Data Strategy

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

The noble Lord is right that digital identity and having clarity on that is critical. The Government have been very open about having had some unavoidable delays, most particularly around the election and now, sadly, with Covid. Part of the work within the strategy will be to identify which areas and datasets to prioritise and focus on.

[Lord Balfe (Con) [V]]

Can the Minister give us an assurance that the Government will not let public data go into private hands and then be kept there in such a way that it cannot be accessed by other people within the public sector? There is a concern that private companies may get hold of public data and that it will then be lost to wider policy-making.

[Baroness Barran]

My noble friend’s last point is spot on, in the sense of the value of good data to public policy-making. I think many of us are looking forward to that. Crucially, part of it must be that we uphold those principles of transparency, accountability, inclusion and, obviously, lawfulness. They will be part of the considerations that we look at.