sign up new and expectant mothers.
In exchange for registering with Emma’s Diary, mothers receive shop vouchers, free gifts and pregnancy tips. There is no suggestion that Experian or Labour breached data protection legislation.
The ICO said the disclosure ‘risked causing distress to some affected data subjects’ and that any of the mothers could ‘ reasonably infer that the Labour Party was sub- jecting her to a degree of profiling for political ends and without her knowledge’.
The commission said it was likely affected individuals would be distressed that their children’s personal data had been used in an election campaign without their consent.
The commission noted that this was the first time Emma’s Diary had shared data with a political party and its reputation would be tarnished by the revelations.
A Labour spokesman said: ‘We have neither bought nor used Emma’s Diary data since the 2017 general election and will be reviewing our approach to acquiring data from third parties.’
Lifecycle Marketing, the trading name of Emma’s Diary, said: ‘ We have always sought to fully comply with our data protection obligations. We are deeply disappointed by the ICO’s decision to publish a report including details of enforcement action intended to be taken against Lifecycle Marketing.
‘We look forward to working with the ICO on its ongoing investigation and will be submitting our written representations to challenge the ICO’s findings in accordance with the usual process.’
The ICO said it would not normally reveal plans to impose a fine before completing the relevant inquiries but in this case it believed that there was an ‘overriding public interest to do so’.
‘Risked causing distress’