The debate, held at the House of Lords, centred on the statement ‘The privacy battle has been lost and your personal data will never be safe again’, with two speakers on each team advocating for the proposition and the opposition.

Speaking for the proposition, Lord Duncan of Springbank, Conservative peer and deputy speaker at the House of Lords, said that if the government’s collection and use of data was included in the debate, the battle for personal data was lost decades ago.

Lord Duncan said the challenge was that corporations “can do whatever they want” with data, adding: “The right to privacy is not absolute; the right to privacy is qualified in every regard.”

Websites are monetising people’s data collected through cookies, Lord Duncan said. “You are not the customer – you are the product.

“Your data has value. Every single aspect of your life is monitored and monetised.” He added: “Your data is up for sale and the highest bidder will buy it.”

Lord Duncan compared government work to tackle data privacy to the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, who must keep moving just to maintain her position. “Do you not think the government is trying to fight it out? They are running to stand still.”

He added: “The reality is your data is not safe and will not be safe.”

Also speaking for the proposition, Ceri Perkins, chief experience officer at The Gate London, said that the fastest growing group among the UK public in terms of attitudes to data privacy were those who were unconcerned by the issue.

“We didn’t become more observant – we became more unconcerned,” Perkins said. “We have internalised our own defeat.” People want to use websites, so will accept cookies to access the content they wish to, she added, saying that the trade-off between use and privacy is “baked into everyday life”.

People are also not aware of what they are giving away when accepting infringements on their data privacy and there are misconceptions about the risks, Perkins said, adding that “younger people are less careful with privacy” and that many people are put off using safer options for their data if those options are deemed inconvenient.

For the opposition, Ellie Gauci, head of strategy, loyalty and customer relationship management at VCCP UK, said that data privacy was “not a battle: it is an allied collaboration”.

There was cooperation between consumers, regulators and industry in the battle for data privacy, Gauci said, with all three “working together to co-create systems that both protect individuals and allow innovation”.

Gauci added that the EU alone had issued €4bn in fines, and brands are paying the price for not using data well. Every brand has a data protection officer and the subject of data privacy “is a boardroom topic”.

Responsible data use and practices are good business, and GDPR helped marketing to “replace arrogance with accountability”, Gauci added.

“Data is no longer a compliance cost but a commercial advantage,” she said. “Privacy is not dying but professionalising. The battle is not being lost; it is being won one trusted click at a time.”

On synthetic data, Gauci also said that “you can see the potential of that aggregated data for the greater good” in areas such as health.

Joining the opposition team, Tony Miller, chief marketing officer at Direct Line Group, said that “the world is moving forwards not backwards” on data privacy.

Miller noted that the privacy industry is one of the world’s fastest growing, adding that “you don’t invest billions in something that has already been lost”.

“Privacy is not just a domestic issue but a global norm,” Miller said, adding that the quest for better data policies “is not a funeral march, but a global movement”.

Miller concluded: “Technology is not an enemy of privacy but its biggest ally.

 “Every encrypted message is another quiet victory.”

The proposition won the vote by 41 votes to 14.