Digital Government (Disclosure of Information) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Holmes of Richmond and Baroness Chapman of Darlington

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, similarly, I rise to support these regulations. I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on the manner in which he introduced them. They are specific in scope, as all good statutory instruments should be; I support that specificity in them.

My question for my noble friend concerns that specificity of scope. It is underpinned by perhaps one of the most important principles for government both at Westminster and in all the devolved nations: how we optimise the potential, not inevitable, benefits that we could have from the data that exists and the sharing of that data. What more is happening across Whitehall to enable the right level of data sharing to ensure that we have robust, reliable and real-time data in all government departments and that citizens are far more engaged with the opportunities and how we all may play our part in them? Certainly, there are areas where the data is patchy; it is even non-existent in some areas. As we know, none of us fits into one simple, vertical departmental silo; we need support and services horizontally from a number of different departments, in a number of circumstances and at a number of times throughout our lives.

As I say, the underpinning nature of these regulations is probably one of the most critical elements if we are to take advantage of the opportunity that this data can bring us and deploy all the elements of the new human-led technologies for the benefit of citizens and the state alike.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

To begin, I thought that was a very interesting question from the noble Lord. It probably stretches the scope of this discussion but perhaps we could return to it in a debate because it is something we are all trying to grapple with at the moment.

The Minister knows that an SI is uncontroversial when most of the questions are about the consultation. I think there is nothing of substance to object to here. As an aside to my noble friend Lord Jones, about parental lack of choice around childcare, let me say that the issue is that the lack of choice is down to the complexity of the available schemes, the lack of support, the lack of availability and the cost. I am surprised it has taken the Scottish Government so long to get to this measure, I must say, but it is welcome. It will enable more parents to have that choice, which we very much welcome because we know about the evidence of the benefits to pre-school children of participating in learning through play and childcare more generally.

As we are here, the Minister is here and there has been a consultation, I want to ask the Minister something. He spoke about percentages in his helpful and thorough introduction. Can he give us an idea of how many people took part in the consultation? What assurances can he provide in response to the concerns raised about the sharing and handling of sensitive data?