THE Conservative Party acted illegally by collecting ethnicity data on millions of people, the Information Commissioner has told MPs.
Elizabeth Denham said the information was deleted after her office intervened.
But she told members of the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee: “They did not have the legal basis to collect it … it was illegal to collect.”
Before the 2019 general election, the party purchased data that estimated a person’s county of origin, ethnic origin and religion based on their first and last name.
This was applied to the records of 10 million voters.
Ms Denham said that after the release of her office’s findings last November the data was deleted.
If it had not been, her office would have ordered it to be destroyed, she added.
Ms Denham went onto explain in response to a MPs question: “Religion and ethnicity are both – like health information – special category data that requires a higher standard for a legal basis to collect.
’So again, ethnicity is not an acceptable collection of data, there isn’t a legal basis that allows for the collection of that data.”