Media Bill

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

We live in a world where our current Government have, for the last few years, frequently stood at the Dispatch Box and talked—usually when they were slightly on the back foot—about how we are world-leading, world-beating, et cetera. In all my experience of giving praise, praise is at its most effective when it is given to us by other parties. If you go around the world and ask people what they think about our public sector broadcasters, they say they are genuinely world-beating and set the pace for the world. For once, can we accept praise and believe what the rest of the world is telling us, rather than thinking that we can reinvent truth—and do it in a way that may lose what we have? I quoted Joni Mitchell at Second Reading. She did not talk about the baby going out with the bath-water—they use showers in California—but you get my point.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register, primarily as chair of Peers for the Planet. I rise to speak to Amendment 8 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who very much regrets that she cannot be here this afternoon.

After listening to the contributions on the first four amendments in this group, I hope—it does not always happen in Committee—that my comments on Amendment 8 will continue the conversation that has been started about overarching principles. This amendment reflects two of the enduring principles which have underpinned our world-class—my noble friend used the phrase “world-beating”—PSB regime: discoverability and trust. Ensuring prominence for public service broadcasters in a digital world is a welcome reform in this Bill. In ensuring that PSB content is discoverable, we need to do what we can to maintain and strengthen public trust in the content that is discovered. I am particularly grateful to the Royal Society for its support for Amendment 8. Its briefing recognises the importance of science and scientific credibility in our national broadcasting framework. It also recognises the risks posed by concerning trends in misinformation.

Amendment 8 would amend the Communications Act 2003 to require Ofcom, in carrying out its functions, to report on the provision by public service broadcasters of accurate and timely science-based public information, and of countering misinformation, including—but not exclusively—on matters such as public health, climate and the environment, which reflect key existential threats of our time.

The effect of Amendment 8 is cross-cutting; it is not genre specific—that is a debate we will have later in Committee. It emphasises the important of good science and the need to tackle misinformation across the totality of PSB output, a theme that has already emerged. It sits alongside a number of other strategic objectives in Clause 1(5) of the Bill, which encapsulate important outputs of the PSB regime, such as “facilitating … well-informed debate”, reflecting diverse cultural concerns and traditions, and the concerns of children and young people, as well as original and regional production.

The need for this amendment is well documented. In its recent report Trusted Voices, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee notes the rise of information on public health issues such as Covid-19, water fluoridation and 5G, alongside climate change. It states:

“The Covid-19 pandemic made clear just how vital it is to be able to access authoritative information. In February 2020, the World Health Organisation warned that, alongside the outbreak of COVID-19, the world faced an ‘infodemic’, an unprecedented overabundance of information—both accurate and false—that prevented people from accessing authoritative, reliable guidance about the virus”.


In this context, the committee emphasised the importance of trusted voices from the scientific community and the role of the media in providing those trusted voices. Recent research from Ofcom further underlines why those trusted voices matter: it found that adults and children “overestimate” their ability to spot misinformation, with “only two in 10” adults being

“able to correctly identify the tell-tale signs of a genuine”

social media post. Worryingly, there is a similar pattern among children.

The damage caused by misinformation in relation to health issues is also well documented. A 2022 study covered in the bulletin of the World Health Organization found that:

“Incorrect interpretations of health information, which increase during outbreaks and disasters, often negatively impact people’s mental health and increase vaccine hesitancy, and can delay the provision of health care”.


This year, a Lancet study indicates that infodemics create damage beyond the negative outcomes for any specific health epidemic,

“such as reduction of public trust in health institutions and economic burden due to increased morbidity and mortality, including costs that take away resources from other public health activities”.

Damage caused by misinformation on climate change is similarly concerning. The Global Risks Report 2024 by the World Economic Forum ranked misinformation as the biggest short-term risk to human society, and extreme weather events as the top long-term risk. Those two findings underline that one of the greatest risks to society is obscuring the facts on climate change. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report in 2022 was very clear:

“Rhetoric and misinformation on climate change and the deliberate undermining of science have contributed to misperceptions of the scientific consensus, uncertainty, disregarded risk and urgency, and dissent”.


It also found that misinformation, in turn, is impacting on climate policy decisions.

Everyone agrees that, since the PSB regime was last reviewed, the world has changed. We are now, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said, to look to the future and the effects of that infodemic. The evidence on the level of, and the damage caused by, scientific misinformation is deeply troubling. Some of it can be measured in data, but much of it is much more insidious. Surely the roles of the media regulator and the PSBs in the coming years become more, rather than less, important in responding to this challenge.

Amendment 8 is a proportionate and workable amendment to future-proof the PSB regime. It provides a clear strategic steer on the responsibility of the media sector and its regulator, without being overly prescriptive. The crucial role of science in our cultural and public discourse is something on which most of us agree. If we want a powerful regulator such as Ofcom to take into account the importance of science, and the clear dangers of scientific misinformation, we need to tell it to do so, and we need our public service broadcasters to support trusted voices and be trusted themselves.

I hope the Government will give this amendment serious consideration.

Charities Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a co-chair of Peers for the Planet and the chair of Malaria No More UK. Like others who have spoken, I have been involved with various charities for many decades.

I certainly support and welcome this Bill and its provisions to address complicated and uncertain areas of charity law. I will leave it to others better qualified than I to comment on some of the detail, although I have past experience of legacies and ex gratia payments where these provisions will, I think, be extremely welcome.

Since we do not often debate charity law, I hope that noble Lords will allow me the opportunity to touch responsible investment, which is another area of charity law that could similarly be described as complicated and uncertain, and, in line with that, to consider how the role and remit of the Charity Commission aligns with the UK’s net-zero and biodiversity goals.

In January 2020, the Charity Commission began a listening exercise. It revealed that ambiguities in charities investment law impede some charity trustees from pursuing responsible investment strategies. The commission subsequently published a consultation on draft revised responsible investment guidance. My reading is that this continues to take a permissive approach to responsible investment but neither expects nor encourages any charity to invest responsibly. I fear that that could be interpreted as an invitation not even to consider whether responsible investment is the right thing to do.

With environmental degradation and climate action failure commonly recognised as the greatest risks we face, and with the Government arguing that all sections of society should be involved in our statutory and international obligations and support the UK’s transition to a net-zero, nature-positive economy, I have to ask whether the Charity Commission should play a part in this and encourage charities to do so themselves. The commission’s statutory remit does not include any express mention of sustainability or any requirement to promote sustainable behaviour on the part of charities. This is at odds with government policy and trends in all areas of society. The commission’s strategy documents —its five-year strategic plan and its business plan—make no reference to the challenges posed by climate change and biodiversity loss. The commission last updated its rather slim guidance on environmental sustainability in March 2013.

The Climate Change Committee’s recent progress report to Parliament emphasises the need for a net-zero test to ensure that all government policy is joined up and compatible with UK climate targets. Charities and their regulator should not be exempt from this. At a time when these changes are driving comprehensive social, economic and political change, charities should be at the forefront of responding to it and seizing sustainable opportunities, and the Charity Commission should be encouraging them to do so.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, that this is not the Bill to make major changes to the commission’s functions, although perhaps in future we could look at how we could insert a responsibility for it to align with climate change goals in statute. In the meantime, much could be done through improved guidance and clarification of the commission’s role to ensure that it takes the UK’s environmental commitments into account when setting its strategy. I would be very grateful for any comments from the Minister on how the Government consider their own goals should interact with the Charity Commission’s remit, powers and guidance for charities.

Data Protection and Privacy

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I do not believe that that is the case although I cannot give an absolute guarantee because I am not sure of my facts. One thing that the Digital Economy Bill did was to outline what Governments can do with their own data. They can use it within government. The general data protection regulation makes the issue of consent much more explicit. Consent has to be genuine consent.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister add the National Health Service to the list of organisations that need to be involved? Does he agree that within the National Health Service there is an enormous amount of data that could be of fantastic benefit to medical research? It can be anonymised. It may be, for example, that in cohort studies people have already given their consent to that data being used. I declare my interests, as set out in the register. Will he agree that there can sometimes be a misunderstanding of the extent of data protection, which could act as a real obstacle to the sort of research that we all want to see?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

That is the subject of the amendment to the Data Protection Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell. It gives a good example of the sort of thing that the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation could consider. On the one hand, the National Health Service has an unparalleled amount of medical information that could be used to advantage. On the other hand, if it is monetised and sold on, which has the superficial attraction of providing money for the NHS, it could prevent researchers using that information in the same way that pharmacological organisations do. It could actually prevent health benefits occurring. It is a classic example of an ethical dilemma that the centre will be able to look at.

Data Ethics Commission

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

That is of course important, and the data protection Bill will include measures to protect children and to allow data which is held by social media companies, for example, to be deleted. As for engaging children in considering these ethical issues, that is something that the data commission can consider but, as I said, we have not yet been specific about the structure, function and remit of the commission.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the ethics and governance council for UK Biobank. Does the Minister agree that the potential value in health of the use of big data—in the development of new medicines and other fields—is enormous? In view of that, will he ensure that the interests of medical research are included in the commission’s terms of reference, given that it is essential that the public have trust in the systems governing the use of their information?