Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I hesitate to make a Second Reading speech, and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, cannot resist rehearsing these points. However, it is important, at the outset of Committee, to reflect on the Bill in its generality, and the noble Lord did a very good job of precisely that. This is fundamental.

The problem for us with the Bill is not just that it is a collection of subjects—of ideas about how data should be handled, managed and developed—but that it is flawed from the outset. It is a hotchpotch of things that do not really hang together. Several of us have chuntered away in the margins and suggested that it would have been better if the Bill had fallen and there had been a general election—not that the Minister can comment on that. But it would be better, in a way. We need to go back to square one, and many in the Committee are of a like mind.

The noble Baroness, Lady Harding, made a good point about data management, data control and so on. Her example was interesting, because this is about building trust, having confidence in data systems and managing data in the future. Her example was very good, as was that of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, who raised a challenge about how the anonymisation, or pseudonymisation, of data will work and how effective it will be.

We have two amendments in this group. Taken together, they are designed to probe exactly what the practical impacts will be of the proposed changes to Section 3 of the 2018 Act and the insertion of new Section 3A. Amendment 4 calls for the Secretary of State to publish an assessment of the changes within two months of the Bill passing, while Amendment 301 would ensure that the commencement of Clause 1 takes place no earlier than that two-month period. Noble Lords might think this is unduly cautious, but, given our wider concerns about the Bill and its departure from the previously well-understood—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Scott of Needham Market) (LD)]

My Lords, a Division having been called, we will adjourn for 10 minutes and resume at 4.48 pm.