Online Safety Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

Having listened to the Minister, I think we need clarification on the issue of duplication and what is illegal as opposed to just harmful. If we can clarify that, I shall not move my Amendment 157.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Beith) (LD)]

When we come to Amendment 157, that will be noted.

Amendments 13A to 13C

Moved by

Online Safety Bill

Lord Beith Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th April 2023 Lords Chamber

Amendment 19 not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Beith) (LD)]

If Amendment 20 is agreed, I cannot call Amendment 21 by reason of pre-emption.

Amendment 20

Moved by

Telecommunications Legislation: Human Rights

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

I fear I cannot list the British companies but I am more than happy to write to the noble Lord. I am not sure whether that information is in the public domain. However, I reassure him that my honourable friend the Minister for Digital Infrastructure is actively working on this as we speak.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that a regime that is contemptuous of the human rights of its own citizens and of international standards of human rights will have no restraint about abusing the human rights of UK citizens or persons resident in the UK who may have fled from that regime when it has access to telecommunications systems as a means of doing so?

[Baroness Barran]

I understand the noble Lord’s point but we work very closely with GCHQ and the National Cyber Security Centre and take significant advice on how we can protect our citizens. We keep that under constant review.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Beith Excerpts

Committee: 6th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I rise in support of Amendment 172C, which refers to Clause 164(3)(c). I have no interest to declare but it might be helpful if I remind your Lordships that, prior to joining this House, I worked at the BBC for the best part of 10 years. For the majority of my time there, I worked in the area of governance and regulation, advising three successive chairmen.

I just want to make a couple of simple points. I have not been involved in this Bill so far but, when it was highlighted to me that it would introduce a clause that would, for the first time, bring into statutory regulation a facility for the pre-transmission involvement of regulators in broadcasting in this country, I was surprised—indeed, I was very worried. This is a very big change to our current set-up. Broadcasting is a very heavily regulated sector but it is regulated post hoc, not ex ante—I know that your Lordships like a bit of Latin.

When I worked at the BBC under the old governance regime, before Ofcom was set up and before the BBC became subject to Ofcom regulation, there was only one editor-in-chief at the BBC and he had the final say editorially. We have a former editor-in-chief sitting in his place here today. The governors, led by the chairman, were very clear that their responsibilities prevented them ever interfering in any programming pre-transmission, so even the governors did not involve themselves in programmes pre-transmission. When they had done so in the past, the result had been absolutely calamitous.

We should remember that we demand impartiality from broadcasters in this country. We set very clear and rigorous codes for them to follow and they take them very seriously. However, in order to ensure that there is impartial broadcasting in this country and to give our audiences confidence, in exchange we give broadcasters their independence. I worry that a very simple clause in the Bill, which may look quite innocuous, could put at risk something that is very important to us. I understand that the media can sometimes be arrogant and that they sometimes get things wrong, but we should make sure that we tackle them when they get things wrong rather than try to interfere and put at risk something which, as I said, is very precious to us in this country.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I simply want to speak about my noble friend’s Amendments 185E and 185F, which relate to custodial sentences. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Black. I missed the opening part of his speech as I was looking up the reference to which I now want to refer—the ninth report of Session 2010-12 produced by the House of Commons Justice Committee, of which I was then chairman. As noble Lords know, we took evidence from the Information Commissioner on a number of occasions. We said in the report that we shared,

“the Information Commissioner’s concern and dissatisfaction that no order has been brought before Parliament to implement section 77 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which would have the effect of providing custodial sentences for breaches of section 55 of the Data Protection Act. Currently the only available penalty is a fine, which we feel is inadequate in cases where people have been endangered by the data disclosed, or where the intrusion or disclosure was particularly traumatic for the victim, or where there is no deterrent because the financial gain resulting from the crime far exceeds the possible penalty”.

The point was made earlier that in some quarters—this is not particularly a media matter; it refers to many kinds of illicit information-gathering—meeting fines, should they be imposed, can be seen as a “trade expense”. So we said:

“We accept the Information Commissioner’s argument that the issue of custodial sentences for section 55 offences is not exclusively, or even primarily, an issue relating to the media and that the issue should be dealt with by Parliament without waiting for the outcome of Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry”.


That illustrates just how long the matter has been going on and how unsatisfactory it is, to the point of disgraceful, that what Parliament has previously enacted remains not in force because of the lack of commencement.

English Churches and Cathedrals Sustainability Review

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Beith]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they expect to receive the report of the English Churches and Cathedrals Sustainability Review, which was announced in 2016.

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and, in doing so, declare my registered interest as president of the Historic Chapels Trust.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, I understand that the chair and the panel are currently finalising the report and recommendations in consultation with key stakeholders. It is hoped that they will submit the report to the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for DCMS before the end of the year.

[Lord Beith]

I thank the Minister for that reply, but does he realise how much concern there has been at the ending of the Heritage Lottery Fund’s dedicated scheme for major repairs to historic places of worship? Do the Government hope that the sustainability review report to which he referred will provide some answer and will it open some doors in the Treasury? If it does, what will be the position of non-conformist and Roman Catholic historic buildings, which do not fall within the remit of that sustainability review?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

Of course, I understand the implications of the HLF’s fairly sudden decision to close the grants for the places of worship scheme. As a result, the Minister responsible has had discussions with the HLF. I am pleased to say that it has guaranteed to make available the same proportion for the next two years, so the funding will continue. As for other faiths, it is true that the review concentrates on the Church of England, but any lessons learned from that can be taken forward and applied to other faiths. The main government funding, of course, applies to other faiths.