Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between Lord Bassam of Brighton and Baroness Harding of Winscombe

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th March 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I associate myself with the comments that my noble friend Lord Kamall just made. I have nothing to add on those amendments, as he eloquently set out why they are so important.

In the spirit of transparency, my intervention enables me to point out, were there any doubt, who I am as opposed to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who was not here earlier but who I was mistaken for. Obviously, we are not graced with the presence of my noble friend Lord Maude, but I am sure that we all know what he looks like as well.

I will speak to two amendments. The first is Amendment 144, to which I have added my name. As usual, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has said almost everything that can be said on this but I want to amplify two things. I have yet to meet a politician who does not get excited about the two-letter acronym that is AI. The favoured statement is that it is as big a change in the world as the discovery of electricity or the invention of the wheel. If it is that big—pretty much everyone in the world who has looked at it probably thinks it is—we need properly to think about the pluses and the minuses of the applications of AI for children.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, set out really clearly why children are different. I do not want to repeat that, but children are different and need different protections; this has been established in the physical world for a very long time. With this new technology that is so much bigger than the advent of electricity and the creation of the first automated factories, it is self-evident that we need to set out how to protect children in that world. The question then is: do we need a separate code of practice on children and AI? Or, as the noble Baroness set out, is this an opportunity for my noble friend the Minister to confirm that we should write into this Bill, with clarity, an updated age-appropriate design code that recognises the existence of AI and all that it could bring? I am indifferent on those two options but I feel strongly that, as we have now said on multiple groups, we cannot just rely on the wording in a previous Act, which this Bill aims to update, without recognising that, at the same time, we need to update what an age-appropriate design code looks like in the age of AI.

The second amendment that I speak to is Amendment 252, on the open address file. I will not bore noble Lords with my endless stories about the use of the address file during Covid, but I lived through and experienced the challenges of this. I highlight an important phrase in the amendment. Proposed new subsection (1) says:

“The Secretary of State must regularly publish a list of UK addresses as open data to an approved data standard”.


One reason why it is a problem for this address data to be held by an independent private company is that the quality of the data is not good enough. That is a real problem if you are trying to deliver a national service, whether in the public sector or the private sector. If the data quality is not good enough, it leaves us substantially poorer as a country. This is a fundamental asset for the country and a fundamental building block of our geolocation data, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, set out. Anybody who has tried to build a service that delivers things to human beings in the physical world knows that errors in the database can cause huge problems. It might not feel like a huge problem if it concerns your latest Amazon delivery but, if it concerns the urgent dispatch of an ambulance, it is life and death. Maintaining the accuracy of the data and holding it close as a national asset is therefore hugely important, which is why I lend my support to this amendment.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has, as ever, ably introduced his Amendments 74, 75, 76, 77 and 78, to the first of which the Labour Benches have added our name. We broadly support all the amendments, but in particular Amendment 74. We also support Amendment 144 which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and cosigned by the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones and my noble friend Lady Jones.

Amendments 74 to 78 cover the use of the Government’s Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard—ATRS. We heard a fair bit about this in Committee on Monday, when the Minister prayed it in aid during debates on Clause 14 and Article 22A. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, outlined its valuable work, which I think everyone in the Committee wants to encourage and see writ large. These amendments seek to aid the transparency that the Minister referred to by publishing reports by public bodies using algorithmic tools where they have a significant influence on the decision-making process. The amendments also seek to oblige the Secretary of State to ensure that public bodies, government departments and contractors using public data have a compulsory transparency reporting scheme in place. The amendments legislate to create impact assessments and root ADM processes in public service that minimise harm and are fair and non-discriminatory in their effect.

The noble Lord, Lord Kamall, made some valuable points about the importance of transparency. His two stories were very telling. It is only right that we have that transparency for the public service and in privately provided services. I think the Minister would be well advised to listen to him.

The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, also alighted on the need for government departments to publish reports under the ATRS in line with their position as set out in the AI regulation White Paper consultation process and response. This would put it on a legislative basis, and I think that is fairly argued. The amendments would in effect create a statutory framework for transparency in the public service use of algorithmic tools.

We see these amendments as forming part of the architecture needed to begin building a place of trust around the increased use of ADM and the introduction of AI into public services. Like the Government and everyone in this Committee, we see all the advantages, but take the view that we need to take the public with us on this journey. If we do not do that, we act at our peril. Transparency, openness and accountability are key to securing trust in what will be something of a revolution in how public services are delivered and procured in the future.

We also support Amendment 144 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for the very simple reason that in the development of AI technology we should hardwire into practice and procedure using the technology as it affects the interests of children to higher standards, and those higher standards should apply. This has been a constant theme in our Committee deliberations and our approach to child protection. In her earlier speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, passionately argued for the need to get this right. We have been wanting over the past decade in that regard, and now is the moment to put that right and begin to move on this policy area.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has made the argument for higher standards of protection for children persuasively during all our deliberations, and a code of practice makes good sense. As the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, said, it can either be stand-alone or integrated. In the end, it matters little, but having it there setting the standard is critical to getting this policy area in the right place. The amendment sets out the detail that the commissioner must cover with admirable clarity so that data processors should always have prioritising children’s interests and fundamental rights in their thinking. I am sure that is something that is broadly supported by the whole Committee.

Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between Lord Bassam of Brighton and Baroness Harding of Winscombe

Committee stage
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. As this is the first time I have spoken during the passage of the Bill, I should also declare my interests, but it seems that all the organisations I am involved in process data, so I refer the Committee to all the organisations in my entry in the register of interests.

I want to tell a story about the challenges of distinguishing between personal data and pseudonymised data. I apologise for bringing everyone back to the world of Covid, but that was when I realised how possible it is to track down individuals without any of their personal data. Back in November or December 2020, when the first variant of Covid, the Kent variant, was spreading, one test that was positive for the Kent variant came with no personal details at all. The individual who had conducted that test had not filled in any of the information. I was running NHS Test and Trace and we had to try to find that individual, in a very public way. In the space of three days, with literally no personal information—no name, address or sense of where they lived—the team was able to find that human being. Through extraordinary ingenuity, it tracked them down based on the type of tube the test went into—the packaging that was used—and by narrowing down the geography of the number of postcodes where the person might have been ill and in need of help but also in need of identifying all their contacts.

I learned that it was possible to find that one human being, out of a population of 60 million, within three days and without any of their personal information. I tell this story because my noble friend Lord Kamall made such an important point that, at the heart of data legislation is the question of how you build trust in the population. We have to build on firm foundations if the population are to trust that there are reasons why sharing data is hugely valuable societally. To have a data Bill that does not have firm foundations in absolutely and concretely defining personal data is quite a fatal flaw.

Personal data being subjective, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, so eloquently set out, immediately starts citizens on a journey of distrusting this world. There is so much in this world that is hard to trust, and I feel strongly that we have to begin with some very firm foundations. They will not be perfect, but we need to go back to a solid definition of “personal data”, which is why I wholeheartedly support the noble Lord’s amendments.

[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—

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Debate between Lord Bassam of Brighton and Baroness Harding of Winscombe

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th January 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I associate myself with the remarks just made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, about recognising how important it is that we embolden the CMA to tackle these merger issues. I do not have anything like the expertise in detailed drafting that my noble friend Lord Lansley has just demonstrated, but I encourage the Government to listen carefully to his advice and review the drafting. We should see if we cannot come together with a solution on Report that achieves what I think we are all trying to achieve here.

I would also like to briefly correct the record. On Monday, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, said, I said that all the companies had appealed their designation of the DMA. Much to my amusement, Google was very swift to email me on Tuesday morning to tell me no, it was very keen to collaborate, so I would hate that to become a considered fact of this Committee—I owe Google that.

I support the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, but I point out to the Committee that it is actually a very small amendment. The CMA told us in one of its briefings last week that it could undertake only two SMS investigations at any one time. We should recognise that it is a very minor amendment meaning that, while the CMA is investigating two entities, those two entities will be required to report. We should accept that that is a very small improvement that we should encourage the Government to accept.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure the Committee will be relieved to know that we do not have a great deal to say on this, except that we see merit in the amendments from both the noble Lords, Lord Vaux and Lord Lansley.

I thought the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, made a very good point: this is very simple. It is about providing and encouraging greater transparency in the merger process. It is straightforward in ensuring that all parties are aware of the status of the undertaking involved, and it brings clarity where the SMS is concerned.

It has to be regretted that companies might want to use mergers and acquisitions as a way of delaying SMS designation. As the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, has just said, there are delays enough in the process as it is. If the CMA is going to be able to do only two of these a year, there is hardly much reason to encourage more, greater and longer delays in the process.

The noble Lord, Lord Vaux, argued that designations could take until 2025 and delays will occur. With the sheer volume of acquisitions taking place, if companies are going to use that as a means of gaming the system then that cannot be right. It cannot be in consumers’ interests either.

I turn to the elegant amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. It seeks to ensure, where a designated undertaking is involved, that there is an assessment of the impact on consumers. The Minister has argued from the Dispatch Box that the legislation is designed by the Government to place the interests of consumers at the very front of this piece of working legislation. So, if a merger is likely to lead to a loss of benefit to consumers, it must therefore be right that market intelligence is shared, and we assume from our perspective on the Labour Benches that that must be a public good to be supported.