Electronic Communications (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Lords Chamber

With those few questions, I just say that I very much hope that this short debate will have been wasted.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I looked behind me in vain for interventions from our side of the House. I am happy to provide as short a contribution to this debate as others, and very happy that my noble friend Lord Foster—if I may call him that—has made some of his usual penetrating comments that leave me free to look at things at another level. As the Minister said, this SI seems a simple matter of tidying up an area that had not been previously dealt with in full. I cannot comment on why some of this was not done earlier, but it is being done now. When I got it and saw the pages and pages of sheer drudgery that our very talented Civil Service has had to give its best time to, my heart sank.

It also occurred to me that debating it today is very ironical because the Prime Minister does not want a no-deal exit—neither do the Lords or the Commons. Nobody wants it, but we look as if we might be in danger of drifting into it. Once upon a time, a Roman emperor played the violin while the city around him burned. Now, our contemporary empress is fiddling in European capitals and burning our boats while she does it. We must ask ourselves very seriously whether this exercise of 500 or more statutory instruments being pushed through our procedures in this way has been beneficial to anybody.

I note the substantive point that the statutory instrument intends to deal with the,

“notification of personal data breaches by providers of publicly available electronic communications service”.

I have learned so many acronyms in reading for this debate—indeed, it has been on a par with “Line of Duty”, which I watch rather assiduously when I can. The replacing of “competent national authority” references with references to the “Information Commissioner” seems to tidy everything up. I looked and, as has been mentioned by others already, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee drew attention to the facts about these calls. Indeed, it added an appendix to one of its committee meetings to ask technical questions of the Minister. He has answered those and I need not therefore repeat them.

With the ground adequately covered and tidiness brought to a fundamentally futile exercise, I am happy to rest the case there. I invite the Minister to say some reassuring words and answer our questions so that we can move on to other business.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their points and detailed questions on a detailed SI.

The noble Lord, Lord Foster, castigated us for bringing these small changes forward at a late stage and asked why we did not bring them forward earlier. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, looked at the details, a substantial number of which need to be addressed, not only in legislation but in EU decisions, regulations and directives. That takes time, and we want to get it right. He also asked whether I can categorically assure him that he will not have to deal with these matters again. Of course I cannot give him that assurance, as he well knows, but the point is made and I accept it.

On a serious note, it is important to get these things right. I pay tribute to the civil servants in my department, who have worked very hard to try to do that. Most of the provisions in this statutory instrument are genuinely technical, changing the language so that it makes sense in the event that we leave the EU. Of course, this is a no-deal Brexit SI, so it is contingent on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Foster, asked some specific questions about his favourite subject—the BEREC regulations—such as why we did not bring them forward. The reason is that this SI repeals the 2018 BEREC regulation, which replaced the 2009 BEREC regulation. That regulation was repealed and replaced in December 2018, so it is now necessary to revoke the new 2018 BEREC regulation. It was not ready at the time of the previous SI, which is why we are doing that now. I hope that he can feel happy with that.

As far as the GDPR is concerned, we agreed the data SI in this House some weeks ago. The noble Lord referred to Article 81 on the suspension of proceedings, which is omitted from the UK GDPR. In a UK-only context, that provision becomes redundant, because it is right that breaches of the UK GDPR are brought before UK courts. Of course, amendments to the retained GDPR were debated by this House in February 2019.