Online Anonymity

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

“Do as you would be done by” is a sensible basis for progressing. However, there are people who would not subscribe to that—I think “evil” is the correct word for them—and we have to take those into account. The Law Commission is looking at the body of law which allows the authorities to trace people to make sure that it is effective. It will publish its first report at the beginning of November. We will make sure that the law is capable of pursuing those who will not follow the precept mentioned by the noble Lord.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, in such instances as we are imagining in a Question like this, there are the individuals who, under the cloak of anonymity, use the internet for purposes that may be legitimate or not, but there are also the platforms that host those messages. I believe that in Germany a mechanism is used to make it mandatory on the part of platforms to shut down harmful messages within a certain time beyond which fines are imposed and measures taken. Might the Minister and Government consider such a device?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Lord is right. I believe that the law in Germany is that one has to take down abusive content within eight hours once the host has been informed of it. There is some doubt whether that complies with EU law. Nevertheless, it is something we will look at, because the social media code of practice also includes such measures, which at the moment are voluntary. Many of the large and well-known media sites try to comply with such things; the problem is that new sites appear and gain huge scale very quickly and do not always behave in the same way. The whole point of the White Paper which will be published in the winter is to look at areas where we might need legislation.

Sport: Performance-Enhancing Drugs

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I cannot think of a better example than that of the noble Lord, as a 1964 Olympic sprinter: he proves the point that role models are very important. It is important that those who receive honours are suitably checked so that they behave correctly—that is, not only legally but also in an ethical and moral sense.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, we have rightly talked about education and we congratulate the Government on significantly increasing the amount of money available to UKAD. However, there is the whole question of anticipating the development of such practices and preventing them. Such briefing as I have been able to put together suggests that internationally, there is a movement of illicit drugs and substances across borders. Can the Minister help us to understand whether, after the momentous events we are about to experience in coming out of Europe, the sharing of intelligence and the availability of cross-border information will apply in this particular area of endeavour?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

Criminal activities are subject to the negotiations that will take place and the Home Office is responsible for those. On doping in sport, we already have an international system based on WADA which I do not think will change just because we are coming out of Europe. This is an international problem that extends far beyond the borders of Europe. However, I take the noble Lord’s point that it is very important that we continue with that system and I see no reason why we should not be able to.

Distributed Ledger Technologies

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

As I said, the evaluations are at too early a stage to say. Projects are being undertaken, however, and the Department for International Development is one of those undertaking a proof of concept at the moment.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, we have heard that various studies and evaluations are taking place. It is an extraordinarily complex area but it seems to me, even as a lay person, that its outcomes will be amazingly innovative and helpful. I, of course, must leave the technology to others, but if any questions raised by these evaluations need a closer ethical and moral look, will somebody be monitoring the situation to make sure they are referred to the data ethics body we have talked about?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I agree with the noble Lord. Most technology has ethical concerns, particularly the internet and the fact that, by definition, it is cross-border. We not only have to get our own regulatory house in order, and think of these ethical considerations, but we have to work internationally to try to get consensus. The point about distributed ledger technologies is that they build trust without always having regulations because everyone has the same copy of the same data, which provides a great advantage.

Gambling: Fixed-odds Betting Terminals

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, on a day when those in the party opposite are endeavouring to contain their disarray within the bounds of public decorum, will the Minister cast his mind back to the day alluded to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans when euphoria was released along the Benches around the House at the news that the limit was to be fixed at £2? I do not think that anyone in that debate was under the impression that it would take as long as is now being suggested. All the arguments were rehearsed and great enthusiasm was expressed. Is the Minister convinced, on looking at the respective interests of the revenues—not the employment—of the gambling industry and the well-being of the 14% of problem gamblers produced by these machines, that the right decision has been taken?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am not clear to what decision the noble Lord refers. When we made the announcement that the revenue forgone from FOBTs would be made up by remote gaining duty, we said that the Chancellor would introduce that at the relevant Budget. We want it to be revenue neutral and so the remote gaming duty has to be in place to make up for the forgone revenues. We said that at the time. We are implementing this as quickly as we can. A process has to be gone through and we are keen to get on with it.

The Politics of Polling (Political Polling and Digital Media Committee Report)

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, from my position in this debate no one will expect me to unwrap the enigma that is at the heart of the representations that have just been made, so I must just replicate what was done by the noble Lord, Lord Young: there will be another hospital pass for the Minister in a moment. The urgency of the plea cannot be ignored. The case has been well made, and we look forward to how the Minister will help us to deal with this matter. I felt that other contributions to this debate wandered into the territory of the digital aspect of polling. The contribution by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, did this in particular. It leaves me recognising not that I or anybody should be responding but that notice has been given that this whole area needs urgent attention, and indeed the report says so. It says that Governments, regulators and platforms themselves are on the back foot and that urgent—the word “urgent” is used several times in the report—attention needs to be given to the subject.

I hope the Minister will be able to give us some assurance as to how this is to be taken forward. The report appeared in March this year, four or five months ago, and many things have happened since. Mention was made of Cambridge Analytica but that was only just happening at the time. Today we have heard about the Bloomberg report and many other aspects of the way that these platforms are behaving and all the activity that is happening. Heaven knows what will happen when the Mueller report on the possible interference of Russia in American electoral policies causes us to see the consequences of all that.

I mention digital not to discuss it but to recognise that the report indicates that that is where the action must now be. As far as the report itself goes, I learned a lot about the mechanics of making polls, the differentiation that is made between the variables and the volatility of public opinion, demography and the need for transparency, and lots of other things. Six out of eight speakers in this debate have been members of the committee, and they have faithfully taken us through the material contained in the report and given us a very good picture of the ground that it covers. The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, has helped us to get a whiff of some of the controversy and subterranean movements that were happening within the discussions of the committee. That made for more drama, and of course we have had a lot more since.

This is a very important report. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, on bringing it together in this concise way. Possibly he will recognise—indeed, this is mentioned in the report—that it goes only as far as the remit took the committee. Now we need action on where the real drama is—the digital area where polls can happen in particular ways and opinion can be moulded through particular technological devices. I look forward to getting some reassurance from the Minister on that. With that, I pass the rugby ball across the Dispatch Box to the Minister.

Youth Services

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for introducing this debate. I wish it was more populated and with a greater expression of experience and ideas. It is clear from his remarks that we shared the same innocent and golden period for work in youth clubs. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that table tennis was always a great fascination to me and the disco at the end livened me up ready for going home, so I cannot agree with him on that one.

I declare an interest as president of the Boys’ Brigade. It sounds masculine but girls are now very much a part of it. The Boys’ Brigade and Girls Association must get a snappier title now that they are together. With 45,000 children and young people in tow and 8,000 volunteer leaders, it is a great privilege to serve in this way.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Storey, I will begin with the headline in yesterday’s Times, which bears repeating. It was the main story on the front page. It said that 30,000 children in gangs were aged between 10 and 15. As he mentioned, Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner, said that,

“criminals are preying on young people by taking the place of society”.

We must weigh those words. This is becoming an alternative, a parallel way of living their lives on the streets. The social structures within which too many of our children are growing up are provided by drug dealers and gangsters, who are operating in what the Children’s Commissioner described, chillingly, as,

“a systematic and well-rehearsed business model”.

What an awful thing that is to contemplate. She compared what is happening in the field she has been looking at to the Rotherham sex abuse scandal, with all its intricacies, substructures and ways of controlling young people in particular.

I mentioned that I am the president of the Boys’ Brigade and that ought to be a warning that there is a potential conflict of interest. In case anyone thinks I am about to plead my special cause—your Lordships must correct me if I do that—I mention it also for the positive reason that it gives me ample opportunity to be with young people rather a lot of the time. I listen to them carefully and I am impressed by them. The noble Baroness’s reference to our need to respect young people is predominant. They are often despised, marginalised or paternalised and it is incumbent upon us to find ways of getting alongside young people and listening to them.

As well as my work in the young people’s organisation I have mentioned, I have worked in the inner city in education for the past many years, with two schools—one in the borough of Islington and one in the borough of Tower Hamlets—in keenly disparate and mixed environments. All kinds of social problems ensue from that. On one occasion I encouraged a young man from one of those schools to write an account of his childhood life. I did that because he had been the victim of a gang attack when he was out with his best friend. The best friend was murdered on the street, in broad daylight, just 100 yards from where I was living while my young friend somehow escaped with his life. The tale he tells is horrific. This is what I asked him to write. He was in his young childhood, aged eight at the time. He and his best friend were kicking a ball around in a piece of parkland when they were surprised by two gangs that were fighting each other. They were using baseball bats and broken bottles. Then, in the little memoir that this young man wrote as part of the therapy that I thought might be useful for him as he got over his own brush with death, he said,

“myself and my friend were safely hidden in a bush afraid to come out of our enclosure. Right in front of our eyes … two teens had cornered one of the rival gang members. Surrounding him they struck him around the head with a glass bottle. He collapsed on the ground blood leaking from his head. He began foaming at the mouth. We were petrified … two days later news came that this individual had lost his life … I was eight years old and I had witnessed my first murder”.

It certainly was not the last.

These are the realities within which our children and young people too often are growing up in our cities, and, as reports remind us, in rural areas. I will echo what has been said amply by other speakers. How do we provide for our young people? I know that the Government will tell us—I can write the lines for the Minister—how much money they have committed and that it is the responsibility of local authorities to disburse that money. Quite right, yet when we look at local authorities’ spending power, as has again been said by others, we find that because local authorities have a desperate need to make provision for adult social care, homelessness prevention and so much else, within the terms of their spending power it is the youth provision that suffers the most.

If there is one thing I want to communicate in my remarks it is not so much making the case, which I think is self-evident, but trying to emphasise the need for urgency in contemplation of this whole area of our national life. Various figures have been quoted. I have seen figures both in line and at odds with ones that have been quoted. It is very hard, except that we can see in percentage terms a huge decrease in money devoted to youth services. However it is calculated and whatever the actual figures we come up with, certainly more than half and sometimes two-thirds have been cut since 2010. It is anticipated that those cuts will go on being severe for the next two years. We can understand local authorities taking money from the easy part of their budgets, but it is a counsel of despair and puts our young people in jeopardy for the rest of their lives.

We know from our newspapers that, after Mrs May’s announcement for the NHS just a few days ago, all those representing the NHS, defence, social care and education are raising their voices and demanding substantial injections of cash. The needs of our children and young people are likely to be lost in the clamour and the positioning for extra money if it can be found. We must not allow that to happen.

I will spend quite a lot of my summer break with young men and women from the Boys’ Brigade’s work in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, and the Republic of Ireland. I will be offering my thoughts about leadership to hundreds of young people gathered for training at our regional centres. The Scottish and Northern Irish devolved Governments are more than happy to inject some core funding into youth movements such as the brigade, the Scouts and others—it is not just my own interest here. They seem less inhibited about finding money from, for example, the proceeds of crime that have been recuperated and from dead bank accounts and to put that at the disposal of young people. That seems a very practical way of proceeding. I wish that we could have a similar response here in England.

I have listened to a lot of pop music in my time because my children tell me that, if I want to know what young people are thinking, that is what I have to do. It is really inimical to me. I have had a classical education, I am an innocent abroad, so I listen to grime and garage and rap and I do my best—that is all I can say. On the verge of my adult life, I felt that I could echo Van Morrison’s “Brand New Day”. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Storey, will remember that too. In my middle years I sang along with D:Ream, “Things Can Only Get Better”, which of course the Labour Party used as its song of triumph at the 1997 election. Now the notes are less positive. It is much more Foo Fighters. Dave Grohl is touring at the moment with his song “The Line”, which, as he puts it, is,

“a search for hope in this day and age where you feel as if you’re fighting for your life with every passing moment, and everything is on the line”.

I see the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, nodding. She has found a way to roll her sleeves up where she is. If she has any spare time, I will take her on to my team as well. We could do with a bit of her energy.

The important thing for me is not this statistic against that statistic. It is not this kind of a case against that one. It is just sensing the urgency of the needs of our children and young people at this time and finding the will and the resolution to do something about it.

Digital Government (Disclosure of Information) Regulations 2018

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I start with an apology. Because of the way in which these items of business have been scheduled—or perhaps I should say not scheduled—I might have to leave before I hear the Minister’s response. He is aware of that and I am very grateful for his indulgence in that respect, which will make me feel even guiltier when he hears what I have to say.

I am indebted to medConfidential for many of the points I shall make and to the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, who takes a keen interest in these matters but cannot be present today.

The essence of what I have to say is that these regulations and codes should be withdrawn. In summary, earlier this month the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee published a report on these draft regulations made under Part 5 of Chapter 1 of the Digital Economy Act, as the Minister explained. The DCMS offered assurances that the codes of practice were consistent with each other and drafted to be compliant with the new Data Protection Act 2018 and the latest standards of best practice. However, subsequently it replaced the standards with a new set under a different name—the data ethics framework—so the codes as laid do not reflect current DCMS guidance. In our view, this invalidates the whole of our debate.

I will go through the details. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee drew the digital government regulations to the special attention of the House. The DCMS told the committee that the codes were to

“the latest standards of best practice for information sharing, including the ‘Data Science Ethical Framework’”.

That is at paragraph 9 of the committee’s report. As the SLSC says:

“In their response, DCMS have also offered assurances that these codes of practice are consistent with each other and have been drafted to be compliant with the new Data Protection Act 2018 and the latest standards of best practice for information sharing, including the ‘Data Science Ethical Framework’”.


The committee’s report was finalised on a Tuesday and printed the following Thursday. On the Wednesday, the DCMS replaced the “latest” standards with a new set under a different name, the data ethics framework. Quite apart from the concerns raised by the committee, when the DCMS gave its response to the committee it surely must have known that a new framework was due the following day to replace the one to which it referred, and that its assurances would therefore be untrue even before they were printed.

The current codes reference the Data Science Ethical Framework, which predates the Data Protection Act and the GDPR. By that fact alone, these DCMS codes cannot be approved. They are, by definition, out of date following legislation on which the DCMS and the Minister himself led.

As the Minister described, a number of groups were consulted on the draft codes in the middle of last year, and while there is consensus from all sides that the codes are improved as a result of that constructive engagement, those consultations were before the Government surprised everyone with the proposal for a “framework for data processing by government” in the Data Protection Act—before the guidance changes due to the GDPR had fully begun, before the Government announced that the Data Science Ethical Framework was in need of replacement, and certainly before the DCMS launched the replacement with a new name last week. The department assured Parliament that,

“these codes of practice are consistent with each other”,

but it cannot assert they will be compliant with other codes, as yet unlaid and unwritten by the Information Commissioner. What the Information Commissioner does should be up to the Information Commissioner. She should not have her hands tied by her sponsor department.

It is particularly important that these codes and the regulations are withdrawn given that the first issuance of the codes is under the affirmative procedure for approval of the House and future updates will be under the negative procedure.

I have a few other questions. Where is the framework for data processing by government included at the last minute by Ministers in Committee on the Data Protection Bill? There is still no clarity as to what the Government plan to do with it, only that it is not the Data Science Ethical Framework nor the data ethics framework. It is, however, yet another government data framework that must be taken into account. The passage of the Data Protection Act 2018 necessitates updates to many ICO codes. Late in the day, the DCMS chose to introduce its new framework for data processing by government, which surely must be the governing instrument for these codes, but, as I said earlier, it has provided no clarity on how this will operate.

The department seems to be offering nothing other than assurances of compliance when one looks through the codes. It talks of consultation with the ICO. Has the ICO confirmed publicly that these codes are compliant with the GDPR, the new Data Protection Act and the ICO guidance?

According to recent announcements from University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, it is conducting artificial intelligence trials internally for issues of direct benefit to it. This shows not only that the NHS is beginning to understand the power of data and digital tools, but that this can be done in-house for public benefit and that there are viable alternatives to handing data to and sharing data with multinational companies. What are the Government doing more broadly across the NHS to ensure that there is full recognition across the NHS?

The Digital Economy Act affords the Secretary of State considerable powers to make use of publicly controlled data, which is of considerable concern in some quarters. The key concern is the scope for different departments to share and then link datasets, such as sharing health data from the Department of Health and Social Care with the Home Office to identify illegal immigrants, as stated in recent headlines. What is the scope and/or limitation for the Secretary of State to share publicly controlled data with private entities? Is this likely to inform the introduction of so-called “data trusts”?

Then, of course, there is the question of whether any of the codes is fit for the future in terms of technology. In particular, what are the duties of transparency and explainability where datasets are used to construct artificial intelligence solutions, algorithms and the like for government purposes? What consultation was engaged in this respect? There appears to be no reference in any of the codes to this. Should we not wait for the data ethics and innovation centre to give its guidance on these matters involving the Government and their deployment of artificial intelligence?

In the light of the above, it is clear that neither these regulations nor the codes are fit for purpose. Will the Government withdraw them before placing replacement codes before the House? Will the Minister confirm that the codes will be compliant with any yet-to-be-written Information Commissioner codes? Will they be confirmed as such by the Information Commissioner? Sadly, I will not hear the Minister’s reply but I very much hope that it is a full one.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, far be it from me to get the Minister off that hook. It is always humbling to be in the presence of those who have seen the heat of the day and borne the burdens of bringing some complicated pieces of legislation on to our statute book. Perhaps we can all breathe a sigh of relief as we notice the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, depart from his place.

I will restrict my remarks, since I was not in possession of the briefing that the noble Lord had, to the observations I made on the simple basis of reading these papers. It was a jolly weekend and some good bedtime reading—150 pages on a very complicated matter—but as far as the regulations themselves are concerned, it seemed mildly reassuring that multiple disadvantages, such as television retuning, fuel poverty and water poverty, were all to be held in view with a view to ensuring that people who might suffer in these areas had their suffering minimised as far as possible. One million vulnerable energy consumers might qualify for help. From this side of the House, we cannot particularly grumble at that.

The thing that worried me was that, since these are the first tinkerings with or things that ensue from last year’s Digital Economy Act, it is incumbent on us to ensure we monitor very carefully the direction of travel as the Act lives its life and is implemented. For that reason, I find myself again and again wondering whether—while, yes, three years down the line it all has to be embedded and to work itself out—we should not promise ourselves a bit more micromanagement than that as things go along.

I liked the way that liaison with devolved bodies—to ensure that a UK-wide measure is implemented in Wales and Scotland in a way consistent with legal provision—was set out because, with another hat on, when we were arguing the devolution clauses in the EU withdrawal Bill we talked all the time about frameworks within which UK-wide pieces of action would have to be worked out in consultation with, and with consent from, the various interested parties. Here is a lived example, I thought, of how that might work.

I worried about how on earth we would keep together pieces of action that would see nine departments of state share information across their boundaries, as well as the Revenue and 32 local and regional bodies, as we considered how best legitimately to allow these bodies to share information. What kind of computer system do we have in place? We have had such a string of unfortunate experiences of supportive technology for mountainous pieces of government activity going wrong that I just look at this and am glad that it is not me operating it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to one of the two speakers for remaining and for the points that both have made. If the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, thinks that was a rant, compared to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, he is an amateur; I thought he was very reasonable and measured in what he said. I shall go through his points as quickly as I can.

The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, was correct to point out that we need to help where we can. The measure is to enable public authorities to share information. A key criterion for the Digital Economy Act was that it had to be for the benefit of individuals and households. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, suggested that, because things were in the wrong order—I will address some of his points shortly—we should withdraw the codes, wait for the Information Commissioner to issue her code and lay the codes again in six to nine months. That will mean that all the good work that is done, which the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, identified, in using public information to help individual households that are vulnerable or suffering will effectively be put off. For example, on the fuel poverty measure, that would be another winter when we could not use the information to help the public.

On some of the issues raised by the noble Lord about the information shared, I remind him that the information is permissive: it does not have to be shared; it just allows public authorities to do that. They have very clear outlines of what they are able to do; they must have information sharing agreements. The measure merely allows public authorities to do it; there is no compulsion on any of them. It must also be in accordance with the Digital Economy Act and the Data Protection Act. That will give individuals the right—and mean that they can trust—that their information will not be misused, because it is subject also to the GDPR.

In talking about the difference between the Digital Economy Act and the Data Protection Act the noble Lord was a bit confused about paragraph 9. I was surprised—I thought it seemed pretty clear, but I accept that it could be made simpler. What it is really getting at is that the Digital Economy Act referred not just to living people, as the Data Protection Act does, but also includes bodies corporate and distinguishes between the information in those. So we are saying that there is a distinction, and they therefore need to apply both, but when it comes to the information referred to, and referring to individual living people, the Data Protection Act will apply and so will the General Data Protection Regulation. I will send a letter to the noble Lord outlining that paragraph to see if we can explain it. I doubt we will be able to do it in words of one syllable but we will try to make it a bit clearer for him and I will put a copy in the Library. I accept that it is not immediately obvious to a normal person.

I am glad that the noble Lord, in contrast, said that the codes were “clear, succinct and admirable”. I point out, however, that these are not for small businesses but for public authorities. The only time that they would involve a private business is when the private business has been contracted by a public authority to deliver something.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that clarification—of course, I should have been clear about that myself—but in my small business I did have registration responsibilities, so under one of the codes I would have had to bear some of these things in mind; so there was just a hint of relevance about what I said.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am grateful for that reminder.

There has been an awful lot of consultation around this. In many ways, this is a model: it has taken about two years of open, public policy-making. The codes were in place in draft while the Act went through Parliament, so parliamentarians of both Houses were able to discuss the codes. They have been amended as a result of that and made clearer, and we have also put in some increased transparency and some review mechanisms. They were consulted on again after the Act was passed: we had a formal consultation again on the codes that are with us today. That included organisations that might have thought to have worried about it, such as privacy groups, so a lot of stakeholders were involved in that.

Coming eventually to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, his speech was based on a briefing by the only organisation, I think, which had any worries about this. The overwhelming majority of stakeholders that were involved in the consultation were very supportive of these codes.

The noble Lord asked about the statistical methodology. I cannot remember exactly what it was, but I will write to the noble Lord.

The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, also asked how we will keep track of all this. Of course, there will be a register in place, open and fully searchable by the public. The Information Commissioner has a power of audit, which will be used to keep track of all the data that is shared, and the audit logs will be kept for all data shared under the powers.

The noble Lord talked about transparency: how are we going to monitor and track the impact of this data sharing? Review boards will be established to oversee any non-devolved and England-only information sharing pilots that are set up, and there will also be a review board to advise Ministers and make recommendations on the establishment of new objectives, if there are any. The membership of those review boards will come from across the various data holding departments, as well as the ICO and representatives of civil society. Lastly, the ICO has said that she will carry out an independent review of all the Part 5 powers in two to three years.

Breaching of Limits on Ticket Sales Regulations 2018

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I join those who have welcomed this statutory instrument. We could say that progress on the part of the Government has been somewhat slower than perhaps we would have wished, but nevertheless we are surely getting there. That is largely due to the fact that we are working in a cross-party way and in a spirit of collegiate support on the issues that are worrying us in this area.

In your Lordships’ House, this effort is led by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, who is in his place and has spoken out. However, it would be right at this point to recognise the work of the all-party group which he talked about, because it has indeed been good at keeping up pressure on the Government on this issue. We also miss, yet again, the spirit and enthusiasm of Baroness Heyhoe Flint, who sadly is no longer with us but who was definitely part of the team that includes on our side my noble friends Lady Hayter and Lord Collins, who have managed to keep this issue in front of your Lordships’ House and have got us to where we are today.

Having said that, others have mentioned the problem of resourcing the teams which will have to make sure that the new regulatory process works in practice, and that means trading standards in particular. It is not, as others have said, just a question of resources; it is also a question of matching the technical skills of those who are operating computers to try to cheat ordinary customers out of the ability to buy tickets as they would wish. I am sure that the Minister will have some words to say about that, but I would be grateful if he could make sure that we understand better how the resourcing element of this is going to be met.

Finally, we are still left with a couple of rough ends, and I do not think that we should consider this to be the end of the game. I have yet to have properly established what is a ticket; the legal definition still eludes those who have been working on this issue. It can either be a licence to attend a performance or it can be a piece of real property which, with justification, can be sold on to others. I think that it is a bit of both, and it would be helpful if we could make sure that we put into statute a proper definition of what a ticket is. Once we have that, the rest of the issues which are raised by this whole question of touting and how it operates will be erased.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to add my voice to those who have spoken, some of whom have of course carried the burden of this subject for quite a long time. A few years ago, I wanted to see David Tennant performing in “Richard II” at the Barbican. Because of the activities of the organisation already named, I was obliged to pay hundreds of pounds for a ticket, greatly inflated from the face value, in order to get a rather poor seat. I have never told my wife about this expenditure and now that I have made my confession on the Floor of the House, I hope that she will not read Hansard. However, I have been a victim of touts and it was only the grandeur of the performance that rescued the whole thing in my mind.

It is of course scandalous that these things take place. It is perhaps unfortunate that trading standards people, who are accustomed to dealing with infractions of this nature and are empowered to do so, are given less than helpful advice when it comes to pursuing matters in this area. The police have all the powers necessary to bring cases and all the rest of it. It seems important that the police are not burdened with what, for them, will be a marginal or lesser activity. They face so many serious things these days. Perhaps we can look at that in due course.

Since I have mentioned drama and quoted Shakespeare, perhaps I can quote the words of the Minister back to him. He said in an earlier debate that,

“with the new offence on the statute book, the Government will work with industry to enforce it. An offence is only worth having if criminal acts are reported. We have industry groups in place that are now willing and able to take action in partnership with our law enforcement agencies”.—[Official Report, 29/3/17; col. 660.]

We are promised constant review of the outcomes of these regulations once we have approved them. Of course that is good, but are we convinced that if we wait a statutory amount of time—a year or two—to monitor what is happening, the police might not feel that this was their priority and we will have rather little to report at that time, and that we cannot anticipate already the likely shortcomings in the way this matter will be implemented?

My children are less concerned with David Tennant at the Barbican than they are with the Arctic Monkeys. Of course, their recent re-emergence to the public saw a prime example of this kind of difficulty. Indeed, it might well be described for all of us as our “Favourite Worst Nightmare”, since that was the name of one of their albums. One commentator at that time said that it is easier to buy a gun in the United States than an Arctic Monkeys ticket in the United Kingdom. Or, as another one said, it is,

“easier to get a reservation at Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino”,

than one of their tickets. That is another one of their albums, course.

It is well enough to play around with words; it is the ordinary public who suffer from these dangerous and profiteering pirateering activities. It is time that we recognise this as something that has to be addressed, which we do and have done. Indeed, looking at some briefing from Ticketmaster, I see for just how long it has been active in the field trying to control these sorts of activities. It is time that we find ourselves not only expressing concern and making provision, but giving power to the people best able to do something about this so that, when we get our promised report back in due course, we will be able to see first, to answer the Minister’s worries, people brought to justice and, secondly, treated righteously before the law.

All of us can express our very real concerns about this aspect of our national life. All of us want to see something done about it. We just hope that this statutory instrument will not only add something that looks right on paper, but achieve some of the objectives we mentioned today.

First World War: Empire and Commonwealth Troops

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, when we ask Ministers whether they are planning to commemorate the contribution made by Empire and Commonwealth troops during the First World War, we already know the answer. They will give a resounding yes to that question and point to their record thus far—to all the events and memorials both here and across the world, on which lots of money is spent. All we can do is simply endorse any tendency to self-congratulation that they offer, since the worthy recipient of the attention and the resource has been well testified to in various speeches this evening.

The fields from which troops were drawn have been mentioned by noble Lords one after another. When she spoke in such a debate not long ago, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, reminded us that it was not just Tommies but Tariqs and Tajinders too. She was echoing Mahomet Kemal Ataturk, who reminded us after Gallipoli that it was Mehmets as well as Johnnies who made the ultimate sacrifice, and that their bodies would be well looked after in the fields where they had fallen.

Incidentally, and perhaps this is a bit of a sales pitch, I was at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford on Saturday to hear our Parliament Choir and the Dunedin choir from the University of Otago give voice, for the first time north of the equator, to an oratorio called “Gallipoli to the Somme”. It was one of the most moving pieces of music that I have ever heard, and the presence of Indian troops, as well as New Zealanders and Australians was well mentioned in it. It will be repeated at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the next couple of weeks, and I hope that my mentioning it at the Dispatch Box and the record in Hansard will persuade many noble Lords to attend. It is well worth it.

As we commend the Government, we must admit the distinct note of irony that occurs to some of us. These days, in our approach to the question of immigration, we have shown again and again a cold indifference to the efforts of people from what was then the British Empire—the same countries whose war efforts we want to commemorate. Crude criteria have evolved: as we heard from my noble friend Lady Kingsmill, other criteria now replace those that affected her. People cannot even attend family events or strengthen twinning relationships or other informal relationships because of the way our immigration system works against such things happening. One only has to give voice, as many have, to the word “Windrush” to capture the sense of frustration and injustice that reigns in these matters. It is disturbing that Ministers do not appear to see the connection between these actions.

Thanks are due to the people from the United Kingdom’s former dominions and colonies for the suffering that they underwent and the courage that they displayed, but surely that should not be separated from some kind of obligation to treat present-day citizens from those same lands in a fairer, more transparent and more generous manner. I do not much believe in making apologies for historic injustice or in giving thanks for the sacrificial acts of a century ago unless those apologies and that gratitude have cash value. Another way of putting that would be that we might rediscover some commitment to honour Commonwealth citizens in our day.

Once the First World War was declared, the opening and final shots were fired in different parts of Africa. I am glad that there has been ample mention of the East Africa campaign, especially the role of the porters and bearers. Some 646 died in the sinking of the SS “Mendi” in the English Channel just bringing porters from Africa. The supply lines as well as the front lines need to be remembered. The narrative of the Great War affects the acts of bravery on the front. We should not forget those who contributed their land and harvests, which were commandeered. Recruitment became commandeering as time went on, so we should try to remember the little people behind the scenes as well as all the others.

In a few weeks, I shall be going to Kenya in my ecclesiastical role. I will be asking to see a church that is named Kariokor. It is not karaoke: I do not expect to sing. Kariokor is a way of spelling “Carrier Corps”, because there are regions in Kenya and east Africa that continue to carry the name and are—not as official monuments but in their own humble way—real, lived-in monuments to a thus-far rather anonymous bunch of people without whom our front-line troops could not have operated. Let us commemorate and let us give thanks, but let us not drop our gaze from the unfashionable and unnoticed contributors to that war whose centenary currently impinges so insistently on our minds.

Gaming Machines and Social Responsibility

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be able to begin a response to that Statement, which we thank the Minister for repeating, with a welcome from these Benches. In the Welsh language, we have a little tag, “Chwarae teg”—which means, “Fair play, you have done a good job by there”.

We of course welcome the announcement, which is the culmination of cross-party campaigning. Others were mentioned in the Statement, but we add Carolyn Harris, chair of the cross-party APPG and the Minister, Tracey Crouch, who led the review. They should be commended personally in this way. It is of course a victory for all those people whose lives have been blighted by these toxic machines, and these measures should be enacted as soon as possible. A period of delay for consultation is of course understandable, but we hope that it will not be longer than it needs to be.

Last year, there were more than 230,000 individual sessions in which a user lost more than £1,000. That was referred to in the Statement. These machines have increased the risk of problem gambling. It was referred to in one interview on the radio as the “crack cocaine” or “category A” of addictive gambling activity. It is indeed very addictive and very damaging. The evidence shows that this measure will reduce harm for those experiencing it and eliminate the most addictive roulette content, which will significantly reduce the problem gambling associated with these machines.

Having said that by way of commendation, we have of course to mention our caveats and express our aspirations for ongoing work in this area. We are disappointed, for example, that the Government have not yet introduced a mandatory research and treatment levy. Currently, gambling companies make voluntary contributions to the charity GambleAware to help pay for education, research and treatment of gambling addiction, but we would consider replacing this with a compulsory system. The Statement mentions the continuing education, research and treatment that the Government intend to activate, and the levy would help to pay for all that.

The Government need to set a few challenges for the industry, too: we should not encourage complacency. I ask the Minister to reassure us, for example, that the use of contactless cards to admit people to certain gambling games will be looked at with a critical eye. Mention was made in the Statement of online gambling. We continue to be very worried about its effect on those who use it. It has increased at an exponential pace, and we hope that that, too, will be looked at critically.

Then there is the question of children gambling. A large number have shown themselves to be open to using outlets for gambling, and 57,000 children turn out to be problem gamblers: 57,000 children categorised in that way is surely cause for concern.

On the business news yesterday, I heard that the decision of the Supreme Court in the United States of America to deregulate gambling in the area of sport has brought a spark to the eye of our gambling companies, which now see opportunities to expand their business in those directions. So, while losing a bit of money here, they will not be without innovative possibilities to increase their income elsewhere.

We congratulate the Government once again but look forward to hearing satisfying responses to our continuing concerns about this activity.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, in the other place in 2010 I proposed that the stake for a fixed-odds betting terminal be reduced to £2, and in 2015 my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones introduced a Private Member’s Bill in your Lordships’ House proposing the same. We knew then that FOBTs were blighting the lives of thousands of gamblers and their families, and that the betting shops blighting our high streets were getting something like 70% of their profits from these terminals, which were a catalyst for anti-social behaviour and serious crime. So we on these Benches very much welcome the Statement that has been made today.

However, as the Minister acknowledged in the Statement, this has been a cross-party campaign to get changes, and I, too, pay tribute to Carolyn Harris and all members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. Outwith politics, there have been many, including the churches—and I pay a particular tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for the work that he has done —and many within the gambling industry itself who have also been campaigning for this change to take place. Many tributes have been paid to the late Baroness Tessa Jowell, and I support all them all. I will make one further one, because it was the noble Baroness who, as Secretary of State in 2005, introduced the legislation that allowed the establishment of fixed-odds betting terminals. It is to her enormous credit that she showed bravery and courage when, two years ago, she publicly acknowledged that she and her Government at the time had got it wrong. She would be the first to say that the decision today is the right decision for the families and individuals who have been affected, and for society—but I am sure that she would have gone further and said that there is still more to be done in relation to online gambling and the advertising of gambling.

I have three quick questions to the Minister. The first is that the Statement makes it clear that this move will need parliamentary approval and that there is still to be further consultation with the gambling industry to ensure that it is given “sufficient time for implementation”. I think that all of us are anxious for this change to take place as rapidly as possible. Can the Minister give us an indication of the timeframe that he envisages before we see a £2 maximum limit?

Many concerns have been expressed about the number of betting shops on our high streets. Although changes were made in 2015, will the Minister acknowledge that the planned changes to the National Planning Policy Framework would give an opportunity to enhance the powers that local authorities have to be able to take action if problems emerge in future following this change?

Finally, I welcome very much that Public Health England is to conduct an evidence review into the health aspects of gambling-related harm. We are all keen to ensure that enough money is made available by the industry to pay for research into, education around and treatment of gambling problems. Will the Minister tell your Lordships’ House whether the time has not come to change the current voluntary levy to a compulsory one? As I have said in your Lordships’ House before, it is very strange that the compulsory levy for horseracing raises 10 times more to support horses than the voluntary levy currently raises to support people. The time has come to change that.