Reform failed to get Good Law Project's suit against it thrown out

Today, 19 June, the High Court comprehensively ruled against Reform UK’s bid to throw out the Good Law Project’s (GLP) legal action against it.

Back in 2024, before the general election, the GLP challenged all political parties to come clean about the data they held on members of the voting public. The action — backed by thousands of supporters — was part of the non-profit legal organisation’s #stoptargetingme campaign.

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) it’s a legal requirement for political parties to list and/or delete personal data when requested. And, with the GLP’s help, 1746 people did just that to the far-right party.

Profiling and panic

Fortunately, everyone already knew Reform is holding exactly as much data as it can sink its grubby little claws into. The party’s own privacy policy states clearly that:

Reform Party UK aims to create and maintain a profile for each registered voter in the UK. We will do this by merging the Electoral Register(s) with other data that may be lawfully available to us.

However, Reform failed to comply with the people’s simple Public Access Request. Well, it’s called a request — it’s really more of a legally-enforceable demand.

So, the GLP took the next step to hold them to account — it sued. The non-profit explained that:

What is now common ground – Richard Tice MP originally swore a statement to the contrary which he then admitted was wrong – is that Reform uses a powerful voter targeting tool called NationBuilder. It can be used to ‘micro-target’ voters by scraping social media and commercial databases and building deep profiles of voters.

Griffin Law’s Phillip Coppel KC is representing the Reform Party. Unfortunately for him, he’s got an uphill battle on his hands — you’ve got to see the argument he made to believe it. As the GLP put it, Coppel mooted that:

his client was entitled to delete data it held at the time a subject access request was made and provide only the data it held at the time of compliance. If this is Reform’s position it would be remarkable – and almost certainly wrong. However, we believe the truth is likely to be otherwise.

‘Actually, if we get the request, panic and delete everything, you’re not allowed to be mad!’ Genuinely outrageous, and highly unlikely to hold up in court. In any case, it certainly wasn’t enough to prevent the case from proceeding to trial.

Not a good day for Reform UK

Adding insult to injury, Reform will now, in all likelihood, be required to pay back the GLP’s legal costs. The judge is still finalising this order, but the total could run to over £200,000:

over £40,000 which we incurred and over £160,000 to the Access to Justice Foundation in respect of our solicitors’ pro bono representation.

Add that to the absolute drubbing Reform took in last night’s by-elections, and Farage has really got to be stinging right now. We’d send someone to check, but we imagine he’ll be straight back to hiding from the media now. What’s £200,000 as a fraction of a £5,000,000 undeclared, untaxed political ‘gift’ again?

Featured image via the Canary