Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between Lord Harlech and Lord Clement-Jones

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I will be brief because we very much support these amendments. Interestingly, Amendment 239 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, follows closely on from a Private Member’s Bill presented in November 2021 by the Minister’s colleague, Minister Saqib Bhatti, and before that by the right honourable Andrew Mitchell, who is also currently a Minister. The provenance of this is impeccable, so I hope that the Minister will accept Amendment 239 with alacrity.

We very much support Amendment 250. The UK Commission on Bereavement’s Bereavement is Everyone’s Business is a terrific report. We welcome Clause 133 but we think that improvements can be made. The amendment from the noble Baroness, which I have signed, will address two of the three recommendations that the report made on the Tell Us Once service. It said that there should be a review, which this amendment reflects. It also said that

“regulators must make sure bereaved customers are treated fairly and sensitively”

by developing minimum standards. We very much support that. It is fundamentally a useful service but, as the report shows, it can clearly be improved. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on picking up the recommendations of the commission and putting them forward as amendments to this Bill.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as someone who has been through the paper death registration process and grant of probate, which has something to do with why I am in your Lordships’ House, so I absolutely understand where the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, is coming from. I thank her for tabling these amendments to Clauses 133 and 142. They would require the Secretary of State to commission a review with a view to creating a single digital register for the registration of births and deaths and to conduct a review of the Government’s Tell Us Once scheme.

Clause 133 reforms how births and deaths are registered in England and Wales by enabling a move from a paper-based system of birth and death registration to registration in a single electronic register. An electronic register is already in use alongside the paper registers and has been since 2009. Well-established safety and security measures and processes are already in place with regard to the electronic infrastructure, which have proven extremely secure in practice. I assure noble Lords that an impact assessment has been completed to consider all the impacts relating to the move to an electronic register, although it should be noted that marriages and civil partnerships are already registered electronically.

The strategic direction is to progressively reduce the reliance on paper and the amount of paper in use, as it is insecure and capable of being tampered with or forged. The creation of a single electronic register will remove the risk of registrars having to transmit loose-leaf register pages back to the register office when they are registering births and deaths at service points across the district. It will also minimise the risk of open paper registers being stolen from register offices.

The Covid-19 pandemic had unprecedented impacts on the delivery of registration services across England and Wales, and it highlighted the need to offer more choice in how births and deaths are registered in the future. The provisions in the Bill will allow for more flexibility in how births and deaths are registered—for example, registering deaths by telephone, as was the case during the pandemic. Over 1 million deaths were successfully registered under provisions in the Coronavirus Act 2020. This service was well received by the public, registrars and funeral services.

Measures will be put in place to ensure that the identity of an informant is established in line with Cabinet Office good practice guidance. This will ensure that information provided by informants can be verified or validated for the purposes of registering by telephone. For example, a medical certificate of cause of death issued by a registered medical practitioner would need to have been received by the registrar before an informant could register a death by telephone. Having to conduct a review, as was proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, would delay moving to digital ways of working and the benefits this would introduce.

Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between Lord Harlech and Lord Clement-Jones

Committee stage
Monday 22nd April 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

The Minister used the expression “when the evidence emerges”, as did the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, in another context last week. I would have thought that these organisations know what they are about, and they have provided some pretty comprehensive evidence about the impact on their businesses. Is that not a pretty good reason for the Government to think that they might not have this set of provisions entirely right, quite apart from the other aspects of this group of amendments? If that evidence is not enough—I read out the list of organisations—the Government are more or less saying that they will not accept any evidence.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

I thank both noble Lords for their interventions. On the point from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, there is a trifecta of decision-making between the Secretary of State, the ICO and the organisations all working together. That is why there is a consultation requirement before using the power. On the point from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, it is a question of your point of view; we feel that we have done stakeholder engagement and believe that we have got the balance right between the needs of organisations—

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

Will the Minister write and unpack exactly what the balance of opinion was? We are talking about pretty crucial stuff here. It is not always a question just of numbers; it is quite often a question of weighting the arguments. The Minister should write to us and tell us how they came to that conclusion, because the case was clearly being made during the consultation, but the Government have effectively ignored it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for those further points requesting clarification. On how we have come to this decision, I am happy to write to all noble Lords in the Committee. The noble Lord went in an interesting direction because, in the context of the rest of the Bill, so many of the amendments have been about protecting private users, but the noble Lord seems to be swaying more in favour of the advertisers here.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, it is all about the relative importance and the weighting. Maybe that is a good illustration of where the Government are not getting their weighting correct for the beginning and this part of the Bill.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

I take the noble Lord’s point. We are working with industry and will continue to do so. For the benefit of the Committee, we are, as I said, happy to write and explain the points of view, including those from Data: A New Direction. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, power ultimately lies with Parliament via the affirmative resolution procedure for the Secretary of State power.

I will go back to the amendments we were discussing. This regulation applies to complex and technical markets. The very reason we have taken a delegated power is so that the new exemptions can be carefully created in consultation with all affected stakeholders. As I explained, the Bill includes a requirement to consult the Information Commissioner, the Competition and Markets Authority and any other relevant stakeholders, which would include trade associations and consumers or web users.

Amendment 201 would widen the application of the “strictly necessary” exemption. Currently, it applies only to those purposes essential to provide the service requested by the user. Amendment 201 would extend this exemption so that it applies to the purposes considered essential to the website owner. We do not think this would be desirable, as it would reduce a user’s control over their privacy in a way that they might not expect.

For the reasons I have set out—and once again reaffirming the commitment to write to noble Lords on how the weighting was worked out—I hope my noble friend and the noble Baroness will not press their amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

I am not going to carry on much longer. I know that that will be a grave disappointment but it makes the case, I think, that it is high time that the Government did something in this area. It is clearly hugely unpopular. We need to make sure that Amendment 208A is passed. If not now, when?

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for tabling Amendment 208A and the noble Lord, Lord Leong, for moving it. This amendment would insert new Regulation 22A into the privacy and electronic communications regulations and would prohibit via email or text unsolicited approaches encouraging people to commence personal injury claims sent by, or on behalf of, claims management companies.

The Government agree that people should not receive unsolicited emails and texts from claims management companies encouraging them to make personal injury claims. I assure noble Lords that this is already unlawful under the existing regulations. Regulation 22(2) prohibits the sending of all unsolicited electronic communications direct marketing approaches—including, but not limited to, texts and emails—unless the recipient has previously consented to receiving the communication. Regulation 21A already bans live calling by claims management companies.

In the past year, the Information Commissioner has issued fines of more than £1.1 million to companies that have not adhered to the direct marketing rules. Clause 117 considerably increases the financial penalties that can be imposed for breaches of the rules, providing a further deterrent to rogue claims management and direct marketing organisations.

Amendments 211 and 215 relate to Clause 116 so I will address them together. Amendment 211 seeks to confirm that a provider of a public electronic communications service or network is not required to intercept or examine the content of any communication in order to comply with the new duty introduced by Clause 116. I assure the noble Baroness and the noble Lord that the duty is a duty to share information only. It merely requires providers to share any information that they already hold or gather through routine business activities and which may indicate suspicious unlawful direct marketing on their networks; it does not empower, authorise or compel a communications provider to intercept messages or listen to phone calls.

Should a communications provider become aware of information through its routine business activities that indicates that unlawful direct marketing activity may be taking place on its service or network, this duty simply requires it to share that information with the Information Commissioner. For example, a communications provider may receive complaints from its subscribers who have received numerous unsolicited direct marketing communications from a specific organisation. We know from the public consultation that people want action taken against nuisance calls and spam, and this duty will support that.

Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between Lord Harlech and Lord Clement-Jones

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th March 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, I think we should try to let the Minister make a little progress and see whether some of these questions are answered.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

I am sorry, but I just do not accept that intervention. This is one of the most important clauses in the whole Bill and we have to spend quite a bit of time teasing it out. The Minister has just electrified us all in what he said about the nature of this clause, what the Government are trying to achieve and how it fits within their strategy, which is even more concerning than previously. I am very sorry, but I really do not believe that this is the right point for the Whip to intervene. I have been in this House for 25 years and have never seen an intervention of that kind.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Harlech and Lord Clement-Jones

Report stage
Monday 17th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend very much for that intervention.

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House that, as we are on Report, interventions on current speakers should be for direct questions or points of elucidation.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

I am sure my noble friend with 30 years’ experience stands duly corrected. He has reminded us that we have 20 years’ experience of something being on the statute book without really cranking up the powers and duties that are on it or giving Ofcom appropriate resources in the media literacy area. If that was about offline—the original 2003 duty—we know that it is even more important online to have these media literacy duties in place. I very much hope that the Minister can give us, in a sense, a token of earnest—that it is not just about putting these duties on the statute book but about giving Ofcom the resources to follow this up. Of course, it is also relevant to other regulators, which was partly the reason for having a duty of co-operation. Perhaps he will also, at the same time, describe how regulators such as Ofsted will have a role in media literacy.

I shall briefly talk about Amendment 269AA to Clause 141, which is the clause in the Bill setting up the advisory committee on misinformation and disinformation. I heard very clearly what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, had to say, and I absolutely agree—there is no silver bullet in all this. Establishing provenance is but one way in which to get greater transparency and authentication and exercise judgment; it is not the complete answer, but it is one way of getting to grips more with some of the information coming through online. She may have seen that this is an “and” rather than an “or”, which is why the amendment is phrased as it is.

Of course, it is really important that there are initiatives. The one that I want to mention today about provenance is the Content Authenticity Initiative, which I mentioned in Committee. We need to use the power of such initiatives; it is a global coalition working to increase transparency in digital content through open industry standards, and it was founded four years ago and has more than 1,500 members, with some major companies such as Adobe, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Arm, Intel—I could go on. I very much hope that Ofcom will engage with the Content Authenticity Initiative, whatever the content of the Bill. In a sense, I am raising the issue for the Minister to give us assurances that this is within the scope of what the committee will be doing—that it is not just a question of doing what is in the Bill, and this will be included in the scope of the advisory committee’s work.

Thea AI has been an industry-led initiative that has developed content credentials which encode important metadata into pieces of content. Those pieces of information reside indefinitely in the content, wherever it is used, published or stored, and, as a result, viewers are able to make more informed decisions about whether or not to trust the content. The advisory committee really should consider the role of provenance tools such as content credentials to enable users to have the relevant information to decide what is real and what is disinformation or misinformation online. That would entirely fit the strategy of this Bill to empower adult users.

Online Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Harlech and Lord Clement-Jones

Report stage
Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harlech (Con)]

My Lords, the guidance in the Companion states that Peers who were not present for the opening of this debate last week should not speak in the debate today, so I will have to ask the noble Baroness to reserve her remarks on this occasion.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, that neatly brings me to the beginning of my own speech. I have expressed to the Chief Whip and the Minister my great regret that my noble friend Lady Benjamin is not able to take part in today’s debate because of the rather arbitrary way the group was started at the very end of proceedings on Thursday. The Minister is very much aware of that; it is a very sad thing.

I pay huge tribute to my noble friend, as the noble Lords, Lord Bethell and Lord Farmer, have. She is sitting behind me, yet she cannot make her contribution after a decade of campaigning so passionately on these issues. That includes pushing for age verification for pornographic content. We stood shoulder to shoulder on Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act, and she has carried that passion through into the debates on this Bill.

My noble friend believes that the Minister’s amendments in particular are a huge step forward. She describes this as a landmark moment from her point of view. She wants me to thank Barnardo’s, CARE and CEASE for their support and for bringing evidence and research to us on pornography. She would like to thank the Secretary of State and the Minister in particular for taking us to this point.

My noble friend also welcomes the review that was announced last week but, like the noble Lords, Lord Bethell and Lord Farmer, she has some questions that have be asked. This review is a good opportunity to examine the gaps in regulation, but it is proposed that the review will take a year. Is that the proposal and is it a firm year? What happens thereafter? Is there a commitment by the Government to legislate on this, if they are still the Government in a year’s time? What are their intentions and what is the road map to legislation? For instance, the gambling review started four years ago and we have not seen real change yet, so I think it is important to have some assurance in that respect.

Who will be involved in the review? Will the third sector and charity organisations working in this space be involved? The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, asked about scientific and medical research, which are all important aspects. I know that my noble friend would want to pay her own tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Farmer and Lord Bethell, to others involved in this exercise—“exercise” should be what it is called as it certainly feels like exercise—and in particular to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I hope that the Minister will give my noble friend those assurances, despite the fact that she is not able to take part in this debate today.

From my point of view, I welcome the Government’s decision to strengthen the Bill’s age-verification requirements for online pornography, especially in respect of the principles for age assurance. But—and there always is a “but”—we absolutely need that age assurance to be privacy protecting. Amendment 125 is crucial and I am disappointed that it has not been included so far.

My noble friend Lord Allan referred to one of the major objections. We had a huge argument and debate about the efficacy of age verification when we discussed Part 3. There were great fears that age verification was going to be privacy invading and there was not a great deal of certainty about the kind of technology that was available for this kind of privacy-protecting age verification. I personally prefer and wanted to see third-party age verification; at the time, I thought it far better and safer to have third parties, such as Yoti, being responsible for our certification rather than the big tech companies, for all kinds of reasons and not just competitive ones. If we do not have some privacy-protecting language, we will be back in that situation of suspicion if we are not very careful.

Like my noble friend, I welcome the announcement of a review on the issue. There is a huge gap currently, and I give credit to the Secretary of State for understanding that that gap between the treatment of online pornography and offline pornography is very large indeed, as the BBFC can say from its experience. There is a wealth of evidence showing the link between violent pornography and real-life violence against women and girls. That is one of the reasons that I am so pleased that this review is taking place.

I mentioned the BBFC and have mentioned it before. It was going to be the regulator under Part 3 of the Digital Economy Bill. I very much hope that the Government will consult the BBFC, as it has a great deal of experience in offline certification, so I hope it will be heavily involved in a review of this kind.

I listened to my noble friend very intently and I think he made many points that resonate about the practical way in which will need to age-verify to make it simple for the public who are 18 and over. I much prefer the idea of third-party age verification to putting myself in the hands of big tech. I hope that Ofcom and the Government will do everything they can to make sure that those kinds of services are readily available and are not just controlled by the big tech companies in an anti-competitive way.