A bid to enshrine data protection principles in legislation was defeated in the House of Keys this week.

But Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas insisted this was not because the government was against the principles, but it was the wrong legislation to attach them to.

He said the current Data Protection Bill was ’enabling’ legislation that would allow the Isle of Man to meet changing international obligations. As such, he said, it would be wrong to include the binding principles.

On Tuesday, Lawrie Hooper (LibVannin, Ramsey) attempted to insert a new clause into the bill.

He wanted the bill to include a provision that all any actions enabled by the bill should be subject to guiding principles that personal data must be:

Processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner;

Collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and any further processing for archiving purposes in the public interest or for research and statistical purposes must not be incompatible with the initial purpose;

Adequate, relevant and limited to what was necessary for the purpose for which they were processed;

Accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date;

Lept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary;

Processed in a manner that ’ensures appropriate security of the personal data’.

Mr Hooper said: ’The principles deal with the lawful processing of data, making sure the data is collected only for specified purposes, to make sure that data held is adequate and relevant, that it is accurate and up to date and it is held only for as long as necessary and it must be held securely.

’These principles are important when talking about a framework or an enabling bill. Ideally these will be in primary legislation because it will prevent any future government from tampering with them easily.’

He acknowledged that secondary legislation was still subject to Tynwald scrutiny, but added: ’I firmly believe that we get more scrutiny of primary legislation than we do of secondary orders.’

But Mr Thomas said he was against including such a clause in the current bill.

’There is nothing wrong with the principles, it is just they do not mean anything outside their context, and they do not really mean anything outside of the framework in which they will be applied,’ he said.

’The Council of Ministers has [another] Data Protection Bill which is in the legislative programme where these principles can be put into primary law.’

MHKs voted against including the new clause by 16 votes to seven.