Data Protection and Privacy

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Lord is right to mention the Kidron amendment—I think it is called that now, by universal approval—which the Government are pleased to support. It is early days, to the extent that the Data Protection Bill has not even had its Second Reading in the other place. However, the ICO is aware of what it will be required to do if this amendment remains in place and is working on that. In the meantime, it is concentrating on the GDPR coming into effect on 25 May, and the work that has to be done to get people up to speed before that date.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, following the question of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, does the Minister believe that the best place to start is in schools, with personal data taught as part of a statutory PSHE course?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

It is very important that all young people are aware of both the opportunities and the dangers associated with the internet and data-driven technologies. To that extent, I agree with the noble Lord.

Museums and Galleries

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

“Where’s the cash?” was the forward and impatient response by the Guardian to the Mendoza review in its editorial on 14 November last year. The Museums Association said,

“we are disappointed that despite recognising the severe funding difficulties experienced by many museums, the government has failed to identify any new resources or capacity to improve the sustainability of the sector”.

As the MA reported last year, for the whole of the UK—for which figures are more readily available than just England—at least 64 museums closed, alongside a 31% drop in real-terms funding between 2010 and 2016. Concerning the future, according to the Local Government Association, local services generally, covering England and Wales, face a £5.8 billion gap in 2019-20, and the 1% council tax flexibility—not in any case the fairest point to introduce an extra tax burden—will be,

“nowhere near enough to meet”,

the gap.

The plain fact is that a number of the key priorities set out by the Mendoza review simply will not be effectively achieved without proper funding through local authorities, because so much depends on the day-to-day running of those local and regional museums for which council funding is, frankly, irreplaceable, and this despite the continuous exhortation over many years now by central government to find other means of funding. Indeed, an acceptance of the Government’s stance is an aspect of the review itself.

A key and important priority of the review is cultural education. It is hugely important for our museums to act as educational tools—windows on the world for children and adults. One of the latest announcements of cuts, in December, was of the 50% cut by Eastbourne Borough Council to the Towner Art Gallery, which chair David Dimbleby believes jeopardises its significant learning programme. The DCMS’s own report last year showed a worrying 6.9% decrease in educational visits for under-18s to DCMS sites. There is a parallel here, as the National Society for Education in Art and Design points out, with the reduction in teaching hours in schools, as reported by the Cultural Learning Alliance.

It is right that the national bodies should work more closely together but councils cannot and should not be perceived as being shut out of the frame. The Arts Council, quite correctly, makes it very clear that it is not there to pick up the shortfall.

As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, set out passionately in his opening speech, we have extraordinary public collections and put on wonderful special exhibitions. Anyone who watched the BBC series “Britain’s Lost Masterpieces” will realise that we have more than we even thought we had. The additional funding provided by the lottery—so helpful, as the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, explained, for refurbishment and many other things—sometimes erroneously gives the impression that all is okay, particularly in London. On the subject of the lottery, will the Minister respond to the concerns about last year’s fall in lottery income? We have recently had a National Audit Office report which points out a decreasing interest in draw-based games, with, however, increased profits for Camelot.

The permanent public collections belong to us. They need to be properly displayed and seen as often as possible, maintained and conserved in museums fit for purpose and staffed with experts. We have much of that but are in danger of losing it for some of our museums, although all of them are pinched. Our local and regional museums are important parts of our community and should be properly funded through local councils by central government. Central government is failing us. The public deserve better.

Working internationally is one of the priorities of the review for our museums. On the potential effect of Brexit, a survey carried out last week of galleries participating in last weekend’s London Art Fair discovered that the primary concern was about free movement of people and goods. There is clearly concern over the movement both ways of artists, gallerists, staff and many others who are part of this industry. One should add here too that museums and galleries are about cultural exchange and knowledge, and our future participation in Erasmus+ is germane to the argument. We need to be careful here. I think it is very likely that we will remain within Erasmus; rather, our level of participation is the crucial issue. To retain the currently meaningful benefits, our participation must remain on the same level as that of all other countries within the EEA. There are also considerable fears over an increase in licensing requirements, which may severely affect our ability to lend and borrow artworks.

The galleries’ second major concern is around their tax status and about which way VAT on goods moving between the UK and other countries will go. What assurances can the Minister give that the Government as a whole, who will have some control over these areas, are taking these matters seriously? These are concerns that affect the arts and the creative industries more generally.

Finally, I ask the Minister, if he has not already done so, to look carefully at the measured speech which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, made during the debate on the ivory trade on 21 December and which was answered by Defra. Our significant cultural heritage and our living environmental heritage are both important. We need to preserve both.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise in support of these amendments, as if any further support were needed. I speak as the Member of your Lordships’ House who chaired your Communications Committee when we produced our report, Growing Up With the Internet. My noble friend Lady Kidron was a most distinguished member of the committee and greatly helped us in formulating our recommendations. Alongside support for parents and schools and other measures, the committee sought government intervention in curbing the poor practices of the organisations providing content and delivering the internet’s services to children, especially through social media. This group of amendments takes forward that central theme from the committee’s report, and I thank my noble friend and congratulate her on her foresight and tenacity in pursuing this. I also thank the Minister, backed by his Secretary of State, for supporting these amendments today.

The underlying significance of the amendments is that they establish a process for government—for society—to intervene in determining the behaviour of those responsible for internet services that can have such a huge impact on the lives of our children. In particular, the new process will cover the activities of huge global companies such as Facebook and Google, among the most prosperous and profitable organisations on the planet, which have the power, if only they would use it, to ensure the safety and well-being of children online. The process set in train by these amendments involves empowering the Information Commissioner to set the standards that all the key players will be expected to adopt or face significant sanctions. The amendments mark a necessary shift away from depending on good will and purely voluntary self-regulation. They represent a breakthrough in holding to account those mighty corporations based far away in Silicon Valley, to which the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, made reference, and others closer to home. It is good to see major organisation such as Sky and TalkTalk supporting such a change, alongside the major charities such as the NSPCC.

Your Lordships’ Communications Committee and the whole House owe a huge debt of gratitude to my noble friend Lady Kidron for so diligently taking forward the arguments that have led to the significant change which these amendments herald. I know that the committee, as well as all those concerned with the safety and well-being of the nation’s children, will greatly welcome this big step towards ensuring better behaviour from all the relevant commercial enterprises. I suggest that this is a major step in protecting not just children in the UK but children around the world as the value of this kind of intervention becomes recognised, as the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, mentioned. The amendments get my fulsome support.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 117 in my name, but before I do I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lady Kidron on obtaining this important code of practice for children. I apologise for not having spoken in the debate on this Bill previously, but Amendment 117 is significant and is also a children’s rights issue.

If there is to be—correctly—a sensitivity concerning age-appropriate understanding by children in relation to information services, the same should be no less true in the school setting, where personal data given out ranges from a new maths app to data collected by the DfE for the national pupil database. A code of practice needs to be introduced that centres on the rights of the child—children are currently disempowered in relation to their own personal data in schools. Although not explicitly referred to in this amendment, such a code ought to reflect the child’s right to be heard as set out in Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Among other things, it would allow children, parents, school staff and systems administrators to build trust together in safe, fair and transparent practice.

The situation is complicated in part by the fact that it is parents who make decisions on behalf of children up to the age of 18; although that in itself makes it even more necessary that children are made aware of the data about themselves that is collected and every use to which that data may be put, including the handing on to third-party users, as well as the justification for so doing. The current reality is that children may well go through life without knowing that data on a named basis is held permanently by the DfE, let alone passed on to others. There may, of course, be very good research reasons why data is collected, but such reasons should not override children’s rights, even as an exemption.

It is because there is no clear code of practice for a culture of increased data gathering in the school setting that we now have the current situation of growing controversy, enforcement and misuse. It is important, for instance, that both parents and children, in their capacity to understand, are made aware—as schools should be—of what data can be provided optionally. However, when nationality and place of birth were introduced by the DfE last year, many schools demanded that passports be brought into the classroom. In effect, the DfE operated an opt-out system. The introduction of nationality and place of birth data also raises the question of the relevance of data to improving education and its ultimate use. Many parents do not believe that such data has anything to do with the improvement of education. Last week, Against Borders for Children, supported by Liberty, launched an action against the Government on this basis.

There is now also considerable concern about the further expansion of the census data in January next year to include alternative provision data on mental health, pregnancy and other sensitive information without consent from parents or children, with no commitment to children’s confidentiality and without ceasing the use of identifying data for third-party use.

It was only after FOI requests and questions from Caroline Lucas that we discovered that the DfE had passed on individual records to the Home Office for particular immigration purposes. As defenddigitalme said, such action,

“impinges on fundamental rights to privacy and the basic data protection principles of purposes limitation and fairness”.

I appreciate that as the Bill stands such purposes are an exemption, but teachers are not border guards.

In 2013, a large number of records were passed to the Daily Telegraph by the DfE. In an Answer given on 31 October this year by Nick Gibb to a Question by Darren Jones, he incorrectly said that individuals could not be identified. There is no suggestion that there was any sinister intent, but many parents and schoolchildren would be appalled that a newspaper had possession of this data or that such a transfer of information was possible. Moreover, in the same Answer he said that he did not know how many datasets had been passed on. This is unacceptable. There needs to be a proper auditing process, as data needs to be safe. It is wrong too that a company may have more access to a pupil’s data than the pupil themselves, or indeed have such data corrected if wrong.

It is clear that from the Government’s point of view, one reason for having a good code of practice is to restore confidence in the Government, but this should not be the main reason. In September, Schools Week reported that the Information Commissioner’s Office was critical of the current DfE guidance, which is aimed at schools rather than parents or children and is, in the main, procedural. It said that rights were not given enough prominence. Both children and parents need to be properly informed of these rights and the use to which data is put at every stage throughout a child’s school life and, where applicable, beyond.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I add my very strong welcome for this amendment to the very strong welcome from these Benches. I endorse everything that my noble friend Lord McNally said about the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and her energy and efforts. In fact, I believe that she was far too modest in her introduction of the amendment. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Best, that, quite honestly, this is essentially a game-changer in the online world for children. As he said, the process of setting standards could be much wider than simply the UK. As the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, said, these major tech companies need to wake up and understand that they have to behave in an ethical fashion. Having been exposed to some of the issues in recent weeks, it is obvious to me that as technology becomes ever more autonomous, the way tech companies adopt ethical forms of behaviour becomes ever more important. This is the start of something important in this field. Otherwise, the public will turn away and will not understand why all this is happening. That will inevitably be the consequence.

Youth Orchestras

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I think the orchestra should check with its insurance broker because I am not sure whether that is a critical factor for travelling orchestras. Much more important is the visa requirements that will be needed after Brexit, and we are working hard with the Home Office to ensure that they are acceptable. The other measure that we are taking is the orchestra tax relief, which allows orchestras to travel.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister concerned at the continuing fall in income from the National Lottery—the lottery benefiting youth orchestras alongside other areas of the art—and, if so, what measures might be taken to reverse this trend?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Earl is a doughty champion of the arts, for which I pay tribute to him. Of course we are concerned that lottery receipts are reducing. I believe work is under way to look at that. I do not have the information to hand but the Minister responsible in my department is looking at it very closely.

Brexit: Creative Industries

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness that the creative industries have been not only European leaders but world leaders. As far as Europe is concerned, we absolutely want them to go on contributing in that way. That will be part of the negotiations. We want them to continue to be part of things such as the European creative fund. With regard to other EU funds, if various industries apply for grants the Chancellor has agreed to guarantee to continue paying those after we leave, until the project’s expiration.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, for many working in the creative industries the most pressing concern is whether they will be able to travel to other countries in Europe at short notice to work. Some UK musicians travel within Europe more than 40 times a year. Surely in that and many other instances—the Minister will be aware that the advertising industry raised this concern yesterday—the implementation of visas will be unrealistic and detrimental to the sector.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Earl makes a good point and we are only too well aware of it. One of my department’s roles is to make sure that the aspects raised by the creative industries are known throughout government, in particular to the Department for Exiting the EU and the Home Office. My department is working closely with the Home Office and the Migration Advisory Committee.