Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Committee stage
Monday 25th March 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 19 is consequential on my more substantive Clauses 114 and 115 stand part notices, which are also in this group. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for his support.

These amendments all relate to the 150 or so pages of late amendments tabled in the Commons on Report and therefore not given adequate scrutiny before now. No real explanation has been given for why the Government felt it necessary to table the amendments in this way, and this group of amendments comes under the heading of so-called “democratic engagement”. Clause 113 extends a soft opt-in for direct mail marketing for furthering charitable or political objectives, while Clause 114 goes further and allows the Secretary of State to change the direct marketing rules through secondary legislation for the purpose of democratic engagement. This would allow the Government, in the run-up to an election, to switch off the direct mailing rules that apply to political parties.

Like many others, we are highly suspicious of the Government’s motives in introducing these amendments in the run-up to this election. Although we do not have a problem with a softer opt-in for direct mailing for charities, the application of Clause 114 to political parties gives politicians carte blanche to mine voters’ data given in good faith for completely different purposes. It would allow voters to be bombarded with calls, texts and personalised social media without their explicit consent.

When you consider these proposals in the context of other recent moves by the Government to make it harder for some people to vote and to vastly increase the amount of money that can be spent on campaigning in the run-up to an election, you have to wonder what the Government are up to, because these measures have certainly not been requested by Labour. In fact, these measures were not supported by the majority of respondents to the Government’s initial consultation, who wanted the existing rules upheld.

The Advertising Association has told us that it is concerned that switching off the rules could result in an increase in poor practice, such as political lobbying under the guise of research. This is apparently a practice known as “plugging”. It referred us to a report from the previous Information Commissioner on how political parties manage data protection, which provided key recommendations for how political parties could improve. These included providing clearer information about how data will be used and being more transparent about how voters are profiled and targeted via social media platforms. This is the direction our democratic engagement should be going in, with stronger and more honest rules that treat the electorate with respect, not watering down the rules that already exist.

When these proposals were challenged in the Commons on Report, the Minister, John Whittingdale, said:

“We have no immediate plans to use the regulation powers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/11/23; col. 912.]


If that is the case, why do the Government not take the proposals off the table, go back to the drawing board by conducting a proper consultation and test whether there is any appetite for these changes? They should also involve the Information Commissioner at an early stage, as he has already gone on record to say that this is

“an area in which there are significant potential risks to people if any future policy is not implemented very carefully”.

Finally, if there are to be any changes, they should be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny and approval.

We believe that Clauses 114 and 115 are taking us in fundamentally the wrong direction, against the interests of the electorate. I look forward to the Minister’s response, but I give notice now that, unless the Government adopt a very different strategy on this issue, we will return to this on Report. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, with pleasure, as I agree with everything that she just said. I apologise for having failed to notice this in time to attach my name; I certainly would have done, if I had had the chance.

As the noble Baroness said, we are in an area of great concern for the level of democracy that we already have in our country. Downgrading it further is the last thing that we should be looking at doing. Last week, I was in the Chamber looking at the statutory instrument that saw a massive increase in the spending limits for the London mayoral and assembly elections and other mayoral elections—six weeks before they are held. This is a chance to spend an enormous amount of money; in reality, it is the chance for one party that has the money from donations from interesting and dubious sources, such as the £10 million, to bombard voters in clearly deeply dubious and concerning ways.

We see a great deal of concern about issues such as deepfakes, what might happen in the next general election, malicious actors and foreign actors potentially interfering in our elections. We have to make sure, however, that the main actors conduct elections fairly on the ground. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, just set out, this potentially drives a cart and horses through that. As she said, these clauses did not get proper scrutiny in the Commons—as much as that ever happens. As I understand it, there is the potential for us to remove them entirely later, but I should like to ask the Minister some direct questions, to understand what the Government’s intentions are and how they understand the meaning of the clauses.

Perhaps no one would have any problems with these clauses if they were for campaigns to encourage people to register to vote, given that we do not have automatic voter registration, as so many other countries do. Would that be covered by these clauses? If someone were conducting a “get out the vote” campaign in a non-partisan way, simply saying, “Please go out and vote. The election is on this day. You will need to bring along your voter ID”, would it be covered by these clauses? What about an NGO campaigning to stop a proposed new nuclear power station, or a group campaigning for stronger regulations on pesticides or for the Government to take stronger action against ultra-processed food? How do those kinds of politics fit with Clauses 114 and 115? As they are currently written, I am not sure that it is clear what is covered.

There is cause for deep concern, because no justification has been made for these two clauses. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s responses.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Committee stage
Monday 12th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 19 and I very much support the arguments put forward by my noble friend Lady Hayman. She made a powerful case for why there should be a clear public benefit written into the Bill, which is why her emphasis and the detail in the amendment are important. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that the Minister has already said that he agrees with this. That is fine, but having it written down in the way set out here would be an important addition.

All the examples in the amendment have been cited by Ministers and supporters of the Bill, in various debates, as advantages that could accrue from it. The Minister believes in and is committed to issues such as the environment, climate change mitigation, food safety and animal welfare. As my noble friend said, we have talked many times about the potential to develop a world-class reputation for our science and innovation, and this would be a way of stating, publicly and internationally, what this research is about—so it is not just buried away in Hansard but is in a more public domain. That is very important.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, these preconditions very much reflect those that were spelled out in the Agriculture Act. It is not as though it is not legislative practice to have that amount of detail; it is, as it was done in a different Bill. So why can we not have it in this Bill as well? That would have the great advantage of putting the public good at the heart of the Bill.

It would also ensure that public money for gene-editing research, particularly in public institutions—I am involved in one of them—is firmly anchored and focused on the public good benefits. It would give the funding allocation something to measure against, which is an advantage. I am sure that the vast majority of research institutions in the UK would welcome this clarity; it would fit with the ethos of their operations anyway, and, in a sense, play to their strengths. It would be good to have measures in place on how that money is being spent, much as there are for ELMS funding in the Agriculture Act. We wanted to see what we would get for our investment with the farmers, so it was no longer just a free handout.

The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, made the important point that we need to reassure the public that this is not a backdoor to further environmental damage and exploitation. We come back to the subject we have already debated, which is how we can make sure that we take the public with us. This is certainly one way we can make sure of that. We have to learn the lessons from the GM crop row of over 30 years ago, when one of the main criticisms was that it would allow the multinational seed companies to exploit farmers in developing countries by locking them into seed contracts in which the seeds could not be naturally regenerated for future use. We need to reassure people that that sort of exploitation is not part of our agenda on this occasion, so it is important to write that public benefit and use into the Bill.

It is important that we provide public reassurance. If it is good enough for the Agriculture Act, why can we not adopt a similar policy here? I urge the Minister to think about this; it would provide a great deal of public reassurance on an issue that we know is still quite sensitive. I hope he feels able, if not in my noble friend’s terms then in his own terms, to come back with an amendment that reflects the detail of that amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 19, which noble Lords will see already has a full complement of signatures. I thought the signature of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was far more useful than mine, so I was pleased to leave that space. If the Minister cannot agree to make some commitment such as that which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, of Whitchurch, just asked for, it might well be possible to find a Conservative Back-Bencher to make a complete set on Report, should we get to that stage. I would have attached my name to this and I think it has already very been powerfully argued for, but I want to make two additional points.

Both the Environment Act and the Agriculture Act were built around the idea of public money for public good. Here, surely the Conservative Government would embrace the idea of public good for no public money at all. This is the Government able to make the rules, and they can ensure that there is public good without a penny having to be spent. That would be very much in line with the Environment Act and the Agriculture Act.

I want to highlight a couple of the elements in Amendment 19 that I think are particularly important, including sub-paragraph (x),

“supporting or improving human health and well-being”.

I note that the Government, in promoting the Bill, talk a great deal about sugar beet. Given the massive overconsumption of sugar in the UK diet—if we produced by volume only two-thirds of the sugar we produce in the UK, that would be more than enough for a sufficient, healthy level of diet without importing a single gram of sugar—and the fact that sugar beet is associated with massive loss of fertile topsoil from some of the richest lands in the UK, if we could gene-edit sugar beet to be more productive on less land, it would be ideal to combine that with ensuring that we produce only a healthy amount of sugar and free up the land for other purposes.

I also note that the Minister talked about sub-paragraph (ii), mitigating and adapting to climate change—indeed, he talked about the climate emergency quite a lot this afternoon. Of course, when we are talking about animals, we talk about engineering cattle to release less methane; we are looking at a whole-systems approach here, and having fewer cattle would be by far the easiest way to produce less methane. Further, they would not be consuming grains and proteins, such as soya from the Amazon, which we could be consuming as human food instead. It is a complex issue, but what we are getting at here is trying to deliver, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, what the Minister said is the purpose of the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Winston, has not spoken yet, but I will venture to make one comment on his Amendment 21. The wording is not terribly clear, and the noble Lord could answer now or later, or think about this amendment on Report. It says that the genome should be sequenced and the changes recorded and reported to the Secretary of State. My question is whether that should be published and publicly available. We are talking about licensing something that the Government are giving companies the right and the chance to potentially make money out of, so it is perfectly reasonable to demand an increase in public knowledge to make accessible those genomes that would then be available to other researchers for all kinds of possibly very different purposes, not necessarily productivity or seed-producing purposes. The knowledge of all those genome sequences would be a very useful thing. I think that should perhaps be written into the amendment.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer my support, as I attached my signature to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. It may come as a surprise to the House to see both of us on the same amendment, but that shows its breadth of support. Given the hour, some people may feel like they have started to dream; for the Minister, it is possibly a nightmare. But I am not going to speak at length, because we have canvassed on this, both in Committee and on an earlier amendment that appeared in my name on the labelling of single-use nappies.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, just outlined, there are real reasons in savings for families. The figures that she gave translate to a saving of £11 a week over the average time that a baby or toddler is in nappies. This is where we perhaps part company, because I will point out that that would almost make up for half the cut in universal credit that is approaching.

It is interesting that, overnight, we saw significant investment in a UK maker of reusable nappies. This is a chance for the Government to be promoting a good, positive, green industry—something they often talk about. There are huge environmental, social and economic benefits to this amendment. It is common sense and has support from across the House, so I hope we hear something positive from the Minister.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not repeat what I said in our previous debates on this, but I very much support the noble Baroness’s amendment. We agree that the Government should take action to encourage reusable nappies, including, where necessary, incentives for the low paid to be able to access them in the first place. The sooner we use innovation to encourage alternatives to single-use nappies and that whole industry, the better. On that basis, as the late hour is descending on us, I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Report stage
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have to question the description given by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, of HS2 as affecting a

“small area of ancient woodland”,

given that the Woodland Trust says that 108 areas of ancient woodland are at risk of “loss or damage”. However, it will probably please your Lordships’ House to know that I will not restart the HS2 debate at this moment.

I will focus on Amendment 100, to which we in the Green Party would have attached one of our names, had there been space. We are talking about something very ancient and precious, and we can make comparisons with cathedrals and indeed with your Lordships’ House. I was on the site of what is supposed to be the Norwich western link, standing at the base of an oak tree that was a sapling when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne. An ancient woodland containing trees like that is comparable to your Lordships’ House or a cathedral. Think about the protections we offer to those and all the money we are thinking about putting in to preserving this building; we are in a different place on that.

We often think of ancient woodland as being out in the countryside somewhere. I want to be a little parochial and point out that Sheffield has 80 ancient woodlands within its boundary. I want to think and talk about the benefits to human health and well-being of having these ancient woodlands—indeed, London has some of them, and, when I lived here, I used to walk in them as well. They have enormous human health benefits that we have to take account of.

Returning to the subject of walking through ancient woodland in Sheffield or the threatened woodland in Norwich, we are talking about not just trees here but crucial, utterly irreplaceable habitats for bats and insects. These woodlands would have a chance truly to flourish without air pollution and other factors. Lichens and mosses—crucial, complex organisms that are absolutely foundational to rich, healthy ecosystems—depend on those ancient trees to thrive and indeed survive. So I commend both these amendments to your Lordships’ House, and I encourage the noble Baroness to press Amendment 100 in particular to a vote.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in favour Amendment 100, in the name of my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone, and Amendment 101 in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. We regard both these amendments as important.

As I said in Committee, the Bill is woefully lacking in any reference to a tree strategy and the need to protect our existing woodland stock as well as to increase the percentage of England under tree cover. The only such reference in the Bill is to felling street trees, and although this is an important issue, the crucial importance of preserving our ancient woodland and the need to deliver the protection and expansion of trees in woodlands in the future is not recognised.

As noble Lords have said, a comprehensive strategy is important not just to enhance biodiversity but in order to play a crucial role in carbon capture and sequestration. This has been emphasised by the Committee on Climate Change, which has pointed out that the UK tree-planting effort has “consistently fallen below” the target needed to achieve net zero by 2050.

Of course, we recognise that the Government have produced a tree action plan, but it is non-statutory and lacks the clarity and targets to deliver the necessary transformation of our landscapes and to tackle climate change. This is why we believe that a tree strategy with statutory and interim targets should be in the Bill. It should include measures to guarantee the preservation of ancient woodland, an emphasis on broad-leaf native woodland and greater powers to protect trees from disease and pests by encouraging domestic nurseries to produce more resilient saplings. It should also recognise the importance of smaller woodlands in creating biodiverse nature corridors and enhancing public enjoyment at a local level—a point made by my noble friend Lord Whitty.

Although we welcome the Government’s commitment to planting 30,000 hectares a year by the end of this Parliament, the Minister will know all too well that non-statutory tree-planting targets have come and gone in the past, as the earlier promise to plant 11 million trees demonstrates. So, I hope that, when he responds, the Minister can explain why a statutory tree strategy is missing from the Bill when there are already a number of strategies for other parts of nature development in it.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Report stage
Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I support both these amendments: Amendment 1, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and backed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, to which I am pleased to have attached my name; and Amendment 21 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.

In introducing his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, looked at what happened in the timeframe from when we last debated the Bill to today. I will take a different timeframe and go back to when the Bill was first introduced on 15 October 2019. A lot has happened since then. Obviously, we have had, and still have, a global pandemic, which is related to our biodiversity and climate crises, but in reaction to it we have seen enormous, massive and rapid change. We have seen the invention from scratch of highly effective new vaccines from a range of technologies. We have seen billions of doses of those vaccines already delivered. We have seen transformation on an almost daily scale of our entire way of life. The previously obscure word “lockdown” has become daily currency. International travel has almost stopped. “Zoom” has become a verb.

What has happened to the climate in those two years? Emissions fell in 2020, chiefly because of the pandemic, but a lot less than people expected. They then started to rise again. We have seen Extinction Rebellion out on our streets regularly and the climate strikers have become part of the national life of countries all around the world. But we have yet to see the scale of reaction that is needed to these emergencies, which are on the same scale as the pandemic. Just look at the contrast between those two scales of reaction and the fact that the Bill was written two years ago. In the age of shocks, with time moving so fast, that is an age. Amendment 1 would update the Bill to be fit for today, as it must be, and create the frame for it to be fit for the future.

I will briefly address Amendment 21. It is particularly important because we are starting to see the word “resilience” in news coverage, which was once an extremely rare occurrence. It is starting to rise up the news agenda. I speak as a former journalist. Amendment 21 seeks to address the risks, identify them and report on them.

I will focus in particular on proposed new subsection (2)(c), which would ensure that the views of 11 to 25 year-olds in the United Kingdom are continuously engaged in debating these risks. I reflect on that because yesterday I was in Sheffield, where I joined the Young Christian Climate Network, which is on a deliberately very slow pilgrimage from Truro to Glasgow, stopping in as many communities up and down the land as it possibly can to engage communities, particularly young people, on this issue. Climate strikers, young pilgrims and Extinction Rebellion are leading. The amendment would ensure that the Government and the Bill are at least in the right place to catch up.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 1, to which I added my name. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for his helpful amendment. We agree that assessing long-term environmental risk should be an essential part of setting environmental targets and improvement plans.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, very much for setting out why recognising our climate and biodiversity emergency is so important. He and other noble Lords set out the case with clarity, passion and commitment. As he said, this is indeed code red for humanity.

We had a number of excellent contributions in Committee which all strengthened the importance of having Amendment 1 underpin the Bill. It has of course become commonplace for government and civic society to acknowledge that we have a climate change emergency. The recent global evidence that the noble Baronesses, Lady Boycott and Lady Bennett, referred to reinforces this view. Quite frankly, it has made a mockery of the dwindling band of climate sceptics.

However, we still have some way to go to put the biodiversity crisis on an equal footing with the climate crisis, with comparable attention and resources. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said, biodiversity is seen as the poor relation, yet, as we have heard, the evidence of a biodiversity emergency is all around us. At a UK level, the RSPB’s State of Nature report showed that 41% of our species are declining and one in 10 threatened with extinction. We are one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. At a global level, the WWF has documented the international failure to meet the UN biodiversity targets, with an average 68% of species decline across the world. We see the impact of this decline in our gardens, countryside and waterways. For many of us, it is personally heartbreaking to see nature suffering and declining in this way.

We now understand more than ever that nature is not just a “nice to have”; it underpins our very existence and regulates the earth’s climate. As the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee’s report concludes:

“Biodiversity and well-functioning ecosystems are critical for human existence, economic prosperity, and a good quality of life.”


Of course, this echoes the previous conclusions of the much-quoted and seminal Dasgupta report.

That is why Amendment 1 is so important. A government declaration of a climate and biodiversity emergency would be more than symbolic. It would make it clear that the two issues are inextricably linked and that both require action on an urgent scale. In Committee, the Minister acknowledged these arguments. He said:

“We absolutely recognise the extent of the crisis”


that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and I had relayed. He went on to say:

“There is no doubt that the facts on the ground tell us that we are in crisis territory”,


but he also acknowledged that international action on climate change is well ahead of any comparable action on biodiversity. As he said:

“It remains the case … that of all international climate finance, only 2.5% to 3% is spent on nature-based solutions.”—[Official Report, 21/6/21; col. 37.]


This lies at the heart of the problem. A group of us were involved in debates on the Financial Services Bill earlier in the year. It was clear then that banking and businesses in the UK are slowly waking up to their climate change commitments, but I do not recall much mention of biodiversity in their strategies for the future. So far, it seems that biodiversity and nature-based solutions are seen as Defra issues, not government-wide issues. I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity or commitment on this issue, but the evidence seems to show that the department is struggling to get other government departments to take this issue seriously. This is why it is important that the Government as a whole recognise the joint emergency of climate change and biodiversity, and why the Prime Minister needs to recognise the emergencies and put action on both issues at the heart of government policy for the future.

Nature will not wait. We are spiralling into levels of extinction that cannot be reversed. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, this is the right time to make this declaration. I therefore hope that noble Lords will heed our call and support our amendment if it is put to a vote.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, briefly, I offer my support to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and thank her for tabling it and for sharing the very useful Bar Council briefing. I shall just draw a couple of points from that and make an additional point of my own.

One point to draw from that briefing is that there is a broad definition of environmental information within the Aarhus convention. The briefing rather weighs on some of our earlier debates, noting that it includes a non-exhaustive list of elements of the environment: air, water and soil. It also includes cultural sites and built structures, which very much weighed on a debate on day three perhaps—it all blurs—but one that we had earlier on the inclusion of culture within the frame of the Bill, for which noble Lords on all sides of the Committee strongly argued.

I also wanted to draw attention to the other point of the Aarhus convention, which says that

“public authorities may not withhold information, except for”—

and then follows what one would think of as a fairly standard list of exemptions. There is a very important restriction on those exemptions, which is that

“commercial confidentiality may not be invoked to withhold information that is relevant to the protection of the environment”.

Given the level of privatisation of so many aspects of our management of our environment—water companies come to mind most clearly, but there are many others—that may be a very important protection to ensure that this is fully included and complied with. It is worth noting that we are talking about an international convention to which we signed up, but we have recently had a lot of encounters in which the Government do not seem to regard themselves as being bound by international law and matters to which they have signed up.

My final point is the real, life-and-death seriousness of this. I shall refer to a case to which many people, including my noble friend, have referred to previously, which is the tragic death of nine-year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. I want to quote just one sentence from the coroner’s conclusion, which said:

“There was a lack of information given to Ella’s mother that possibly contributed to her death.”


Very often, when people are thinking about information about the environment being available, they are thinking in broad public health terms—they are thinking of campaigners, whom the Green Party is often supporting, fighting big issues. We are also talking about matters of life and death, and people being able to protect themselves and their children if information is available to them.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for allowing us to have this brief debate. She has rightly raised the fact that the OEP should have some continuing role in monitoring and factoring in our obligations under international environmental law. These obligations, including Aarhus, still exist despite us leaving the EU—and these are not technical questions, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, as just illustrated so vividly. If the Government are not minded to accept this amendment, it would be helpful if they could spell out how the role of the OEP and its enforcement functions with regard to our international obligations will appear in the Bill. I therefore look forward to the Minister’s response.

However, since I have the floor, I briefly echo the concerns of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, about all the business on the Bill ending up at Report. I just say very kindly to the Minister that, in the past, it has been a much more iterative process. It is really not very helpful that the Minister seems to be giving us a blanket no to all the amendments we are debating. Normally, there is a little more give and take. Everyone has their own way of doing things, and he must develop his own style, but I fear that he is storing up more problems than is necessary at Report if he does not take the Chamber with him. This might just be a matter of tone, but I give him just a little helpful advice about how we might proceed.