Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, it is always rather daunting following the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. I think the safest thing to say, which has the added benefit of being true, is that I agreed with him.

I declare my interests as set out in the register, in particular that I am a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board and the chair of the advisory panel of Thales UK, which makes the British passport. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, this Bill is a wonderful opportunity to talk about everything that is not in it and to discuss further measures that could be included. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, mentioned the amendment she moved on 24 April to the predecessor Bill, designed to deal with the presumption that computer evidence is reliable, despite the fact that we all know that it is not. We shall need to come to that presumption in Committee.

I supported the amendment from the noble Baroness in Committee earlier this year, although I accept—as I think she does—that simply returning to the position as it was in 1999, before the presumption existed, may not be the best solution. We need some method, for example, of accepting that breathalysers, on the whole, work as they are intended to do, and that emails, on the whole, work as they are intended to do, and we should not have to get a certificate of accuracy from Microsoft before every trial.

The need to find a solution to the problems so brutally exposed by the Post Office scandal is urgent. In the Post Office cases, in essence, the proper burden of proof was reversed and hearsay evidence that was false was accepted as gospel truth. As a result of Horizon and the appalling human behaviour that accompanied it, the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of postmasters were ruined and the UK and Fujitsu are going to have to pay billions in compensation. So this matter is urgent.

The solution may be, as Alistair Kelman has recommended, a set of seven or so detailed statements setting out what has been done to ensure that the computer evidence is reliable. It may be, as a senior and highly respected judge has recommended, a division between complex cases, such as those involving a system such as Horizon, and simple cases, such as those involving breathalysers and emails, with more stringent evidentiary requirements for the complex cases. It may be, as Professor Steven Murdoch has suggested, that documents designed to test the reliability of computer systems should be made available to the other side and be subject to challenge. It may be something else, but this Bill is an opportunity to consider, examine and test those solutions, and another such opportunity may not come along quickly. I repeat: this matter is urgent.

On a different matter, Part 2 of the Bill establishes a regulatory framework for the provision of digital verification services in the UK. We need to be clear that having a clear and verifiable digital identity is a completely different matter from going down the route of identity cards. This is not an identity card Bill. It is an essential method of establishing, if you want or need to have a digital identity, that you are who you say you are and you have the attributes that you say you have. It is a way of establishing relevant facts about yourself without having to produce gas bills. I do not know about other noble Lords, but I find producing gas bills rather tricky now that they are almost all online.

Sometimes the fact you need to establish will be age: to establish that you are allowed to drink or to drive, or that you are still alive, or whatever. Sometimes it will be your address; sometimes it will be your sex. We do not want men going to women’s prisons, nor men who identify as women working in rape crisis centres. Sex is an issue on which it is necessary to have some degree of factual clarity in those circumstances where it matters. The Bill, again, is an opportunity to ensure that this factual clarity exists in the register of births. It will then be for the individual to decide whether to share the information about their sex, age, or whatever.

An organisation called Sex Matters—I am grateful for the briefing—issued a report yesterday pointing out that, at the moment, data verification services are not authoritative, in that they allow people to change their official records to show them as the opposite sex on request. One consequence is that, for example, transgender people risk being flagged up as a synthetic identity risk and excluded, for example, from banking or travel. Another is that illnesses may be misdiagnosed or that medical risks may fail to be identified.

So this Bill is a rare opportunity to put right some things that currently need to be addressed. Those of us speaking today have received a number of helpful briefings from organisations interested in various issues: I have mentioned only a couple. I hope we will take the opportunity given to us by the Bill to take on board several of those proposals.