Guidance

Privacy notice for consultations and calls for evidence

Updated 10 October 2025

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/privacy-notice-for-consultations-and-calls-for-evidence/privacy-notice-for-consultations-and-calls-for-evidence

This privacy notice explains how we use your personal data when you participate in consultations or calls for evidence exercises where we ask for your views, opinions and experiences of the immigration system or policy.

If you have any queries about the content of this privacy notice, contact the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) at enquiries@mac.gov.uk.

Our call for evidence exercises are run through our webpage.

Who collects your personal data

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) is the controller for the personal data we collect:

Migration Advisory Committee
2nd Floor Peel, Home Office Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
United Kingdom

enquiries@mac.gov.uk

If you need further information about how we use your personal data and your associated rights, you can contact the data protection officer at dpo@homeoffice.gov.uk or at the address below:

Data Protection Officer
Peel Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF

The data protection officer is responsible for checking that we comply with legislation.

What personal data we collect and how it is used

We may collect personal information such as:

  • name

  • contact details

  • views, opinions and experiences

We may sometimes ask for more sensitive personal data such as your:

  • age

  • sex or gender

  • race and ethnicity

  • education or skills

  • health or disability

  • level of income

  • location

  • behaviour

  • political or other beliefs

  • immigration status/use of the immigration system

We will take your response into account, as far as possible, with all other responses to the call for evidence exercise. If you consent and provide contact details, we may contact you directly inviting you to give your views, opinions and experiences in response to a new or follow up call for evidence exercise.

Information provided to us in response to a call for evidence or consultation may be published or disclosed in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). If we receive a request for disclosure of the information we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances.

We may also need to pass on information you provide, if it indicates that an individual is at imminent risk of harm. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your information technology system will not be regarded as binding on us.

If you have been contacted for research using information you supplied when you applied for your visa from the Home Office, we may also use other information from your application in our analysis. For example, this could include information you provided on your background characteristics such as gender or nationality.

Fully anonymised data from MAC consultations and research may also be deposited with the UK Data Archive to enable further research.

Data collected from children

As our call for evidence exercises are open to anyone who wishes to respond, it is possible that those who are under the age of 18 may choose to do so. We do not collect demographic data from respondents who indicate that they are under the age of 18. When any other information is provided to us by a child, we use this alongside other call for evidence responses to help us understand views, opinions and experiences of the immigration system or policy.

How your personal data has been obtained, if from a third party

On occasion, we may contact you directly to invite you to participate in a consultation or call for evidence exercise. Where this happens, we will tell you where we obtained your contact information from and clearly outline the purpose of the consultation.

Lawful basis for processing your personal data

The legal basis for processing your personal data is:

  • your consent

  • a task carried out in the public interest - this is to allow us to carry out our work as an advisory non-departmental public body sponsored by the Home Office. This may be applicable at a point during the processing, when consent in is no longer the legal basis for processing, for example when your personal data has been incorporated into its analysis and can no longer be identified.

Where the processing of your personal data is based on consent, you can normally withdraw your consent, and have personal data removed. You can do this using the contact details provided by us when you take part in the call for evidence or by emailing enquiries@mac.gov.uk.

However, you may not be able to withdraw your consent once we have incorporated your data into our analysis. If this is the case, we will tell you when you take part in the call for evidence exercise.

Who we share your personal data with

We will publish a summary of responses to a consultation or call for evidence on GOV.UK; this will not include any personal data.

The MAC uses Qualtrics and Smart Survey software as the platforms to run online call for evidence, and therefore these platforms may have access to your personal data. Both platforms are fully UK GDPR compliant: see Qualtrics Data Protection and Smart Survey GDPR for further information. If other software is used, we will ensure this is compliant with UK GDPR.

Sometimes, we might share your responses with other organisations we are working with or have contracted, but only for a specific reason and for a limited period of time. We will explain this fully in the call for evidence documents.

We respect your personal privacy when responding to access to information requests. We only share information when necessary to meet the statutory requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, or where the information indicates that an individual is at imminent risk of harm.

How long the MAC holds personal data

The MAC will only retain your personal data for as long as either (1) it is needed for the purposes of the consultation/call for evidence or (2) the law requires us to. This means that personal data will be held by the MAC for a maximum of 5 years. Data retention will be reviewed on an annual basis. Anonymised data will be kept indefinitely.

What happens if you do not provide the personal data

We will not be able to gather your views, opinions and experiences. You will not be able to contribute to the specific goals of the call for evidence exercise.

Use of automated decision-making or profiling

The personal data you provide is not used for:

  • automated decision making (making a decision by automated means without any human involvement)

  • profiling (automated processing of personal data to evaluate certain things about an individual)

Transfer of your personal data outside of the UK

The MAC does not routinely transfer data outside the UK. We would only transfer your personal data to another country that is deemed adequate for data protection purposes.

Your rights

Based on the lawful processing above, your individual rights are:

Public task

Information about your individual rights under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018), is available on the Information Commissioners Office website.

Complaints

You have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office at any time.

Personal information charter

Our Personal information charter explains more about your rights over your personal data.

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