Lord Chadlington – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Chadlington on 2016-01-25.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the European Court of Human Rights ruling on 12 January in Barbulescu v Romania on an employer’s right to access an employee’s private emails in the UK.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe

The Government has made no assessment of the judgment The case raises the important question of whether the Applicant had a reasonable expectation that his communications would not be monitored; and could reasonably expect privacy when communicating from the Yahoo Messenger account that he had registered at his employer’s request, and where there was a strict company policy prohibiting use of work systems for personal purposes. The Applicant alleged interference with his article 8 rights and that the interference was not foreseeable or proportionate. But the Court held that there was nothing to indicate that the domestic authorities failed to strike a fair balance between the applicant’s right to respect for his private life under Article 8 and his employer’s interests, and that there had been no violation of Article 8 of the Convention.

The attached ICO’s employment practices code sets out guidance in relation to workplace monitoring. The code is already clear that employers should have policies in place explaining how they expect their IT systems to be used, including setting out the extent to which, if any, the IT system can be used for personal use. Even where no such policy is in place, it is reasonable in certain circumstances for employers to monitor an employee’s use of the IT systems to ensure compliance with any policy or to ensure that employees are not abusing the use of the system. Such monitoring may include accessing non-work communications but this should only be done in exceptional circumstances.