Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and to give full-throated support to my friend the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, on all his amendments. Given that the noble Baroness mentioned it and that another week has passed since we asked the Minister the question, will we see an AI Bill or a consultation before Santa comes or at some stage in the new year? I support all the amendments in this group and in doing so, as it is the first time I have spoken today in Committee, I declare my technology interests as set out in the register, not least as an adviser to Socially Recruited, an AI business.

I will speak particularly to my Amendment 211A. I have put down “image, likeness and personality” not because I believe that they stand as the most important rights that are being transgressed or that they are the most important rights which we should consider; I have put them down to give a specific focus on them because, right now, they are being largely cut across and ignored, so that all of our creatives find themselves with their works, but also image, likeness and personality, disappearing into these largely foundation AI models with no potential for redress.

Once parts of you such as your name, face or voice have been ingested, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said in the previous group, it is difficult then to have them extracted from the model. There is no sense, for example, of seeking an equitable remedy to put one back in the situation had the breach not occurred. It is almost “once in, forever in”, then works start to be created based on those factors, features and likenesses, which compete directly with the creatives. This is already particularly prevalent in the music industry.

What plans do the Government have in terms of personality rights, image and likeness? Are they content with the current situation where there is no protection for our great creatives, not least in the music industry? What does the Bill do for our creatives? I go back to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. How can we have all these debates on a data Bill which is silent when it comes to AI, and a product regulation Bill where AI is specifically excluded, and yet have no AI Bill on the near horizon—unless the Minister can give us some up-to-date information this afternoon? I look forward to hearing from her.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I should first apologise for not being able to attend Second Reading or, arguably more importantly, to be in Committee last week to support the many amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on child protection. I read Hansard carefully and was deeply depressed to see that we were once again needing to rehearse, as she has done again today, the importance of protecting children in the digital era. It seems to be our lot that there is a group of us who keep coming back. We play the merry-go-round and sit in different places; it is a privilege to sit next to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for the first time in the decade that I have been in the House. I support her Amendment 137. She has given a good exposé as to why we should think really carefully about how we protect children in this AI world. I would just like to add one point about AI itself.

We keep being told—in a good way—that AI is an underlying and general-purpose technology. That means we need to properly establish the principles with which we should protect children there. We know that technology is morally neutral; it is the human beings who do the damage. In every other underlying, breakthrough technology, we have learned that we have needed to protect the most vulnerable, whether it was electricity when it first went into factories, toys when they were first distributed on the mass market, or social media, with the age-appropriate design code. I feel that it would be a huge mistake, on the third Bill where many of us have debated this subject matter, for us not to address the fact that, as of today, this is the biggest breakthrough technology of our lifetime. We should recognise that children will need protecting, as well as having the opportunity to benefit from it.

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Moved by

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe]

95: Clause 77, page 91, line 16, leave out “to the extent that” and insert “when any one or more of the following is true”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would clarify that only one condition under paragraph 5 must be present for paragraphs 1 to 4 to not apply.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I was in such a hurry to apologise just now for missing Second Reading that I forgot to declare my interests and remind the Committee of my technology and, with regard to this group, charitable interests as set out in the register.

I shall speak to Amendments 95, 96, 98, 101, 102 and 104 in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood, and Amendments 103 and 106 in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Stevenson. I also support Amendment 162 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. I will speak only on the marketing amendments in my name and leave the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, to do, I am sure, great justice to the charitable soft opt-in.

These amendments are nothing like as philosophical and emotive as the last amendment on children and AI. They aim to address a practical issue that we debated in the late spring on the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. I will not rehearse the arguments that we made, not least because the Minister was the co-signatory of those amendments, so I know she is well versed in them.

Instead, I shall update the Committee on what has happened since then and draw noble Lords’ attention to a couple of the issues that are very real and present now. It is strange that all Governments seem reluctant to restrict the new technology companies’ use of our data but extremely keen to get into the micro detail of restricting older forms of our using data that we have all got quite used to.

That is very much the case for the open electoral register. Some 63% of people opt out of being marketed at, because they have put their name as such on the electoral register. This is a well known and well understood use of personal data. Yet, because of the tribunal ruling, it is increasingly the case that companies cannot use the open electoral register and target the 37% of people who have said that they are quite happy to receive marketing unless the company lets every single one of those users know that they are about to market to them. The danger is that we create a new cookie problem—a physical cookie problem—where, if you want to use a data source that has been commonplace for 40 years, you have to send some marketing to tell people that you are about to use it. That of course means that you will not do so, which means that you reduce the data available to a lot of small and medium-sized businesses to market their products and hand them straight to the very big tech companies, which are really happy to scrape our data all over the place.

This is a strange one, where I find myself arguing that we should just allow something that is not broken not to need to be fixed. I appreciate that the Minister will probably tell us that the wording in these amendments is not appropriate. As I said earlier in the year—in April, in the previous incarnation—I very much hope that if the wording is incorrect we could, between Committee and Report, have a discussion and agree on some wording that achieves what seems just practical common sense.

The tribunal ruling that created this problem recognised that it was causing a problem. It stated that it accepted that the loophole it created would allow one company, Experian, a sizeable competitive advantage. It is a slightly perverse one: it means that it has to let only 5 million people know that it might be about to use the open electoral register, while its competitors have to let 22 million people know. That just does not pass the common-sense test of practical use of data. Given the prior support that the Minister has shown for this issue, I very much hope that we can resolve it between Committee and Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have a couple of amendments in this group, Amendments 158 and 161. Amendment 158 is largely self-evident; it tries to make sure that, where there is a legal requirement to communicate, that communication is not obstructed by the Bill. I would say much the same of Amendment 161; that, again, it is obvious that there ought to be easy communication where a person’s pension is concerned and the Bill should not obstruct it. I am not saying that these are the only ways to achieve these things, but they should be achieved.

I declare an interest on Amendment 160, in that I control the website of the Good Schools Guide, which has advertising on it. The function of advertising on the web is to enable people to see things for free. It is why it does not close down to a subscription-only service. If people put advertisements on the web, they want to know that they are effective and have been seen, and some information about who they have been seen by. I moved a similar amendment to the previous Government’s Bill and encountered some difficulty. If the Government are of the same mind—that this requires us to be careful—I would very much welcome the opportunity of a meeting between now and Report, and I imagine others would too, to try to understand how best to make sure that advertising can flourish on the internet.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness very much for that very helpful intervention. If she has any more information about the view of the Charity Commission, we would obviously like to engage with that because we need to get this right. We want to make sure that individuals welcome and appreciate the information given to them, rather than it being something that could have a negative impact.

I think I have covered all the issues. I hope those explanations have been of some reassurance to noble Lords and that, as such, they are content not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

May I just follow up by asking one quick question? I may be clutching at straws here but, in responding to the amendments in my name, she stated what the ICO believes rather than what the Government believe. She also said that the ICO may think that further permission is required to ensure transparency. I understand from the Data & Marketing Association that users of this data have four different ways of ensuring transparency. Would the Minister agree to a follow-up meeting to see whether there is a meeting of minds with what the Government think, rather than the ICO?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I am very happy to talk to the noble Baroness about this issue. She asked what the Government’s view is; we are listening very carefully to the Information Commissioner and the advice that he is putting together on this issue.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the answers the noble Baroness gave to my amendments. I will study carefully what she said in Hansard, and if I have anything further to ask, I will write to her.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, in response—and very briefly, given the technical nature of all these amendments—I think that we should just note that there are a number of different issues in this group, all of which I think noble Lords in this debate will want to follow up. I thank the many noble Lords who have contributed both this time round and in the previous iterations, and ask that we follow up on each of the different issues, probably separately rather than in one group, as we will get ourselves quite tangled in the web of data if we are not careful. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 95 withdrawn.