Financial Guidance and Claims Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 31st October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not an expert on these things, as most people obviously are. A scam was carried out on me in France in the summer, and that was very educational. The point is: would a person in a remote village who is confused and has already been scammed trust the mail or any other form of communication? Surely there needs to be somewhere—perhaps the post office or the bank—where worried people can go. At the moment they have to write to some governmental body far away. We are in a desperate situation and I would be interested to know the Minister’s opinion on this.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I can be brief. We welcome the Government’s amendments, which would place in the Bill a duty on the FCA to make rules requiring information to be given to consumers and members of the public by relevant organisations and persons about the availability of impartial financial guidance. This requirement will cover all information, guidance and advice provided by the single financial guidance body.

The substance of our debate on this group has been Amendment 29A, which strengthens the government amendment with the intent of increasing the use of the new financial guidance service by placing a duty on the FCA to make general rules requiring specified persons to refer specified members of the public to the new body for guidance. The FCA must also specify the manner and circumstances in which the duty to refer applies. Therefore, the amendment puts the FCA in the driving seat, which is the thrust of the amendment. The noble Baroness said that this was basically what the FCA was about in any event, in which case I would ask: if we are at one in what we are trying to achieve here on the authority that the FCA should have, why not enshrine it in the Bill?

Architecture and the Built Environment

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, we welcome this report and the opportunity to review the built environment. It is more than the buildings, of course; it includes the air in the buildings, the air outside, the water and the landscape. I have always been interested in this. I was a city councillor, dealing not only with pollution and traffic but enabling people to choose the colour of their front door, which was very revolutionary in the early 1970s. It is 15 or 16 years since we had the report from the noble Lord, Lord Rogers. It was a very important report and helped to move London forward in its designs—for example, with the Olympic area in the east part of London.

There is unanimity of feeling about this report, and I would like to introduce a constitutional procedure and ask noble Lords to put up their hands if they want a Select Committee. I would want to put up mine, but I am sure I will not be allowed to do that by the chair. We have never had a Select Committee on this subject. Select Committees are extraordinarily powerful bodies—I have sat on a few myself. It would be the only way to have a genuine cross-cutting move.

There are a number of specific points in the report that are important, one of which is to have a chief architect. Currently, the government chief scientist is doing a tremendous study on cities and buildings. It would be tremendous if there were a chief architect for him to relate to. I have just been lecturing to 1,000 architects, engineers and scientists who are studying the indoor environment and its relation to the surroundings of buildings. There is progress in low-carbon buildings, with low-energy water cooling rather than noisy air conditioning. The important point was that there are many dangers in modern buildings in terms of viruses and microbes. There is the extraordinary statistic that 80% of office workers are dissatisfied with their buildings, according to statistics produced in the United States. One reason they are so dissatisfied is that engineers produce perfectly controlled environments and people want to control their own environments and have a good deal of randomness. I believe in randomness; I studied turbulence.

The other important point in this report is the notion of landscaping. Others have not focused on this so much. The greening of industrial areas, particularly in London but also in other parts of the UK, has made them more beautiful and generated new life. In particular they have improved the health of communities with low incomes and multiple deprivation. Research shows that if you have patches of greenery through a large area there is a lower mortality rate, particularly associated with heatwaves.

The document also referred to public involvement. In a splendid book, which can be found in the Library, on London’s environment—it is the only city in the world that has a book on its environment—there was a review of what Labour did in London through computers and public engagements. There is a notion in the report of an urban room—a strange term, but it involves people in participation. We discussed in a recent Energy Bill that there should be information centres about climate change, energy, ventilation, and so on. I believe that we can bring the energy and architecture people together. We need to have that kind of urban consultation. That is an important part of the point that other noble Lords have been making.

25th Anniversary of the World Wide Web

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to be able to contribute to this welcome debate on the world wide web and the internet, a key aspect of technology and society. More debates on this area will persuade sceptical scientists and technologists to accept that Parliament is relevant. Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, will take over Harold Wilson’s position as probably the only, or best known, prominent politician to be identified with technology and society in the past 40 years.

The Met Office, of which I was the chief executive, was one of the first agencies of government to apply the web in its operations. It may surprise noble Lords that in the 1980s the Met Office used not only the radio fax but Morse code. Many of our operators had to learn it; in fact, I learnt it as a boy from my great-aunt. That shows how far we have come. Morse code was then needed to take data from Atlantic weather ships, which, of course, do not exist any more.

In the 1990s, Tim Berners-Lee discussed with the Met Office how weather forecasts, data and research could be helped by the new developments. In fact, he then gave advice to Gordon Brown’s Government about the importance of opening up data. That has been a big change in the past 30 or 40 years. The World Meteorological Organisation’s congress in 1995 established the new approach. The UN has come in for some criticism this afternoon but it has certainly helped in some areas, including openness of data. The great thing now is that with this data, it is possible for users to be informed about alternatives, from weather forecasts to purchases. That will give people more confidence in many senses.

However, as others have commented, there are dangers. The security of the web is a dodgy business—I was swindled last year. Every time I give a credit card to someone, I fear for my life but, obviously, most other people do not. Of course, I do not fear for my life in the restaurant in the House of Lords; I am very confident there.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, commented, new users of the internet are often weakest and poorest, not only in this country but around the world. So the fact that hurricanes and typhoons can be forecast more accurately and then displayed on the web provides enormous assistance and life-saving help to some communities. In Myanmar—Burma to some people—the coastal communities do not have the web, so hundreds of thousands of people died in the hurricane in 2011.

Air pollution is now predicted in many urban areas: it was used in Beijing and used in London. This can be predicted right down to street levels. If you look at the number 73 bus, it will tell you that if you have breathing difficulties, get a message from your doctor and then you get this information. But this information—I have been talking about it and everybody has been talking about it—is essentially one-way information in terms of technical information. Now, however, we have the possibility of people providing information back. There is a fascinating example from Manila, which was able to deal with floods in a way that we could perhaps learn about in the UK. People there have mobile phones and send back information in the form of a colour—yellow, red or green—as to whether the water has reached their ankles, their knees, their thighs or their shoulders. This goes to a central centre, which can see where all the water is travelling in terms of height; it then runs its computer programs hour by hour and tells people whether to get out or to stay put. This is what is called the “web 2.0”—this business of much more feedback between people—and it is part of the new revolution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all speakers for their contributions to this debate. They have necessarily had to be short and sparky, but they have also been very informative. I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for securing this debate in the first place and for her excellent introductory speech, not only for its immediate and relevant content, but for giving us the historic context on the whole question of the web. I also thank her for her other work until recently as the UK’s digital champion.

The noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, mentioned the need for everyone to have an online presence and indeed he gave us a small glimpse of his own. It is obviously useful to have that. I immediately rushed to my iPad to see what his looked like and I was much impressed by that. I also thought that I had better check out the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, so I looked immediately at her website and discovered that she had already put her speech up on the web. It is here, you can read it now. I think it was done afterwards, because it says,

“This is a speech I made in the House of Lords”,

and not “This is a speech I am about to make”. We are in the middle of a revolution both of our thinking and of our operations.

The noble Baroness ended by asking us: what kind of web do we want? That echoes what I was doing in researching for this debate by thinking about what people thought about the web. The best description that I came across was that the world wide web is humanity connected by technology—humanity, not just people. That is something that I will come back to.

There are those who would argue, and there is some merit in this argument, that the web is just another technology, although of course it is very exciting, different and distinctive in the way that it is applied. I suppose, like any other technology, the web can be whatever we make it; we can shape it and mould it. Most importantly, we need to keep in mind that we can use it to do something that I do not think any other technology has ever done, which is to connect every single person on earth—every single person. The web gives people the ability as users and contributors to improve their lives and communities or, in other words, to create humanity.

As we have heard, there are some 2 billion people currently on the web, mostly in the West and the developed nations but, as the internet becomes more connectable and more available through mobile, that will grow to an estimated 5 billion by 2020. That means huge opportunities and challenges, but it also means huge changes in the way in which we approach and think about the world.

Is the web just another technology? It seems to me that the things that it does that other technologies have not done are important, and we need to think about how we approach and engage with that technology. It does something to time. Whereas before we always had some time to reflect on an activity, people now report on and read about events as they occur. You get instant pictures and information. What happened to reflection?

The world wide web also localises. That seems like a contradiction in terms, but the way in which the web is organised so that any community can find a way of sharing information relevant to their interests and to their members and fellow citizens is an important aspect of what it does. At the same time, it is also universal, in that you have access anywhere in the world where you can get a connection—although that is not always possible, even in Britain.

The web also has a different way of focusing things. We have millions of communities, we all have multiple identities and those identities can be reflected on the web though our languages, our hobbies and our different natures. It allows those with shared interests to exchange resources in a way that has not been possible before. That is helped, of course, by search engines. Information has always existed; it has always been in repositories and difficult to access but now it is available. It is of variable quality, as we have heard, but it certainly is there if you can find it.

The web also provides links, both in real time and in a parallel way, across things. Many noble Lords will understand that if they have young children or grandchildren. My children seem to enjoy in a relaxing moment—although they say that they are working—lying on a sofa together, the three of them, interacting through texting and e-mailing while watching television and possibly reading something on their iPads. I cannot do that, but then multitasking has never been one of my strengths.

In that way, we are engaging by voicing opinions and raising issues in a way that has not been possible before. It is inexpensive, it is free—or virtually free—it is immediate and, if well looked after, it is durable. We have engagement and a chance to get involved in things that we would not otherwise have done. We also have the chance to raise opinions and, as people have said, to make a better fist of democracy, or participatory democracy, than has perhaps been possible before.

So there are huge opportunities but, of course, as many people have said, big challenges. There are, within those challenges, very substantial ethical ones. It will be interesting to listen to the Minister respond, if he can, to some of the very difficult questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and her ethical concerns about some of the issues about the web.

The good news is that the UK seems to have embraced the new technology in a terrific way. We have made economic use of the web and we buy and sell more goods online than any other country. I am not quite so sure about the fact that we have the highest number of Twitter users on the planet. I suspect, and have always thought, that this is largely due to my noble friend Lord Knight—he certainly confirmed in his speech that he has played a major part in that growth.

There are of course other important things, such as MOOCs, which we heard about. We heard how the Open University is developing this new technology, about the sort of digital services that we know are possible through the web and about the way in which an open government system can support these things.

Against that, we also hear that only 30% of small businesses are online, that there are alarming difficulties in getting access for the older parts of our population and that skills shortages are significant. We are also very worried about rural coverage. I read one statistic in my research which suggests that fewer than 0.5% of students choose computer science at A-level. That surely needs to go up, particularly for girls, for whom the figure is a fifth of that.

What comes next? The interesting thing is that most of the history of the web is ahead of us: it is a very young technology and very far from reaching its full potential as an agent of empowerment for everyone in the world. Web access for, perhaps, 4 billion or 5 billion people is an incredible opportunity, and new technologies will enable billions of people who are currently excluded to join in.

However, there are some big questions, such as access and skills, which I have mentioned. There is also a need for a change in the whole way in which we do business from physical interaction, although that will still be important, to one-click shopping. That is, of course, related to things such as transport and logistics—the physical movement of goods. How different it is now watching downloaded films compared to going to a cinema, particularly when you think about the change from reels of film to the way they are now broadcast or available on DVD. I have a particular concern about archiving material on the web. I am not sure that we are up to speed on that and wonder whether the noble Lord might respond to that, particularly about e-mails in government.

There are also points about privacy, which were well made initially by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in relation to children and also by the noble Lord, Lord Birt. We need to address some of the concerns that we have about the “dark side” of the web, as it has been called. The Prism and Snowden cases raise big questions. Perhaps most worrying for me, and an issue raised by other noble Lords, is what comes next in this area rather than what has already happened.

Other noble Lords raised questions that we also have to address, including those relating to intellectual property and whether that is up to date for the digital age. I suspect it is not. It needs much deeper and more effective work to get us ready for what is going to happen there. There is also the question about how we relate to the data that are stored about us. We need a mature conversation about that. As one noble Lord said, we are quite happy to give up considerable details about our personal data, including our credit card details, to commercial operators but we quibble about how much data government holds. That is very silly: we need to get this right and get the balance right. It may well be, as has been said, that we need champions—somebody who looks after information—but we cannot go on living in a parallel world on this.

The world wide web is a technology, but what it does and what it can achieve is really up to us, the users. Like all new technologies, the internet is often blamed for many of the problems in society. This is not the first time. One thinks of Shakespeare’s Globe and why it was situated outside the city, the penny dreadfuls in Victorian times and video nasties. These things are always blamed for society’s ills, but they are a feature of human endeavour and not of the technology itself. The Government have to come up with policies, although sometimes—including, I suggest, in this area—not doing something is almost as important as legislating. Particularly in relation to privacy and other issues, it should always be remembered that one person’s filter is another person’s censorship.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, made some good points about the things we can do in our own House. My suggestion would be voting electronically: why do we have to troop through the Lobbies every time a vote comes, as we do currently? Surely we can do something differently with that. The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, had a good idea, modelled on the Tobin tax, of raising funds for good purposes, which is something we should think about. It is probably too late but it is a good idea. We need to go back to the essential issues about inclusion, openness and transformational thinking about how we operate commercially and personally in a digital world, and how to promote humanity connected by technology—

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

We meet each other in the Division Lobby. If we do not and we all start to press buttons, are we saying that that is progress? One of the themes of today is that we have to balance humanity with technology. That seems to be balancing technology with technology.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

That was too complicated for me. I am at the end of my peroration. I will see you later.

My conclusion is that the question for the Government is how to promote humanity connected by technology.

Energy: Nuclear Safety

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend prelate for that question. What is absolutely imperative is that we get rid of any uncertainty that there may be in the nuclear industry, so that it can go forward at speed to produce the facilities that we need in order to cover the energy position in this country which, as your Lordships know, is pretty tight as we look at the decade ahead.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, will the Minister’s plan ensure that it will be easier for retired inspectors to return? I know that some of them are younger than me and I am sure that that is part of the plan. Will he also ensure that these arrangements will ensure that what was called the National Radiological Protection Board, which was a world-famous organisation for ensuring safety around our nuclear power stations, will have its important status restored? The board became part of the Health Protection Agency, which is now being changed, so it is very important that this aspect is also maintained.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that question. The important thing that we need is to have a body that is regarded as totally independent by the industry and that the industry can interact with it. Clearly, if the body is independent in that way, it will make its own decisions on who to recruit, whether they are retired, from abroad or from wherever. What is needed is an efficient capability.