Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Janvrin Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Janvrin (CB)]

My Lords, I too offer a warm welcome to our two maiden speakers in this debate this afternoon.

As the debate is undoubtedly demonstrating, there are many features in this deeply controversial Bill which will merit a lot of discussion in this House, not least the pressures of the sunset clauses and the interests of devolved Administrations. In the limited time available I want as a member of the Delegated Powers Committee to concentrate on the issues raised by its report on the Bill.

One of the more compelling political arguments deployed in favour of Brexit was that the European Union lacked democratic accountability. It is ironic therefore that the Bill gives, in the words of the Delegated Powers Committee report, “a blank cheque” to Ministers to revoke, replace or update retained EU law by statutory instrument—a form of legislation which is subject only to limited scrutiny by Parliament. The Delegated Powers Committee report sets out at some length why this blank cheque is unacceptable and why some of the key clauses in the Bill confer inappropriate powers on Ministers.

The House will no doubt explore these issues at length in Committee, but I want to make a wider point. Many of the concerns expressed in the Delegated Powers Committee report would not arise if secondary legislation was subject to a process of more effective scrutiny by Parliament, both by the Lords and the Commons. If ever there was a reason for updated procedures to empower Parliament—in particular including the Commons—to sift, scrutinise, debate and, where appropriate, amend secondary legislation, it is surely this Bill.

Effective scrutiny makes better law. This issue affects every citizen—all of us. We need a new approach and we need a new Statutory Instruments Act. We can perhaps discern something of a drumbeat in favour of reform in the recent reports from the two scrutiny committees and the debate we had on them last month in this Chamber. The Hansard Society will set out its ideas later this week.

Whatever else it does, the Bill highlights dramatically the need for effective scrutiny of secondary legislation. This issue goes to the very heart of the balance of power between Parliament and the Executive. It is ultimately about public trust in our democratic system, and we ignore it at our peril.

Turkey: Free Trade Agreement

Lord Janvrin Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Janvrin (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for introducing this debate. It is timely, given that the Turkish free trade agreement was ratified by both sides and came into force last week. I draw the Committee’s attention to my relevant interests in the register as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Turkey. I certainly join other noble Lords in welcoming this most useful report from the International Agreements Committee, which draws attention to some important points. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on those.

I want to use my limited time to make one simple plea. I urge the Minister to continue to make a follow-on, more comprehensive Turkish FTA a high priority in his department’s very full trade policy agenda. I do this for three obvious reasons. The first is to help British business. British companies engaged in the Turkish market certainly need the more stable trading environment and level playing field that a trade agreement can bring. They are in this market because they see Turkey as a strong long-term opportunity despite short-term headwinds, including, as we have heard, concern about the rule of law and human rights. I echo the remarks of the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley: those companies see an entrepreneurial trading nation of more than 80 million people, half of whom are under the age of 31, with a high standard of education, excellent technical skills and an economy that has in the recent past shown itself capable of economic growth rates of more than 5%.

My second reason also echoes points made by other noble Lords. The UK’s interest in moving to a more comprehensive deal is strongly reciprocated by those on the Turkish side. They will undoubtedly be tough negotiators, but we are Turkey’s second-largest export market. Also, the Turkish Government and certainly Turkish business recognise the potential for deepening the trading relationship, not only in areas such as services and agriculture but in more innovative sectors such as cleaner energy, tech and data science. So we continue to have leverage.

My third, more general point is that, if we are to make a success of global Britain, surely Turkey is the kind of country with which we need to engage more closely and openly. Certainly there are these headwinds around, but we are long-standing NATO allies with shared concerns about terrorism, migration, regional instability, organised crime and many other issues. An open, innovative, comprehensive free trade agreement with Turkey will be an essential part of this important wider relationship.

National Security and Investment Bill

Lord Janvrin Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater. Unlike him and other noble Lords who have spoken on this issue, I do not have any particular expertise in the ISC or in intelligence and security matters. None the less, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, who, as a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, was fully aware of many of the intelligence and security issues. I will refer later to one which I think arose during his tenure as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Notwithstanding that, I support the amendments in this group, the context of which was initially addressed at Second Reading by many of their movers: the noble Lords, Lord West of Spithead and Lord Rooker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. They all revolve around the need for parliamentary oversight and accountability, and thus the involvement of the Intelligence and Security Committee in Parliament.

I am concerned about the impact of inappropriate takeovers and dual ownership of firms that are key to the development of the UK’s infrastructure, including the digital sector. The gaping hole in parliamentary scrutiny and oversight needs to be examined and legislative provision made for it. That is where the hole lies in this legislation.

All noble Lords who have spoken have elaborated on the sensitive nature of investment issues involving other countries which may have a strategic or other ulterior interest in the UK. Those need to be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, particularly decisions on notifications that will be taken by BEIS. A strong case was made in the Commons for the Intelligence and Security Committee to be given an explicit role in scrutinising the outworking of the Bill, but unfortunately the Government rejected it. I thank noble Lords who have spoken and I agree with them. The Intelligence and Security Committee could do a proper and adequate job if it was given a report on how the powers in the Bill are or are not being used.

There is currently no provision for oversight of national security material on which decisions will be taken, hence my support for these amendments as they would expand the current reporting requirements to include reporting to the ISC, incorporating details of the national security decision-making process into the existing annual report in Clause 61, an issue already referred to by the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead. It is vital that there is oversight of matters that Parliament cannot itself oversee. Oversight and parliamentary scrutiny are key in this respect.

The ISC was established in 1994. I recall that in 1987-88 a company in Northern Ireland that was allocated a demolition contract for Northern Ireland Electricity Service had its contract and its ability to act as a subcontractor withdrawn on national security grounds. It never found out the nature of those national security grounds. No doubt various views were attributed to it. This case was subject to legal proceedings, and the European Court of Justice eventually sided with the inappropriateness of the actions that the Government had taken. I honestly believe that if the ISC had been established at that time, it would have been able to examine papers associated with that case and to judge the appropriateness of the actions and the company. That parliamentary oversight was unfortunately not available at that time, but it is now available and should be utilised to scrutinise global contracts and notifications within the unit in BEIS.

Parliamentary scrutiny is not something that should be feared. It allows engagement, consultation and a degree of transparency, subject to the rules of confidentiality. I support the amendments in this group.

[Lord Janvrin (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. I speak as yet another former member of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. I strongly support the Bill, but there is a scrutiny gap which has been well identified in this short debate. Other speakers have made the key point in support of explicit oversight by the Intelligence and Security Committee of decisions taken under the Bill based on classified evidence from secret intelligence sources, and I strongly endorse those arguments.

I want to underline very briefly the important point of principle underlying these amendments. The ISC is a vital part of the intelligence agencies’ licence to operate in a democracy by making the agencies accountable to Parliament. It helps maintain public trust and confidence in the secret activities of the state. This obviously includes maintaining trust in government decisions about the activities of the intelligence community. Those broad decisions are taken in the interests of the nation as a whole, but maintaining public trust will surely be just as important when it comes to government decisions that may be narrower but could directly affect the future of individual British companies and the livelihoods of their employees.

The Bill will set up a regime that could materially change people’s lives in the wider interest of national security. However, as drafted, it does so without those people knowing for certain that any decisions based on secret evidence are not automatically subject to scrutiny and examination by the one committee of Parliament specifically set up to be able to do this: the ISC. This seems wrong in principle.

There is then the point of practice. I think we would all argue that effective scrutiny leads to better decision-making. The Minister in another place said that there is nothing to stop the ISC calling for evidence on a specific decision. That may be true, but is it practical? It calls to mind Donald Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”: how does the ISC know which decisions to examine in detail? I question whether such a hit-or-miss approach to scrutiny would lead to better decision-making.

Amendments 70, 78, 79 and 82 all suggest means to provide effective ISC scrutiny. As has been pointed out, Amendment 70, in the name of my noble friend Lord Butler, has the merit of real-time accountability. This should be examined carefully, but the other amendments ensuring regular and automatic classified reporting to the ISC will, I believe, do much to ensure public trust in the processes of the Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord West, said, without one of these amendments, there would be no effective oversight.

I very much look forward to the Minister’s reply, and I hope he will be sympathetic to some kind of movement on this important issue. As I said at the beginning, this is a matter of trust.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, it is a huge pleasure to follow such assembled knowledge and experience. I shall do my best to sum up from these Benches.

On a previous Committee day, we debated an amendment, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on defining national security. In his answer to that amendment, the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Callanan —responded that enshrining national security in law would be an inflexible response and the Government sought the ability to have a “flexible” response to future threats. I found this reasonably persuasive. However, who in the Government and department is defining, at that point in time, what the threat to national security is? Where does the expertise lie? Herein come the amendments before us—all except for Amendment 90, look towards the ISC for that expertise.

In his speech, the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, set out what is at stake. These are extraordinary powers that the Government are taking upon themselves to stop private sector activity. That has been the concern of many of us throughout all the amendments that we have been putting forward. A lot of those powers are being kept very close to the Minister and very flexible, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones said when speaking on a previous group today.

One of the problems that has concerned those of us speaking about the investment part of the Bill is mission creep. Having a role for the ISC at the heart of it would ensure that this really is about security, rather than other issues that can creep into the picture.

Artificial Intelligence (Select Committee Report)

Lord Janvrin Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Janvrin (CB)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for instigating this debate. I congratulate him and his colleagues, their advisers and staff on their excellent report. It is clear, comprehensive and very thought-provoking. The Government have rightly taken it seriously as an important contribution to the realisation of their industrial strategy, one that sets artificial intelligence and the data revolution as one of the four grand challenges to be addressed in shaping the future of this country.

The report gives us plenty to chew on among 74 recommendations under 26 sub-headings in eight substantive chapters. At this stage of the debate brevity is at a premium, but I do want to flag three areas: skills, governance and a subject mentioned right at the start of the debate by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes—public engagement. Under the heading of skills I want to address two separate issues. The first is the need to ensure that we have the highly skilled AI developers this country needs to allow us to be at the forefront of this revolution. The second, a point made by many speakers in the debate, is the need to address and reskill those whose jobs are put at risk by the new technologies such as AI.

On the first point, the report rightly devotes a number of recommendations to this crucial issue, particularly around increased funding for postgraduate studies, what I would call the diversity and inclusion imperative, and the expansion of the visa regime to attract the best talent from overseas to work in this country. I also strongly support the report’s recommendation for short postgraduate conversion courses, perhaps developed by the Alan Turing Institute, to allow students from other disciplines to have a grounding in the application of AI. AI is not an end in itself but a means to an end in other fields, as we have heard, such as medicine, law or the creative industries. The fourth industrial revolution is about the blurring of lines between disciplines. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on plans to address what I would call the interdisciplinary challenge; for example, through conversion courses.

On my second skills point—the need to reskill those whose jobs are lost through technological disruption—this was a major recommendation in the digital skills report of 2015, and it was good to see the Government picking this up in their plans for a national retraining scheme announced in the Autumn Budget last year. It is essential to ensure that the private sector plays an active part in funding these programmes, with collaboration at the local and regional as well as national level. I ask the Minister to confirm that industry is fully involved in the plans for retraining and lifelong learning that have been mentioned so often in the debate.

The second general area raised by the report is the question of effective AI governance. This is well covered in chapter 9—“Shaping artificial intelligence”—and covers government engagement, ethics and regulation. I note that the government response is in the name of two government departments—BEIS and DCMS—as well as the Office for Artificial Intelligence. We also have the AI council to give strategic oversight, the Alan Turing Institute leading on research, and the new centre for data ethics and innovation advising on how data and AI are used and regulated. We are told that AI policy-making will be part of the existing industrial strategy governance and decision-making processes. I agree with the committee that it needs to be clear who is driving policy in this area, both at Cabinet level and below, and how the roles and remits of these various bodies are defined. Clarity is crucial to allow government, industry and the academic world to collaborate effectively. It is vital when it comes to funding, accountability and evaluating success.

I also share the committee’s view, endorsed frequently in the debate, about the importance of an ethical framework for AI policy-making. As we have heard, there are general ethical implications around liability, responsibility, fairness and transparency to be thought through. The whole area of ethics, regulation and defining standards is one in which the UK has often been at the forefront and I hope that that will continue to be the case in this area. The new centre for data ethics and innovation will have an important part to play in this.

My third and final general point is about ensuring that there is wide public understanding of the implications of AI, as we have heard frequently in the debate. The report draws attention to this area in a number of its recommendations. The challenge is to build public trust in a technology where—to repeat the word used in the report—“explainability” is at a premium. There is a job to be done, led by the Government, to ensure public engagement with regard to the risks and rewards of AI and data analytics. Much of the work may well be around reassuring the public on how data is used, as we have heard. Here I draw attention to the work of Professor Wendy Hall and her proposals concerning the importance of data trusts in the future. I ask the Minister: who in government will co-ordinate the public engagement programme that has been referred to so frequently today?

In conclusion, I thank again the committee and its staff for this report—and, indeed, the Government for finding time to debate it. One of the many disturbing features of our present politics is its ability to suck the life out of debates on other long-term challenges facing this country. It is refreshing to be talking about one of those challenges today.