Debate: On whether the privacy battle around protecting data has been lost

Name: Debate: On whether the privacy battle around protecting data has been lost
Start: 2025-10-28T17:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-10-28T19:00:00+00:00
Location: Committee Room 14

Schedule

Tue Oct 28 2025 at 05:00 pm to 07:00 pm

UTC+00:00

Location

Committee Room 14 | London, EN

Motion: "The privacy battle has been lost and your personal data will never be safe again"
About this Event

The next Debating Group debate, sponsored by Christine Jardine MP, will take place on Tuesday 28th October 2025 and has been organised by the Data & Marketing Association (DMA). The motion will be: "The privacy battle has been lost and your personal data will never be safe again"

Taking place in Westminster, attendees can experience a live debate, hosted under formal debating rules and get a chance to have their say on this topic.

The Debate will take place in Committee Room 14 of The Palace of Westminster.

More about The Debating Group here.

Only individual, personalised sign-ups are allowed for access and security reasons.

It is highly likely that there will be a waiting list in operation, so please only sign up if you plan on attending and also, if necessary, cancel via Eventbrite in good time, so others can take your valuable spot!

Our Chair:

Alison Griffiths MP (Conservative Member of Parliament for Bognor Regis & Littlehampton / Member -Business & Trade Select Committee / Officer - All-Party Parliamentary Group for Responsible Business / Vice-President of The Debating Group)

Our speakers:

Proposing:

Tony Miller (Chief Marketing Officer - Direct Line Group & Chair - DMA)

(seconder to the proposer - to be confirmed)

Opposing:

Lord Duncan of Springbank (Conservative Peer & a Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords)

Ellie Gauci (Head of Strategy, Loyalty & Customer Relationship Management - VCCP UK)

Background

For years, Europe and the UK have tried to keep personal data under control, building a fortress of rules that peaked with the heady days of GDPR and, even now, the new Data Use and Access Act. But while lawmakers were busy fine-tuning definitions and drafting safeguards, technology kept moving. AI began scraping the internet, mixing public scraps of information into something deeply personal, and data breaches leaked what was once secret beyond recovery. Now, even machines can guess who you are before you’ve told them. So the question stands: can laws and best practice still protect privacy, or is that fight already over?