Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Viscount Younger of Leckie

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

The noble Viscount explained in response to the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, that at every stage where the powers are going to be expanded, it would come back as an affirmative regulation. I might have been a bit slow about this, but I have been having a look and I cannot see where it says that. Perhaps he could point that out to me, because that would provide some reassurance that each stage of this is coming back to us.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I understand, very quickly, that it is in paragraph 1(1), but again, in the interests of time, maybe we could talk about that outside the Room.

Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Viscount Younger of Leckie

Committee stage
Monday 22nd April 2024 Grand Committee

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. I may be able to give her further reassurances in a letter because, on the one hand, we do want the power to be able to cover the ground. On the other hand, there are necessary protections that we must put in place. So further reassurances probably need to be given. There is that balance to be struck, but I hope I can continue to do that.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

If I may pursue this, I am not sure I heard the Minister’s answer to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—or maybe I did. If it was a charitable bank account, a business account or anything else, I think the Minister said that it would be subject to that scrutiny as well. Once someone acts for a carer, all of their bank accounts could be scrutinised—surely that is ridiculously unfair.

Department for Work and Pensions: AI

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Viscount Younger of Leckie

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

There are couple of questions there. We continue to explore the potential of AI in combating fraud. This includes the integrated risk and intelligence service, using AI to assist in identifying possible fraud in processing universal credit advances. To answer my noble friend’s question, importantly, DWP does not use AI to replace human judgment when considering the potential for incorrectness to either determine or deny payment to a claimant. The NAO and the ICO looked at this issue recently and found no areas of immediate concern.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the issue that my noble friend raised about access to millions of people’s bank accounts came up at a very late stage—Report—of Commons dealings with the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. Can the Minister outline why such contentious measures were introduced only after the line-by-line consideration of the Bill in the elected House? Why did the Government refuse the Opposition’s request that the legislation go back to Committee, as did the Online Safety Bill in the last Session? Can the Minister justify why this very contentious piece of legislation is being rushed through?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I will not be drawn into answering questions on that, but I can say that it is important that the scrutiny of the Bill is done in an effective way and, of course, this House is very good at doing that. As I have mentioned before, it is very important that there is trust in AI solutions; this must be a prevalent issue among all users of AI.