Legal/Privacy

Our Privacy Policy

The Liberal Democrats take individual privacy seriously, and aim to ensure that our websites meet and exceed all relevant legal and regulatory requirements, including the Data Protection Act. Our privacy policy is published on our public website (on this page), and any changes made to it are promptly reflected in the content of this page.

Any personal information collected via our websites will be stored and processed exclusively for the purposes of the Liberal Democrats.

Personal information

Any personal information you provide, including your email address, will not be passed on to any third party (other than any contractors or firms working on our behalf), except where you have signed a petition or similar, where the petition will be presented to a third party.

We do not keep personal information for longer than necessary. The Liberal Democrats are the sole owner of any information we collect via our websites. If you use a credit or debit card to make a payment we send the details to PayPal, who we employ to do our online payment processing, and we do not keep your card details ourselves, other than the type of card used.

If you join an email list, you may also leave it at any time you wish.

If you provide your email address through some other means (e.g. via the membership page), we may use the email address to send you further information in the future. You may at any point request not to receive such information any more.

If you provide your address or phone number, we may write to you or call you. You may at any point request not to receive such contacts any more.

If you provide your mobile phone number, we may call or send you text messages. You may at any point request not to receive calls, SMS or both any more.

Our communications contain details of how you can stop them in future, or you can contact:

Membership Services

Security

We use high-quality encryption (SSL) to protect your personal information when appropriate. All the information provided to us is stored securely once we receive it. People working on behalf of the Liberal Democrats 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.

Website statistics

We use traffic analysis tools to analyse website traffic in order to help us continually improve the design, content and layout of pages.

Cookies

We may place a cookie on your machine to help with the gathering of the above website data or, where necessary, to ensure that sites where you login function correctly. We do not access any information stored in cookies placed on your machine by other websites.

Affinity partners

Links from our website are provided to a range of organisations with whom the Liberal Democrats have affinity arrangements, e.g. Amazon and the Co-operative Bank. Any information you provide to such third parties is protected by their own privacy policy. In each case the Liberal Democrats have reviewed their privacy practices to confirm that they meet acceptable standards. No individual information that you provide to such a third party is passed back to the Liberal Democrats, although we sometimes receive aggregate data. For example, if you order a book via Amazon.co.uk the Liberal Democrats do not receive details of your individual order. However, the Liberal Democrats do receive reports that provide information about the total number of orders placed for different items.

Online payments

If you choose to join the party, you will receive your membership card within 30 days. Party membership is subject to the party's membership rules, details of which are available from Membership Services. If you choose to subscribe to our newspaper, Liberal Democrat News, you will receive your first edition within 21 days.

If you have made a payment by mistake or change your mind, please contact Membership Services (4 Cowley Street
London, SW1P 3NB, 020 7222 7999, membership@libdems.org.uk) for a refund.

Queries

If you have any queries about our privacy policy, or if you think that it has not been followed, please contact:

Chris Rennard
Chief Executive
Liberal Democrats
4 Cowley Street
London
SW1P 3NB
Tel: 020 7222 7999
Fax: 020 7233 2091
Email: Chris.Rennard@libdems.org.uk

You should also contact the Chief Executive if you wish to lodge a formal complaint about any matter covered by our privacy policy.