Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Earl of Erroll

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th December 2024 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to just make one comment on this group. I entirely agree with everything that has been said and, in particular, with the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, but the one that I want to single out—it is why I am bothering to stand up—is Amendment 197, which says that the Secretary of State “must” implement this measure.

I was heavily scarred back in 2017 by the Executive’s refusal to implement Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act in order to protect our children from pornography. Now, nearly eight years later, they are still not protected. It was never done properly, in my opinion, in the then Online Safety Bill either; it still has not been implemented. I think, therefore, that we need to have a “must” there. We have an Executive who are refusing to carry out the issue from Parliament in passing the legislation. We have a problem, but I think that we can amend it by putting “must” in the Bill. Then, we can hold the Executive to account.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the trouble with this House is that some have long memories. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, reminded us all to look back, with real regret, at the Digital Economy Act and the failure to implement Part 3. I think that that was a misstep by the previous Government.

Like all of us, I warmly welcome the inclusion of data access provisions for researchers studying online safety matters in Clause 123 of the Bill. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, this was very much unfinished business from the Online Safety Act. However, I believe that, in order for the Bill to be effective and have the desired effect, the Government need to accept the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Bethell. In terms of timeframe, the width of research possible, enforceability, contractual elements and location, they cover the bases extremely effectively.

The point was made extremely well by the noble Lords, Lord Bethell and Lord Russell, that we should not have to rely on brave whistleblowers such as Frances Haugen. We should be able to benefit from quality researchers, whether from academia or elsewhere, in order to carry out this important work.

My Amendment 198B is intended as a probing amendment about the definition of researchers under Clause 123, which has to be carefully drawn to allow for legitimate non-governmental organisations, academics and so on, but not so widely that it can be exploited by bad actors. For example, we do not want those who seek to identify potential exploits in a platform to use this by calling themselves “independent researchers” if they simply describe themselves as such. For instance, could Tommy Robinson seek to protect himself from liabilities in this way? After all, he called himself an “independent journalist” in another context when he clearly was not. I hope that when the Government come to draw up the regulations they will be mindful of the need to be very clear about what constitutes an independent or accredited researcher, or whatever phrase will be used in the context.

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[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, if I may just interject, I have seen this happen not just in the Horizon scandal. Several years ago, the banks were saying that you could not possibly find out someone’s PIN and were therefore refusing to refund people who had had stuff stolen from them. It was not until the late Professor Ross Anderson, of the computer science department at Cambridge University, proved that they had been deliberately misidentifying to the courts which counter they should have been looking at, as to what was being read, and explained exactly how you could get the thing to default back to a different set of counters, that the banks eventually had to give way. But they went on lying to the courts for a long time. I am afraid that this is something that keeps happening again and again, and an amendment like this is essential for future justice for innocent people.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pity that this debate is taking place so late. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, for his kind remarks, but my work ethic feels under considerable pressure at this time of night.

All I will say is that this is a much better amendment than the one that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, put forward for the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, and I very strongly support it. Not only is this horrifying in the context of the past Horizon cases, but I read a report about the Capture software, which is likely to have created shortfalls that led to sub-postmasters being prosecuted as well. This is an ongoing issue. The Criminal Cases Review Commission is reviewing five Post Office convictions in which the Capture IT system could be a factor, so we cannot say that this is about just Horizon, as there are the many other cases that the noble Baroness cited.

We need to change this common law presumption even more in the face of a world in which AI use, with all its flaws and hallucinations, is becoming ever present, and we need to do it urgently.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Earl of Erroll

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to say a few things about this. The first is that Amendment 5, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is very sensible; sometimes the GDPR has gone too far in trying to block what you can use things for. It was originally thought of when so much spamming was going on, with people gathering data from adverts and all sorts of other things and then misusing it for other purposes. People got fed up with the level of spam. This is not about that sort of thing; it is about having useful data that would help people in the future, and which they would not mind being used for other purposes. As long as it is done properly and seriously, and not for marketing, advertising and all those other things, and for something which is useful to people, I cannot see what the problem is. An overzealous use of GDPR, which has happened from time to time, has made it very difficult to use something perfectly sensible, which people would not mind having other people know about when it is being useful.

The next matter is sex, which is an interesting issue. The noble Lord is absolutely correct that biological or genetic sex is vital when applying medicines and various other things. You have to know that you are administering certain drugs properly. As we get more and more new drugs coming on, it will matter how a person’s body will react to them, which will depend on the genetic material, effectively. Therefore, it is essential to know what the biological sex is. The answer is that we need another category—probably “current gender”—alongside “sex at birth”. Someone can then decide to use “current gender” for certain purposes, including for such things as passports and driving licences, where people do not want to be asked questions—“Oh, do you mean you’re not?”—because they look completely different.

I remember meeting April Ashley in her restaurant. I would not, in my innocence—I was quite young—have guessed that she was not a woman, except that someone said that her hands were very big. It never worried us in those days. I am not worried about people using a different gender, but the basic underlying truth is essential. It comes into the issue of sport. If you have grown up and developed physically as a biological male, your bone structure and strength are likely to be different from that of a female. There are huge issues with that, and we need to know both; people can decide which to use at certain points. Having both would give you the flexibility to do that.

That also applies to Amendment 200, from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which is exactly the same concept. I thoroughly agree with those amendments and think we should push them forward.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I too am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, came in to move his amendment. He is the expert in that whole area of education data; like the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, I found what he said extremely persuasive.

I need to declare an interest as chair of the council of Queen Mary, University of London, in the context of Amendment 5 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I must say, if use were made of that data, it would benefit not only students but universities. I am sure that the Minister will take that seriously but, on the face of it, like the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, I cannot see any reason why this amendment should not be adopted.

I very much support Amendments 34 and 48 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot. I too have read the briefing from Sex Matters. The noble Lord’s pursuit of accuracy for the records that will be part of the wallet, if you like, to be created for these digital verification services is a matter of considerable importance. In reading the Sex Matters briefing, I was quite surprised. I had not realised that it is possible to change your stated sex on your passport in the way that has taken place. The noble Lord referred to the more than 3,000 cases of this; for driving licences, there have been more than 15,000.

I agree with Sex Matters when it says that this could lead to a loss of trust in the system. However, I also agree with the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, that this is not an either/or. It could be both. It is perfectly feasible to have both on your passport, if you so choose. I do not see this as a great divide as long as the statement about sex is accurate because, for a great many reasons—not least in healthcare—it is of considerable importance that the statement about one’s sex is accurate.

I looked back at what the Minister said at Second Reading. I admit that I did not find it too clear but I hope that, even if she cannot accept these amendments, she will be able to give an assurance that, under this scheme—after all, it is pretty skeletal; we will come on to some amendments that try to flesh it out somewhat—the information on which it will be based is accurate. That must be a fundamental underlying principle. We should thank the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, for tabling these two important amendments in that respect.

Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Earl of Erroll

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I hope I am demonstrating the agility of which the Minister is so fond. As I said earlier in respect of the judicial commissioner, these amendments provide a ready-made mechanism for oversight concerning the proportionality and appropriateness of any measures in the regulations and codes. Taken together, Amendments 9 and 19, would require the Secretary of State to take into account the advice of the technical advisory board—and insert a new clause after Clause 14—and that of a judicial commissioner appointed under the 2016 Act. We have gone a little further in specifying the make-up of the technical advisory board, but we are clearly on the same page as the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, with her Amendment 8.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to speak on this issue as I remember mentioning it at Second Reading. There is a person for whom I have huge respect, Dr Louise Bennett, whose extensive knowledge and sagacity I first ran into when we were talking about ID cards years ago and the whole problem of digital identity and privacy over the internet. If you really want to know about such things, read her work: she has produced a lot of work on this. I think a technical advisory board is essential: these are complex issues. The Minister said that the matters subject to regulation will be technical. I do not see how we can do this without a good technical advisory board, and it is good if we have some view of who goes on it, because it is too easy for these things to disappear off and no one thinks about them. We will keep needing cutting-edge advice and not have groupthink, and these matters are very tricky.

Between Amendments 8 and 9, I could not decide between taking “the utmost” and “full” account; there is a neat little difference in the wording. Otherwise, the point about laying it out properly is important. The other thing, which slightly goes back to our previous debate, is that we get into the whole problem of what are regulations, what is guidance, what are guidelines and what is a code of practice and the different legal stance of those different things. We have to be careful about using them as if they were interchangeable. Regulations will often give rise to a code of practice, breach of which is not necessarily an offence, but they can be linked back to a primary Act offence. We should not bandy those words around interchangeably; they are different. We need a technical advisory board and, between these amendments, we should do something about it.

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[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, in its evidence to the Bill in the Commons, BT said:

“we believe greater clarity is needed on OFCOM’s planned approach, with safeguards introduced in the Bill to ensure operator burdens are proportionate.”

Amendment 10 seeks to ensure that codes of practice are necessary and proportionate.

As regards Ofcom’s new powers to ensure compliance with security duties as set out in new Section 105M, how will these relate to Ofcom’s existing powers and duties under Sections 3 and 6 of the Communications Act 2003? Will this duty and the new powers Ofcom is being given still be subject to good regulatory practice so that, for example, it still must have regard to the principles of transparency, accountability, proportionality and consistency and not impose unnecessary burdens? How will this fit in with the statement to be made by Ofcom under new Section 105Y?

Amendments 16, 17 and 21 to Clauses 5, 6 and 19, in my name and that of my nobble friend Lord Fox, seek to ensure that the new powers for Ofcom introduced in the Bill are subject to requirements in the 2003 Act regarding carrying out and reviewing its functions. I was pleased that in her letter to noble Lords after Second Reading, the Minister explicitly said:

“When carrying out its security functions, Ofcom will remain bound by its general duties under Section 3 of the Communications Act 2003 as it is now. Section 3(3) provides a duty on Ofcom to have regard to the need for transparency, accountability and proportionality when carrying out its functions. Ofcom will also be bound by its duty under Section 6 of the Communications Act 2003 to review the burden of its regulation on public telecoms providers. If Ofcom fails to carry out its security functions in line with these duties, then it is likely to be subject to legal challenge.”


I very much appreciate those words, which are a very clear interpretation of the existing Act and the duties of Ofcom and the responsibilities it has in the way that it carries them out. Will the Minister repeat that assurance today?

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words on this because the key words “undue burden” stand out. It is very important that we do not put too many burdens, particularly unnecessary ones, on companies. In particular—and this is something that I have often looked at because I have done a lot of work with innovative and growing companies—you must not let large corporations stifle innovation. There is an attitude among them that regulations are for your enemies; they are a very good way of stopping up-and-coming competition. I have also noticed that departments tend to consult the companies which have significant market presence already and see them as being the people who know all about it. However, that does not take account of what is up and coming. The other thing is that they often have people on secondment from them or people who have retired from the companies and gone into the departments, so there can be some interesting biases within. With those few warnings, I think the whole undue burden issue is more important than people might think.

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[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 14 and 15. I wanted to say on the last group of amendments that I entirely agree with the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, about regulation. It is entirely possible for regulation to provide certainty, to stimulate innovation and, in the context of this Bill, to ensure that we have the right framework for our providers to ensure that our security is not compromised. So there is certainly no negativity in that respect towards regulation; the question is whether it is appropriate in the circumstances and not unduly burdensome for those subject to it. That is why the question of parliamentary oversight, which has been mentioned throughout this afternoon, continues to be important, and I think that it will come up again in the next group.

This amendment is on rather a different area. I have quite a lot of sympathy with Amendment 13 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, but this is more nuanced than the Bill provides for. I want to quote again from the evidence of BT to the Bill Committee in the Commons. It said:

“We agree with the requirements on operators to support the users of their networks in preventing or mitigating the impact of a potential security compromise … In certain cases”—


and this is a sort of “however”—

“the security of the network may be put at greater risk if potential risks are communicated to stakeholders, providing malicious actors with additional information on potential vulnerabilities in the network that they may seek to exploit. We therefore believe that the Bill should explicitly consider such scenarios and not place obligations on communications providers to inform users of risks whereby doing so it will increase the likelihood of that risk crystallising.”

That is where our first amendment is going. BT further stated that

“the Bill also confers powers on OFCOM to inform others of a security compromise or risk of a compromise, such as the Secretary of State or network users. We understand the intention of the Bill in this regard and support the principle. We believe that this would be most effective when done in conjunction with the operator in question to ensure there is clarity and agreement, where possible, on the timing, audience and messaging of such information provision. This would also ensure that this does not cut across any other obligations that an operator may have, such as market disclosures. The Bill currently does not require OFCOM to consult with the operator prior to informing third parties of a security compromise (or risk of one).”

I think these are fair points. The Government must have an answer before Ofcom is faced with that set of issues. In this light, Amendments 13 and 15 make further provision about the duty to inform users of a risk of security compromise and specify that duties to inform others of “significant risks” of security compromises must be proportionate and not in themselves increase security risks.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I put my name down to speak to this because the problem with putting a fixed time period on having to report security breaches is that it very much depends on what the breach is. We mentioned patches earlier. If it is a vulnerability in the software—or it may be the hardware—which requires a patch to be released, you must have the time to produce it and test it as fully as possible. You do not want the hackers out there to know what the vulnerability is until you can roll out the answer to it. That is what zero-day attacks are based on. Equally—the noble Baroness is absolutely correct here—you do not want this stuff swept under a carpet to sit there unused for years. Could our technical advisory board give advice at an incident level, or something like that?

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[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, we know how it is when you are on a roll. This reminds me that it is very unusual for somebody to have the opportunity to get in before the noble Lord, Lord Fox, draws breath, as the Chair did. “Very impressive footwork,” I thought to myself.

There has been a common theme this afternoon of a lack of oversight over aspects of this Bill in many respects—in particular, the regulations and codes. This lack of oversight is compounded by the fact that, under Clause 13, any appeal to the Competition Appeal Tribunal cannot take account of the merits of a case against the Secretary of State. The rationale for this, as the Constitution Committee says,

“is unclear and is not justified in the Explanatory Notes.”

I will quote the Explanatory Notes in full. Clause 13 provides that, in appeals against relevant “security-related” Ofcom decisions, the Competition Appeal Tribunal is to apply ordinary “judicial review principles”, notwithstanding any retained case law or retained general principle of “EU law”—by that they of course mean retained EU law. This means that the tribunal should not “adopt a modified approach” to proceedings, as required under retained EU law, which provides that the “merits of the case” must be “duly taken in account”.

Therefore, this provision disapplies aspects of the ongoing effect and supremacy of retained EU law, as permitted by Section 7 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The rationale for reducing the powers of the tribunal in respect of security matters is unclear and not justified in the Explanatory Notes. The House may wish to ask the Government to justify reducing the powers of the Competition Appeal Tribunal in respect of appeals under Clause 13. That is the motive behind this clause stand part debate.

The most authoritative judgment to date about the current standard of review is the Competition Appeal Tribunal’s TalkTalk Telecom Group plc and Vodafone Ltd v Office of Communications case. This addresses, inter alia, the standard of review on an appeal to the Competition Appeal Tribunal under Section 192 of the Communications Act. The judgment of Peter Freeman QC provides a good analysis of the context and history of the changes to the standard of review. I make no apology for quoting it at some length:

“Of particular relevance to how the Tribunal should approach this appeal are Article 4(1) of the Framework Directive and section 194A of the 2003 Act, as amended by the DEA17 … Article 4(1) provides: ‘Member States shall ensure that effective mechanisms exist at national level under which any user or undertaking providing electronic communications networks and/or services who is affected by a decision of a national regulatory authority has the right of appeal against the decision to an appeal body that is independent of the parties involved. This body, which may be a court, shall have the appropriate expertise available to it to enable it to carry out its functions. Member States”—


this is the key bit—

“shall ensure that the merits of the case are duly taken into account and that there is an effective appeal mechanism…’ … Section 194A provides: ‘The Tribunal must decide the appeal, by reference to the grounds of appeal set out in the notice of appeal, by applying the same principles as would be applied by a court on an application for judicial review.’ … The combined effect of these provisions is to require the Tribunal to apply the same principles as would apply in a judicial review case but also to ensure that the merits of the case are duly taken into account so that there is an effective appeal.”

At paragraph 139, the judgment concludes:

“Given that Article 4(1) continues to apply, it would appear that, in accordance with the Court of Appeal’s view in BT v Ofcom and the High Court’s view in Hutchison 3G, as set out helpfully by the Tribunal in the recent Virgin Media judgment, we should continue, as before, to scrutinise the Decision for procedural unfairness, illegality and unreasonableness but, in addition, we should form our own assessment of whether the Decision was ‘wrong’ after considering the merits of the case.”


“Article 4(1)” refers to the now-repealed framework directive. It should now be read as referring to Article 31(1) of the European Electronic Communications Code—the EECC. The transposition deadline of the EECC was just before the end of the transition period and iseb;normal;j therefore currently binding as part of retained EU law. The wording of the EECC is almost exactly the same as the framework directive in respect of appeals.

That is what will continue to apply across the remainder of the Communications Act for other appeals under Section 192 but is being changed by Clause 13 of the Bill, which amends Section 194A of the Communications Act in respect of security provisions. This is a very significant change to the appeals procedure in security cases. There is a single bald paragraph in the Explanatory Notes, no justification is given—as the Constitution Committee says—and neither is there any evidence of why it is necessary. What evidence does the Minister in fact have of the need to make this major change in respect of security decisions made by Ofcom? I beg to move.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I saw this and thought that I really did not understand why the Government were doing it. I saw what the Constitution Committee had said and realised that it did not understand why it was needed. I cannot believe that you can have a proper appeal if you ignore the merits of the case. I probably have an overdeveloped sense of justice and I think that to have an appeal where you are not allowed to present half the case or whatever is not a proper appeal. In fact, what you find is that the system can use procedural things to run rings around people who have a very justifiable complaint about something. I did not like the look of it and I entirely agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said.

Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Earl of Erroll

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words before the summing up. We need to remind ourselves that the purpose of these regulations is to protect children, including those coming up to adulthood. We are trying to prevent them thinking that some fairly unsavoury habits that are not medically good for them are normal. That is the challenge. These websites have teaser adverts to try to get people drawn into pornography sites to buy harder-core or more detailed pornography. We are not trying to do anything about people who are willing to enter into a payment arrangement with the site but to make sure that children are stopped at the front end and are prevented from seeing the stuff that will give them the wrong impression about how you chat to a girl or a girl chats to a boy and how you behave with members of the same sex or the opposite sex in a sexual relationship. We need to be quite quick on this sort of stuff because if we are going to try to stop this being widespread we need to block it.

There is an awful lot of guff in this. It has taken a long time for these regulations to get here—we really expected them about a year ago. I do not know what DCMS has been doing during this time. I know it had some draft guidelines a long time ago, but perhaps they were so young that they were uneducated too and tried to learn about these things—I do not know.

The point about the adverts is they sit there in front. We are probably going to have buttons on the front of the website stating that people have to verify their age. That will take people off, probably to third-party sites which know them and anonymously verify that they are over 18 and that is when they can get into the website. However, the website is going to want to put something up for that first encounter. I wonder whether this is not an opportunity to think positively and perhaps put up something about understanding the beginning of a relationship and how you can get excited and go forward without going to the harder aspects which involve penetrative sex et cetera. There may be an opportunity there. That is a bit of a red herring because we are talking about the regulations, but it may be a positive thought for the future.

The thing that worries me particularly is paragraph 2.5 of the BBFC guidance which refers to sites that are,

“mostly frequently visited, particularly by children”,

and are,

“most likely to be sought out by children”.

Social media may not be marketed as carrying or giving access to pornography, but it does so on a huge scale. This one-third rule is very odd because it is easily abused. There are about 39 million UK users of Facebook, so do we say that if 12 million are putting up pornography that is okay because it is under the one-third threshold? Earnings would be very hard to measure, given Facebook’s turnover, so how are we going to do the one-third? It is very odd. The purpose of this is to protect children, so I do not think we should be having very high thresholds to let people get away with it.

There are two things that really worry me. Paragraphs 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8 of the guidance are on enforcement. It is going to be very slow. By the time the BBFC has sent out a warning and it is received, given another notification, published this, waited for the website to write back, et cetera, how long will it take? Websites that want to get round it will game the system. If they start doing that, the big websites—they are on side with this and want to help because they have got teenage children and are not paedophiles but are trying to sell adult pornography to adults and therefore want to help, believe it or not—will lose too much business; they will have to go with the flow and play the same game, in which case the whole thing will get wrecked.

If the Internet Watch Foundation, without a true legal basis, can get sites blocked immediately, why cannot we, with proper law? Everyone has had warnings about it. The whole of the industry around the world has apparently been talking about it for the past year. The BBFC has spoken at such events. Everyone knows, so I cannot understand why we cannot act more quickly and go live from day one. If anyone does not comply, that is bad luck. We could set up some pre-notification stating: “If you do not comply by tomorrow, you have had it”.

The other matter is the certification scheme, which is voluntary. A big hole is that because this is under a DCMS Bill, it could not touch privacy and data security. That is an ICO responsibility. The security of people’s data is regulated elsewhere, and the ICO has only recently started to show an interest in this, because it is overloaded with other things. There is now a memorandum of understanding between the BBFC and the ICO, which is very good. They could be brought together in a certification scheme. The BBFC cannot enforce data security and privacy, because that is an ICO responsibility, but a certification scheme could state that a site cannot be certified unless it complies with all the legal standards—both the Data Protection Act 2018, which the ICO is looking at, and the BBFC rules on age verification for websites and providers. That could be good.

If your Lordships want to know how to do it, I fear I shall give a plug for the British standard for which I chaired the steering group, BS 1296; it includes a whole section on how to do the GDPR stuff, as it was then called. We could not mandate it in the British standard because other standards mandate it, but that tells you how to do it.

The certification needs to be clear, otherwise there will be a whole lot of wishy-washy stuff. I am not sure that a voluntary scheme is a good idea, because the BBFC will have a lot of hard work trying to check sites that decide not to comply, so it will have to certify them by another method. That will be difficult.

However, at the end of the day, there is a lot of willingness between all the parties to try to get this to work. The world is watching us—quite a few other countries are waiting to see whether this will work here. That will help enormously. We should try to get a lot of cross-stakeholder information and co-operation, a round table of all interested parties from child protection all the way through to those running the adult sites. Perhaps some good could come out of that. Certainly, everyone wants to help the BBFC and DCMS, the parent body. Everyone wants to help the ICO. We would like to get this to work: there is a lot of good will out there if only we could get moving to make it work properly.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches want the regulations and draft guidance to come into effect. The child protection provisions are a significant element of the Digital Economy Act which, although not entirely in line with what we argued for during its passage, we supported in principle at the time and still do, while realising, as my noble friend Lord Paddick said, that they are not the conclusive answer to children’s access to pornography. As he also said, a number of areas need to be addressed in the course of today’s debate.

For a start, as several noble Lords said, it seems extraordinary that we are discussing these sets of guidance nearly two years after the Digital Economy Act was passed and nearly a year after the Government published their guidance to the regulator, the BBFC. What was the reason for the delay?

Next, there is the question of material that falls within the definition of being provided on a commercial basis under the Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations, the subject of today’s debate. Several noble Lords mentioned this. As drafted, they do not currently include social media or search engines and on these Benches, we regret that the Government have decided to carve out social media from the definition. This is a potentially significant loophole in the regime. It is important that it is monitored and addressed if it damages effectiveness. It is in particular a major concern that social media and search engines do not have any measures in place to ensure that children are protected from seeing pornographic images.

The Secretary of State’s guidance to the AV regulator asks the BBFC to report 12 to 18 months after the entry into force of the legislation, including commenting on the impact and effectiveness of the current framework and changes in technology which may require alternative or additional means of achieving the objectives of the legislation. In addition, under Section 29 of the Digital Economy Act, 12 to 18 months after the entry into force of the scheme, the Secretary of State must produce a report on the impact and effectiveness of the regulatory framework.

This is therefore a clear opportunity to look again at social media. The Government have made some reference to legislating on social media, but it is not clear whether they intend to re-examine whether the definition of commercial pornography needs to be broadened. Can the Minister assure the House that this will be dealt with in the internet safety White Paper, that the Secretary of State’s report will cover the level of co-operation by services such as social media and search engines, which are not obliged to take enforcement action on notification, and that, in doing so, it will firmly tackle the question of access by children to pornography via social media?

Next is the question of resources for the age-verification regulator. This is a completely new regime, and with fast-changing technology, it is vital that the BBFC, as the AV regulator, has the necessary financial resources and stable grant funding to meet the important child protection goals. Can the Minister assure us that the Government will keep resources available to the BBFC in its AV regulator role under review and undertake explicitly in the Secretary of State’s annual report to deal with the question of resources enabling the BBFC to carry out its work?

Next is the question of the BBFC having chosen to adopt a voluntary scheme. On these Benches, we welcome the voluntary scheme for age-verification providers referenced in annexe 5 to the draft Guidance on Age-verification Arrangements. In fact, it bears a striking resemblance to the scheme that we proposed when the Act was passing through Parliament, which would have ensured that a scheme involving third-party companies providing identity services to protect individual privacy and data security would be engaged. As I recall, the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, helped greatly in convening providers of digital identity schemes to show what was possible. I think he is still ahead of us today.

Our key objections were that what was originally proposed did not sufficiently protect personal privacy. The BBFC is to be congratulated on establishing the certification scheme. As I understand it, it already expects all the major providers to undertake the certification process. Furthermore, because the scheme is voluntary, these assessments will be for foreign-based as well as UK providers, which is a major achievement and could not be accomplished with a UK statutory scheme.

The key to the success of the voluntary scheme, however, is public awareness. I hope that the Minister can tell us what DCMS is doing to support the promotion of the BBFC’s kitemark in the three months before the scheme comes into effect.

Next, there are the JCSI criticisms set out in its report on 28 November. This House rightly always takes the criticisms of the JCSI seriously, and the Minister set out a careful response to them. I do not always pray a government memorandum in aid, but the BBFC was following the Secretary of State’s guidance to the AV regulator. Under the terms of Section 27 of the Digital Economy Act, as a result of amendments in the Lords during its passage, the BBFC was charged with having regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance. The JCSI suggests that the BBFC could have chosen to ignore “incorrect” Secretary of State guidance, but that would have put it in an impossible position.

I shall not adumbrate all the different areas, but the inclusion of what was necessary in compliance with Section 27, the advice on best practice, the annexe setting out the voluntary scheme and the role of the ICO all seem to be helpful as part of the guidance and proportionate in terms of what the AV regulator prioritises.

There are a number of other aspects of these sets of guidance worthy of mention too. As we have heard, this age-verification framework is the first of its kind in the world, and there is international interest in it. Are the Government discussing with the BBFC what lessons there are in terms of encouraging robust AV for younger age groups and for other types of potentially harmful content? Will the Government use the expertise developed by the BBFC as the age-verification regulator in the internet safety White Paper?

Particulars of Proposed Designation of Age-Verification Regulator

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Earl of Erroll

Thursday 1st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I have no great argument with the particulars and the designation of the BBFC as the age-verification regulator. Indeed, we had some debates on this. I know that we may have some differences with the Labour Front Bench, but we think that the BBFC is fit for this particular purpose and will carry out the job effectively. Conversations we have had have convinced us of that. Another aspect that is beginning to be unpacked is the appeals system. Although of course we put down amendments on the question of the independence of the age-verification regulator, we think that the appeals system being set up, which is qualified in the Act—we would have preferred it not to be qualified—will be fit for purpose as well.

I want to revert to something that may strike both the Minister and Members on the Labour Front Bench as rather déjà vu: the question of the specification of the type of age verification that is required, or not, by the age-verification regulator. When we talked about this issue in Committee—indeed, amendments on it were laid on 2 February 2017 in Committee and on 20 March on Report; my noble friend Lord Paddick had a particular role in that—we were very concerned on both occasions that the age-verification methods were not going to be specified in enough detail in the Bill. It did not appear that they would be specified in any great detail in the draft guidance.

Flash forward a year and I am afraid that nothing has changed. The Minister may remember that, back in January, the Select Committee on the Constitution said:

“We are concerned that the extent to which the Bill leaves the details of the age-verification regime to guidance and guidelines to be published by the as yet-to-be-designated regulator adversely affects the ability of the House effectively to scrutinise this legislation”.


We have not moved on a great deal. If we look at the details of what I have found—which appears to be the up-to-date draft of the government guidance on the age-verification regulator—under chapter 3, paragraph 4, there is this statement:

“The regulator is not required to approve individual age-verification solutions. There are various ways to age-verify online and the industry is developing at pace. Providers are innovating and providing choice to consumers”.


That is exactly the same wording as in the draft guidance last year and quoted by my noble friend Lord Paddick on 20 March. That is extremely disappointing. It appears that the age-verification regulator will play an incredibly light-touch role in the approval of the type of age-verification that takes place.

Of course, later in chapter 3—which is headed “Age-verification arrangements”—it describes,

“the expectation that age-verification services and online pornography providers should take a privacy by design approach as recommended by the ICO”.

I have the privacy by design guidance from the ICO in front of me and I must say, if I was an age-verification provider, I would not find it particularly onerous, in terms of requiring me to try to find an anonymised age-verification solution. I find the Government’s guidance, as per Section 27 of the Act, extremely disappointing. I very much hope that the Minister can explain whether the ICO will have a role in this, what the impact of privacy by design is, in terms of enforcement, and whether the ICO will have the ability to impose a privacy impact assessment—or even a data impact assessment—on the object of the age-verification regulator’s regulation. Perhaps at the same time the Minister can explain in this particular space the boundary between what the ICO is empowered to do and what the age-verification regulator will be doing.

I am sorry to have to be disappointing in that respect, but I think that as part of the wider landscape—a matter we discussed last year—where we have got to is not particularly satisfactory if the general purpose of the age-verification regulator is to make sure that age-verification really works and that there is not the access for young people to these pornography sites that the Act was designed to prevent.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to say a few words. I was quite involved in this issue when it was going through as part of our consideration of the Digital Economy Act. The Digital Policy Alliance, of which I am chairman, has had a working group on age verification for several years, looking at whether there are available solutions and encouraging people to develop them. I am pleased to tell the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that there are some solutions out there. I will explain something about that.

The only thing I want to say is that the Act received Royal Assent on 28 April, I think, so it has taken a very long time to get this guidance in place. That is a bit of a worry and a bit of a disappointment. I seem to remember that there was an intention to try to have enforcement within a year, otherwise there would be a huge great gap in the meantime. We are trying to protect children after all; that was the whole point of this. Waiting for a year—it will probably now be longer—is an awfully long time not to have protection in place.

I am very glad that the BBFC is finally about to get some teeth, get into operation and do something about this, which I am sure it will do extremely well. I know that it has been consulting an awful lot with a lot of different people from all the different sides, from child protection right through to the adult industry. The interesting thing is that quite a lot of the adult industry is happy to help and to co-operate, because it does not want children wasting its time. It is not in the job of trying to pervert children, but of trying to sell adult content to adults, so it is willing to co-operate. The world is watching. There is apparently now a willingness to realise that this will happen and to co-operate to a large extent.

The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has put his finger on the point about age-verification methods: they have to work and to do various things. I say to him, though, that there is a difference between the bit that is checking the attribute—the age—and the bit about privacy, which is not identifying who the person is to a website and to a casual visitor to that website. It would be career-limiting were it to be found out that the noble Lord himself was visiting an adult content site, even though it would be totally legal for him to do so. Therefore, it is important to ensure that privacy happens at that point, which is the ICO’s part. It is not the ICO’s job to say how age verification should be done. That is a different job.

In fact, we have developed, along with the British Standards Institution, a publicly available specification, PAS 1296, which should be coming out quite soon. It has been around the houses several times and has been revised. That should allow it to be possible for an organisation to see for itself how well it is doing. It might be that an industry body should be set up that can check whether age-verification providers are doing something in alignment with the PAS, which goes into great detail about how you can do these things and make sure that it can be privacy enforcing. The privacy side is left up to the GDPR, but it is mentioned in there as well.

Those are the main points that I wanted to make. It is time to get on with this. It is a huge leap forward. As I said, the world is watching. A whole lot of good will is out there to get this done properly. I look forward to seeing the final draft regulations, which will probably do the job.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Earl of Erroll

Report: 3rd sitting Hansard: House of Lords
Wednesday 10th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, in her amendment. She made a very good case. Current fee proposals really are very flawed. Clause 132, “Charges payable to the Commissioner by controllers”, states:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations require controllers to pay charges of an amount specified in the regulations to the Commissioner”.


That, compared to the existing regime of registration, seems far more arbitrary and far less certain in the way it will provide the resources that the Minister, in a very welcome fashion, pledged to the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam. It is far from clear on what basis those fees will be payable. Registration is a much sounder basis on which to levy fees by the Information Commissioner, as it was from the 1998 Act onwards.

I wish to be very brief; this has already been brought up. The Minister prayed in aid the fact that there are already some 400,000 data controllers and it was already getting out of hand. If the department—indeed, if the ICO—is going to be in contact with all those it believes to hold data as data controllers, it will have to have some kind of records. If that is not registration, I do not know what is. The department has not really thought through what the future will be, or how the Information Commissioner will secure the resources she needs. I hope that there is still time for the Minister to rethink the approach to the levying of future tariffs.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

I just want to ask briefly whether small organisations will also include clubs and societies. I do not know whether that has been dealt with before. For instance, I am the chief of Clan Hay and we have a Clan Hay society. It does not make money, but it has membership lists and branches abroad. I discussed it with the ICO before this came up, and it thought we would definitely have to comply. I hope we will be covered as a small organisation.

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Earl of Erroll

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for putting down this amendment. Indeed, this amendment has many good aspects to it, but I will adopt a phrase which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, used the other day, which is, “It doesn’t go nearly far enough”. It really highlights—and I declare an interest as the co-chair of the new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence—some of the issues that this Bill simply does not deal with. This does need huge consideration: all the ethics involved not only with artificial intelligence, but with the internet of things and the great many regulatory issues which spring from the new technologies. Algorithms are a part of it, of course they are, but we need further consideration.

I agree with those who have said that perhaps Ofcom is not necessarily the best regulator for this—I do not know—and it may be that we need to construct a purpose-built regulator for the world of artificial intelligence and the internet of things in ethical terms. I am not quite sure that Ofcom has got the necessary tools in terms of the ethics aspect of it.

I am very much in spirit with the noble Lord and I am delighted that he has raised it, but we are at the very beginning of a really important debate on a lot of these areas. The essence of all this is trust. We had a continuous debate through Part 5 about the government sharing of data. This is about the private sector and its use of a lot of our data and the way it sorts them and places them in the search engines. Trust is the overwhelming issue of our age, and we are not there yet. If we are going to reassure people who want to use these new technologies, we really do need to come up with a proper regulatory system. I do not think that this new clause quite provides it.

[The Earl of Erroll]

Before the noble Lord sits down, may I just ask him: is it not dangerous to make perfection the enemy of better? In other words, the amendment may not be perfect, but it is moving in the right direction, and to say, “Do nothing”, because it is not perfect is surely very unwise, given all the other stuff that he has said.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I know that the noble Earl himself is perfect in almost every way, so I would very much hesitate to argue with him. Still, I feel we need something rather broader than this proposal would provide.

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Earl of Erroll

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Thursday 2nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll]

Absolutely; I know what the noble Lord means. I simply meant that this is not necessarily an ID application—except, maybe, to identify yourself to the site which then gives your attribute to the other website.

I am thoroughly in favour of the amendment, and so is the industry. We hope to publish a standard on this in the not-too-distant future, which may help the regulator determine who is a fit and proper person to carry it out.

There is just one other thing I want to say. Once you have done your age verification and then go on to the website, if you then choose to subscribe, and give it your credit card number and everything else, that is up to you. I hope and trust that the sites—I know that they are pretty careful about this—will encrypt properly and guard the information with their lives, if not yours.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

I do not want to overload the Front-Bench contributions from this side, or to turn this into a mutual admiration society, but I want to say that the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, has played a blinder in educating many of us in this House about the possibilities and the technologies being developed on anonymised age verification. As the Minister probably knows, we had a very useful session with many of those developing new apps for this precise purpose. Yoti was one, VeriMe was another—one could go on. There are different types of age verification, which can be chosen by the consumer. The most recent, which is now virtually available for general use, is Yoti, which the noble Earl mentioned. These methods are now available for use; this is not a question of pie in the sky, or of things not being available for a year or so. That makes the amendment highly practical, and, as my noble friend said, it is absolutely essential for the protection of personal privacy.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Clement-Jones and Earl of Erroll

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I thank the Minister. If anything, what he has just said demonstrates the complexity of copyright legislation and the provisions of what is now Clause 78. One of the interesting things about this Bill is that when debating Part 6 we have continuously had to push our horizons forward. I think that when we started it was Clause 57 onwards, then it was Clause 66 onwards and it is now Clause 76 onwards, but we are very flexible and adaptable here. The amendment demonstrates not only the complexity of copyright law but the flexibility and willingness to listen that the Minister has demonstrated throughout our debate on Part 6. I welcome his response to the concerns, particularly of those in the news agencies and of photographers, about the possible impact of Clause 78, and I am delighted by the outcome.

If we were in Committee, we would probably want to probe the exact meaning of Amendment 9 to,

“make different provision for different purposes”.

However, as we are at Third Reading, I think we will let the Minister get away without too much debate on those words. They are quite wide, and the other place or whoever might wish to have a discussion about them.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I add a slight note of dissent. I entirely agree with Amendment 9, which gives greater flexibility to,

“make different provision for different purposes”.

However, Amendment 8 paints the regulation-makers into a corner. I quite see the point of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, on the commercial stuff. This is his word as a commercial lawyer among the large rights holders and the people who make money out of this material. I see their point. They have invested heavily in some of this stuff, as in other cases, and they want a commercial return on it.

The trouble is with all the other stuff. This is not just about photographs sitting in commercial archives or produced for a commercial purpose. This is not about film sitting in a commercial archive, or from which, published or not, somebody is trying to make some money. It is everything. The sort of stuff that has ended up with genealogical societies around the country and in libraries’ photographic collections will all fall under this. I realise that this does not apply to pre-1957 photographs, so it will not affect people doing research on the Second World War, but you will suddenly have this strange cut-off point. It would have been wise to keep greater flexibility in this so that the Minister, using,

“make different provision for different purposes”,

could have introduced a definition of which kinds of photograph or film were covered. It would not have been difficult to do.

Therefore, Amendment 8 should perhaps be withdrawn because it can be covered in the rest of the provisions, which says that he can then go on to reduce the duration of copyright in existing works. It is made by regulations. If you can do different provisions for different purposes, I would have thought there would be the flexibility to be able to meet the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the perfectly valid commercial concerns, and also have done things for the libraries, universities, researchers and other people who want to do other things with the works where there was no commercial intent in the first place. Therefore, I would accept Amendment 9 for flexibility, and if I were the Minister, I would withdraw Amendment 8.