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This policy was last updated on the 2nd May 2018

Introduction

The Liberal Democrats (“the Party”) respect individuals’ rights over their personal data. We are committed to ensuring that people are treated fairly in everything we do. This Privacy and Cookie Notice (“Notice”) outlines:

Where this Notice refers to ‘personal data’ it is referring to data about you (or other living people) from which you (or they) could be identified – such as name, date of birth or contact details.

This Notice applies to all personal data processed by the Party about its members and members of the public. This includes data gathered via third parties, such as social media sites, and which is therefore also covered by their own Privacy Polices.

This policy was last updated on 2nd May 2018. Any updates will be posted to this version of the policy. If you wish to see a previous version of the policy, or have any other questions, please get in touch.

The Party may collect personal data from you via means such as:

In person, when you speak to one of our representatives or volunteers

Through a telephone call, either where you call us or we call you

On paper, such as if you return a printed survey or a reply slip on a leaflet

Digitally, such as if you fill in a form on a website or interact with the party online

When you offer or ask about volunteering, or take part in party activities

When you enter into a transaction with the party, such as donating, joining, purchasing a product or paying for an event

Indirectly from other public records or sources, including the full electoral register which the party is legally entitled to

On social media platforms, where you have made the information public, or you have made the information available in a social media forum run by the Party

We may collect personal data about you such as:

Name

Contact details (e.g. email address, address, telephone / mobile number)

Date of birth

Future communication preferences

Information about your financial transactions with the Party

Racial or ethnic origin

Family details

Political opinions

Religious or other beliefs

Other demographic information

Information about your home (e.g. whether it is a flat or house)

Issues you raise

Topics you are interested in

We may also collect information when you interact with the party digitally, such as by visiting one of our websites or communicating with one of our social media channels. This may include additional data to that above, such as:

Your IP address

Your device, browser or operating system

Details of the links that you click and the content that you view

Your username or social media handle

Any other information you share when using third party sites (e.g. sending a tweet or using the Like function on Facebook) We may also place one or more cookies on your device. For further details on this, see below.

We may also collect information about you from other public sources, such as the Land Registry, Companies House or other commercially available sources. We only do so where those sources are lawfully permitted to share the data with us and where we have a legal basis to process data from such sources. This may include, for example, checking the eligibility of a potential donor and may include additional data to that above, such as:

Lifestyle and social circumstance

Goods or services purchased

Charities you support

How we may use your personal data

We may use your personal data to further our objectives, share it with our elected representatives and/or contact you in future. Examples of the way we may use your data include to:

Contact you to canvass for political support

Understand your views and issues important to you

Process surveys you have participated in

Tell you about policies, campaigns or individuals that may be of interest to you

Respond to queries that you raise with us

Administer offers or applications to volunteer for the party or to become, remain or cease being a member of or candidate for the party

Conduct fundraising activities, including checking your eligibility to donate

Manage our sites and services

For more specific information about how we use your data for these activities, and the legal basis on which we rely to process your data in this way, please see the ‘Why the Party is allowed to use your information in this way’ part of this Notice.

If you have provided us with your email, mobile phone number or landline phone number and we have a legal right to use them for such purposes, we may use that information to contact you to promote causes and campaigns that we support, such as by sending you an email, online advert, or a text message.

We will respect any registration you hold with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) except where you have opted in to receive phone calls on that number from us.

You may opt out of communications from us at any time.

Depending on how and why you provide us with your personal data it may be shared within the Party (i.e. between local, regional and national parts of the party and with our elected representatives) or with companies that provide services to the Party (“service providers”). For more information on service providers, please see here: https://www.libdems.org.uk/data-sharing.

In addition, we may share your personal data with third parties when we are required to do so by law (for example, with the Police where they ask us to assist them with their investigations).

However, save for the limited circumstances noted above, we will never pass your personal data to any unrelated third parties unless you have given us your permission to do so. For example, where you have signed a petition and are clearly informed that this petition will be presented to a third party.

Why the Party is allowed to use your information in this way

The Party is a registered national political party in the UK; our work is designed to promote our values and to engage UK citizens in the democratic process.

Accordingly, our work is considered to be of substantial public interest. Because of that public interest basis we are entitled to process sensitive personal data which relates to your political opinions, and your personal data more generally, for the purposes of enabling us to perform our work effectively. Specifically, that processing may include using those aspects of your personal data to help us to plan and execute political campaigns, canvass for your support (such as by visiting or calling you), raise funds, and perform casework that relates to you and your local community.

You do have rights to ask us to stop processing your data for these purposes, and you can read details about those rights here . In addition to the above we may also process your data for other purposes where you ask us to, or enter into a relationship with us that requires us to.

For example, if you choose to join us as a volunteer we will need to process your personal data to record that you have given us your support in this way. A contract will be put in place between you and us and we will process your personal data to the extent that we need to in order to fulfil our obligations under that contract.

Similarly, you may from time to time give us your consent to send you communications by e-mail (or similar mediums) which promote our work. Where you do that we will use your details to send you those kinds of communications until you tell us otherwise. Should you ever ask us to stop sending those kinds of communications we will hold your details on file to ensure that we respect that request – we justify that retention on the basis that we have a legitimate interest in holding your data in that way.

Finally, where we have received your personal data in the various ways described above, we may continue to hold it as part of our records after the relevant processing has stopped. We hold data in this way because we have a legitimate interest in doing so. Specifically, where you have been a member or a volunteer (or have otherwise engaged with us such as by attending a conference or event, or by responding to a survey or questionnaire) we have a legitimate interest in holding your personal data to help us to monitor the numbers and the diversity of people who engage with us, as well as a legitimate interest in making sure that we can follow up any complaints or grievances which you may raise (or which people may raise about you).

The circumstances under which we may share your personal data or disclose it to others

The Party will not sell your personal data to third parties.

Depending on how and why you provide us with your personal data it may be shared within the Party (e.g. between local, regional and national parts of the party) and our elected representatives. It may also be shared with those who provide services to the Party (“service providers”).

We may use service providers to undertake processing operations on our behalf to provide us with a variety of administrative, statistical, advertising and technical services. We will only supply service providers with the minimum amount of personal data they need to fulfil the services we request. We oblige all of our data processors to sign contracts with us that clearly set out their commitment to respecting individual rights, protecting your personal data – including not using it for any purpose other than providing us with an agreed service or fulfilling their legal obligations - and their commitments to assisting us to help you exercise your rights as a data subject.

With your consent, service providers may hold personal data about you in order to facilitate the provision of future services or financial transactions to which you have agreed, such as a payment processor retaining your payment details in order to process agreed future payments from you.

Please note that some of our service providers are based outside of the European Economic Area (the “EEA”). Where we transfer your data to a service provider that is outside of the EEA we seek to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place to make sure that your personal data is held securely and that your rights as a data subject are upheld – in almost all cases we do this by ensuring that the agreements between us and our chosen service providers contain what are called the ‘model clauses’ that oblige them to treat your personal data as if they themselves were based in the EEA.

In addition, we may share your personal data with third parties when we are required to do so by law (for example, with the Police where they ask us to assist them with their investigations). In some cases, this may result in your personal data becoming public.

In particular, the Party and our candidates are required to submit records, including personal data, of donations above certain thresholds to the relevant regulatory authority. In some cases, some of these donation details are made public. For more details about this, please contact us.

However, save for the limited circumstances noted above, we will never pass your personal data to any unrelated third parties unless you have given us your permission to do so.

Additional details about cookies and technical information

A cookie is a small text file placed on your device when you visit a website. You can accept or decline cookies through your browser settings or other software. For more information about cookies, see Information Commissioner's Office's Cookies Information

When you visit one of our websites, we may place one or more cookies on your device. These are for purposes which include:

Improving your experience of visiting the site, including providing personalised content Gathering information you have submitted via the site Processing requests for information or action that you have made through the site Processing login requests Enabling your activity in one place to be used to decide on what information, if any, to present to you in other places Gathered statistical information about the usage of the site Ensuring the smooth operation of online services Remembering whether or not you have been shown a cookie notification message on an earlier visit to the site To make sure online adverts you may receive from us are relevant to your interests.

By using one or more of our sites, you are consenting to our use of cookies in accordance with this Notice. If you do not agree to our use of cookies, then you should set your browser or other software settings accordingly.

We may provide links to third party organisations with whom we have affinity arrangements, such as an online retailer. In such cases additional cookies may be placed to facilitate this arrangement and the third parties may also gather personal data about you in line with their own privacy policies. If a third party shares any personal data gathered in this way with the Liberal Democrats, it will be made clear in its own privacy policy.

We also provide options to share content on social media which may result in your being directed to the social media network’s own systems. If you proceed with this, those networks may gather personal data about you in line with their own privacy policies. On our websites or in other digital communications we may also use technologies variously described as web beacons, pixel tags, clear gifs or tracking pixels to provide us with information about how people have navigated through the site or responded to the communication.

The Party takes the protection of your information very seriously. We use encryption (SSL) to protect your personal data when appropriate, and all the information provided to the Party is stored securely once we receive it. People working or volunteering on behalf of the Party only have access to the information they need, and the web servers are stored in a high-security environment that is kept under 24-hour guard. The Party may store your personal data on secure servers either on our premises or in third party data centres.

Click on the following link to learn more about our Cookies Policy.

Data retention policies

We only keep your personal data for as long as required to meet the purposes set out in this Notice, unless a longer retention period is required by law. For example, this may include holding your data after you have ceased to engage with the party (such as by resigning or ceasing to be a member) where we have a legitimate interest in doing so, such as to enable us to respond effectively to grievances that may arise after you cease to engage with us. Where we collect and hold your details as part of our public interest work, this may also include retaining those details for as long as you remain a registered voter in the UK.

Where permitted by law, we may also save personal data for archiving purposes in the public interest, including historical research. This may involving passing such data to third parties who run historical archives .

The exact details of this are set out in our Data Retention Policy, a copy of which is available here (https://www.libdems.org.uk/data-retention) and all the above is subject to your legal rights, such as to have data in certain cases deleted or corrected, as set out below.

Your rights over personal data

You have legal rights over any of your personal data that we hold.

Right of access

You may, at any time, request access to the personal data that we hold which relates to you (sometimes called a subject access request).

This right entitles you to receive a copy of the personal data that we hold about you. It is not a right that allows you to request personal data about other people, or a right to request specific documents from us that do not relate to your personal data.

Right to rectification and erasure

You may, at any time, request that we correct personal data that we hold about you which you believe is incorrect or inaccurate. You may also ask us to erase personal data if you do not believe that we need to continue retaining it (sometimes called the right to be forgotten).

Please note that we may ask you to verify any new data that you provide to us and may take our own steps to check that the new data you have supplied us with is accurate. Further, we are not always obliged to erase personal data when asked to do so; if for any reason we believe that we have a good legal reason to continue processing personal data that you ask us to erase we will tell you what that reason is at the time we respond to your request.

Right to restrict processing

Where we process your personal data on the legal basis of us having a legitimate interest to do so, you are entitled to ask us to stop processing it in that way if you feel that our continuing to do so impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms or if you feel that those legitimate interests are not valid.

You may also ask us to stop processing your personal data (a) if you dispute the accuracy of that personal data and want us verify its accuracy; (b) where it has been established that our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; (c) where we no longer need to process your personal data (and would otherwise dispose of it) but you wish for us to continue storing it in order to enable you to establish, exercise or defend legal claims.

If for any reason we believe that we have a good legal reason to continue processing personal data that you ask us to stop processing, we will tell you what that reason is, either at the time we first respond to your request or after we have had the opportunity to consider and investigate it.

Right to opt out of processing relating to your political opinions

You may, at any time, write to us to ask us to cease processing your personal data which relates to your political opinions (such as how you have voted in the past, and things that you have told us about how you are likely to vote).

Please note that these requests can only be made about data which relates to your political opinions; they will not affect our right to use other aspects of your personal data.

Right to portability

Where you wish to transfer certain personal data that we hold about you, which is processed by automated means, to a third party you may write to us and ask us to provide it to you in a commonly used machine-readable format.

Right to stop receiving communications

Wherever possible, we will provide you with a choice about how we can contact you to share information about the Party. You can opt out of communications at any time by visiting libdems.org.uk/optout. It may take several days for requests submitted this way to become effective on our systems, or by the methods described below.

Email

If you provide us with your email address and indicate that we may do so (e.g. by subscribing to an email distribution list or by ‘opting in’ through the membership page) we may send you further information about the Party in the future. These communications will take the form of e-mails promoting us and our work.

You can request that you cease to receive these kind of communications from us at any time. The easiest way to do so is to use the unsubscribe link provided at the bottom of any e-mail messages that we send to you. You can also do so at any time by visiting libdems.org.uk/optout. It may take several days for requests submitted this way to become effective on our systems.

SMS Messages

If you provide your mobile phone number, we may call or send you text messages if you have given us permission to do so. You may request to stop receiving SMS messages at any point.

You can stop receiving SMS text messages by following the instructions to opt out provided within that text message. You can also do so by at any time by visiting libdems.org.uk/optout. It may take several days for requests submitted this way to become effective on our systems.

Post and Telephone

We may contact you by post or telephone using information provided to us through the electoral roll and other legitimate sources of contact information for the purposes of campaigning, notifying you of our values and policies, and checking your eligibility to donate.

We will respect any registration you hold with the Telephone Preference Service except where you have opted in to receive communications from us. Further, even if you are not on the Telephone Preference Service register you may ask us to stop making calls to you by telling one of our operators when we call you.

Online Advertising

If you provide us with your email address or telephone number we may use it to ensure online adverts you receive from us are relevant to you. These communications will take the form of online adverts promoting us and our work.

You can opt out of online advertising at any time by visiting libdems.org.uk/optout. It may take several days for requests submitted this way to become effective on our systems. We will have to share your data with relevant service providers. You may still receive online advertising from time to time where providers are unable to remove you from lists or their systems do not permit exclusion lists.

General

While all of our direct marketing communications contain details of how you can stop receiving them in the future you can either follow those instructions (such as using the unsubscribe link in an email or telling a telephone caller), visit libdems.org.uk/optout, or ask us directly using the contact details below. If you do the latter, please provide us with full details of the telephone numbers, postal addresses, email addresses and so on to which you wish us to stop sending communications to in order to help us deal with your request quickly and accurately.

Liberal Democrat Party

8-10 Great George Street

London

SW1P 3AE

Tel: 020 7222 7999

Email: data.protection@libdems.org.uk

We will process any requests to stop receiving communications as quickly and comprehensively as is practical although there may in some cases be further communications already on their way to you which cannot be stopped.

If you ask us to stop sending you information (e.g. by email, post, phone or SMS text), we may keep a record of your information to make sure we do not contact you again, up until the normal retention period for that type of data. See our retention policy above for details.

Please note that this right to stop communications does not apply to emails that we send to you that are a necessary part of us providing a service to you (such as messaging you about your status as a member or a volunteer) or us notifying you about how your personal data is being used.

In addition, the right to stop communications does not apply to the Election Address that we are permitted to send to you during certain elections.

Exercising your rights

You may exercise any of these rights by contacting us using the details below and providing the necessary details for us to be able to identify the relevant data and to act on your request accurately.

When you contact us making a request to exercise your rights we are entitled to ask you to prove that you are who you say you are. We may ask you to provide copies of relevant ID documents to help verify your identity.

It will help us to process your request if you clearly state which right you wish to exercise and, where relevant, why it is that you are exercising it. The clearer and more specific you can be the faster and more efficiently we can process the request. If you do not provide us with sufficient information then we may delay actioning your request until you have provided us with additional information (and where this is the case we will tell you).

If you have any queries regarding the information set out here, if you wish to exercise any of your rights set out above or if you think that it has not been followed, please contact:

Liberal Democrats

8-10 Great George Street

London

SW1P 3AE

data.protection@libdems.org.uk

You can also use these contact details, marked for the attention of the Chief Executive, if you wish to lodge a formal complaint about any matter covered here.

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