The Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal highlighted the need to rush through new data protection laws, the Legislative Council heard last week.

MLCs took the unusual step of pushing the data protection bill through the second reading, clauses and third reading stages at the same sitting, meaning its passage through the upper chamber was completed.

There was already time pressure to get the bill through the branches of Tynwald to meet obligations under the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

Once it becomes law, the bill will enable the government to implement international rules into Manx law by using Tynwald orders.

Attorney General John Quinn said: ’The urgency of this bill is further highlighted against the background of very recent events that have been in the news concerning Cambridge Analytica.

’We have all seen an uninhibited and presumably innocuous sharing of personal data online for social purposes and how that has turned into the inadvertent disclosure of quite staggering amounts of personal information to persons prepared to use it for their own end, regardless of the original purpose for which the information was supplied.’

Political profiling firm Cambridge Analytica stands accused of using data farmed from millions Facebook profiles - in a breach of rules - in a bid to influence the US presidential election.

Mr Quinn said: ’It has become even more important that this bill passes to enable secondary legislation to be made for our own protection in this information age.’

He added that a draft of the regulations that would be brought forward for approval in Tynwald, once the bill becomes law, had already gone through a consultation that would ’inform’ the final wording.