Data Protection Bill [HL]

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

I struggle to see how any amendment can take us to where we need to be at the moment without requiring the generation, prior to the coming into force of this clause, of an evidence base to facilitate an informed determination of what the digital age of consent should be.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, we have to face the reality that children are going online at a younger and younger age, so anything that facilitates that and makes it work more sensibly is essential. We need to think about the interface with the right of erasure in Clause 44 and the clauses just after it. I am not sure whether parental consent is still required for this when someone is under 16. There have been problems where children or younger people have put images and other material online which they want removed but are far too embarrassed to tell their parents about them. The problem is that data processors are not allowed to remove them without parental consent, so the children do not tell their parents, the images stay there and a lot of trouble is caused. That area should be looked at in relation to these clauses and Clause 44. I would love to leave it to someone else to sort this out who is better qualified to deal with the legal position.

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and apologise to the Minister and the House for not being present at Second Reading as I was overseas. However, my noble friend Lady Jay more than adequately set out some of my concerns around Part 5 of the Bill. However, this is also a very important amendment. In the debate initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, on 7 September, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said:

“There is an awkward tension in having a technology that is able to help us to confront our societal needs … and a corporate culture that aggressively balks at … long-term societal responsibilities”.—[Official Report, 7/9/17; col. 2118.]


In the end, that is precisely what this comes down to. The noble Baroness, Lady Harding, made a very important point a little earlier. She referred to barriers to entry being used by corporations to not do the things that they should do, and at the time they should do them.

Today is the 20th anniversary of my entering your Lordships’ House and, if I had to count the number of times I have been told that barriers to entry are the reason for not doing something, we would all be here all day. I well remember the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, who is in his place, and I having a meeting with the then Ministers for Energy and being told that “barriers to entry” were one reason that the large energy companies could not do the things that we suggested they might do at the time. Therefore the idea that the Silicon Valley companies have not reached a sufficient size or sophistication to be able to carry out the de minimis changes to their platforms—the effect of the amendment which the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, set out so beautifully—is a nonsense. Please can the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, beg Matt Hancock, the Minister, to put to one side any more arguments about unacceptable barriers to entry being raised by this and indeed other amendments on the same subject?