Harrogate Borough Council leader, Richard Cooper, has sent a letter to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) asking for the local Lib Dems’ petitions to be investigated for “data harvesting”.
Cllr Cooper says none of the four petitions were submitted to relevant bodies and were instead an exercise to build a database of contact information. The Liberal Democrats say the accusations are false and a cynical ploy to put people off signing petitions.
In the letter Mr Cooper says he believes the party “may have breached at least three tenets of data protection”.
The ICO was set up to uphold an individual’s data privacy. The ICO told the Stray Ferret it is yet to receive the letter but a spokesperson added:
“When we receive the letter we will assess the information provided and decide whether we need to make further enquiries.”
Cllr Cooper criticised the Lib Dems in the letter saying the purposes of the petitions put forward were not fulfilled:
“My contention is that these petitions breach data protections rules because there is a pattern of behaviour which demonstrates that people’s details were collected for a purpose and then not used for that purpose.”
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The Liberal Democrats have called his accusations “ridiculous and laughable”.
The party says three of the petitions were not submitted but insists the Stray FM petition was sent to Bauer Media.
The campaign manager for the Harrogate and Knaresborough Liberal Democrats, Conor McKenzie, said:
“Let’s set the record straight though. The Stray FM petition was submitted, while other petitions achieved a u-turn before we even had chance to submit them.
“No data has been collected improperly as only those who explicitly told us they would like to will hear from us in future. To falsely suggest otherwise is a blatant attempt to put people off signing any group’s petitions in future. Doing so would be hugely damaging to community engagement and council scrutiny.”
