Data (Use and Access) Bill CCLM: motion to disagree Lords Amendment 43B

MPs voted on 14 May 2025 to reject Lords Amendment 43B to the Data (Use and Access) Bill, passing the motion to disagree by 304 votes to 68. The amendment concerned data protection standards for scientific research. The government argued the Bill already preserves the existing threshold for what qualifies as legitimate scientific research under data protection law, making the Lords' additional safeguards unnecessary. Parliament backed the government's position by a substantial margin. The practical question at stake was whether the Bill would weaken the data protection rules that researchers must meet to process personal data. Opponents of the government's position feared the legislation could allow data to be used under a broad claim of "scientific research" without sufficient safeguards, effectively creating looser rules for data exploitation. The government maintained that no change to the existing threshold was taking place and that the Bill did not alter what counts as scientific research for these purposes, making the Lords' amendment an unnecessary addition rather than a necessary protection. Labour MPs provided the overwhelming bulk of the 304 votes in favour of rejecting the Lords amendment, with 266 Labour and 31 Labour and Co-operative Party members voting aye and only one Labour MP recorded on the opposing side. The Liberal Democrats supplied the largest block of the 68 no votes, with 54 of their MPs opposing the motion, joined by 5 Scottish National Party MPs, 4 Plaid Cymru members, and 2 Greens. The vote on Amendment 43B was one of several contested divisions on the Bill the same day, including a parallel motion on Amendment 49B concerning copyright and artificial intelligence transparency, which passed 297 to 168.