Legal action against Reform UK over data can continue, judge rules

Legal action against Reform UK over its collection and use of data can continue after the party lost a bid to have the High Court claim dismissed.

The Good Law Project is suing Reform on behalf of 51 people who claim that the party failed to reply to their data subject access requests within the legal time frame.

Reform opposes the claim and, at a hearing in February, its lawyers described it as “politically motivated” while being an “abuse of process” and asked the court to throw it out.

But in a judgment on Friday, Mr Justice Murray refused the bids to strike out the case and summary judgment – a legal step which would have resolved the claim in Reform’s favour without a trial.

The judge said that the Good Law Project had “sufficient reasonable grounds” to bring the case and the claim was not abusive.

He continued: “The fact that Good Law Project has an underlying motive to bring the claim that is ‘political’, if true, does not mean that this claim is an abuse of process.

“To that extent, therefore, how Good Law Project chooses to portray the claim in its communications with its members or to the general public, for example, via its website, is not relevant to whether this claim, properly analysed, is an abuse of process or is vexatious.”

Mr Justice Murray later said that the question of whether the Good Law Project has the standing to bring the claim on behalf of the 51 people will be a matter for trial.

The court was previously told that the Good Law Project had developed a tool before the general election in July 2024, where people could email the major political parties asking them to stop processing their data.

Along with Reform, people could contact the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party.

More than 11,600 people used the Good Law Project tool, of whom 1,746 contacted Reform.

The court in London also previously heard that while other parties responded to the requests in a timely manner, Reform failed to respond within a month.