Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests, particularly in chairing the board of Century-Tech, an AI edtech company— I will have to talk to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, about that. I am a director of Educate Ventures Research, which is also an AI-in-education business, and Goodnotes, an AI note-taking app. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I agreed with most of what she said, and I look forward to working with her on the passage of the Bill.

I guess we are hoping it is third time lucky with a data Bill. I am sure we will hear from all speakers that there is a sense that this is an improved Bill on the previous two attempts. It is a particular joy to see that terrible stuff around DWP data not appearing in this Bill. There is plenty that I welcome in terms of the improvements. Like most speakers, I imagine, I mostly want to talk about what might need further debate and what might be missing, rather than just congratulating my noble friend the Minister on the improvements she and her colleagues have been able to make.

I anticipate that this will not be the only Bill we have on data and AI. It would be really helpful for this Government to rediscover the joys of a White Paper. If we had a document that set out the whole story and the vision, so that we could more easily place this Bill in context, that would be really helpful. This could include where we are with the Matt Clifford action plan, and a very clear aim of data adequacy with the EU regime. I wonder whether, among all the people the Minister said she had been able to talk to about this Bill, she had also spoken to the EU to make sure we are moving in the right direction with adequacy, which has to be resolved by the summer.

Clearly, this is a Bill about data. The Minister said that data is the DNA of modern life. It has achieved a new prominence with the rollout of generative AI, which has captured everyone’s imagination—or entered their nightmares, depending on how you think about it. The Communications and Digital Committee, which I am privileged to serve on, has been thinking about that in respect of the future of news, which we will publish a report on shortly, and of scaling our businesses here in the UK. It is clear that the core ingredients you need are computing power, talent, finance and, of course, data, in order successfully to grow AI businesses here.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, that we have a unique asset in our public sector datasets that the US does not have to anything like the same extent—in particular in health, but also in culture and education. It is really important that the Government have a regime, established by this legislation and any other legislation we may or may not know about, to protect and deploy that data to the public benefit and not just the private benefit, be it in large language models or other foundational models of whatever size.

It is then also important to ask, whose data is it? In my capacity as chair of a board of an AI company, I am struck by the fact that our current financial regulation does not allow us to list our data as an asset on our balance sheet. I wonder when we might be able to move in that direction, because it is clearly of some significance to these sorts of businesses. But it is also true that the data I share as a citizen, and have given consent to, should be my data. I should have the opportunity to get it back quite easily and to decide who to share it with, and it should empower me as a citizen. I should be able to hold my own data, and I definitely should not have to pay twice for it: I should not have to pay once through my taxes and then a second time by having to pay for a product that has been generated by the data that I paid for the first time. So I am also attracted to what the noble Baroness said about data as a sovereign asset.

In the same way that both Front-Bench speakers were excited about the national underground asset register, I am equally excited about the smart data provisions in the Bill, particularly in respect of the National Health Service. Unfortunately, my family have been intensive users of the National Health Service over the past year or so, and the extent to which the various elements of our NHS do not talk to each other in terms of data is a tragedy that costs lives and that we urgently need to resolve. If, as a result of this Bill, we can take the glorious way in which I can share my banking data with various platforms in order to benefit myself, and do the same with health data, that would be a really good win for us as a nation. Can the Minister reassure me that the same could be true for education? The opportunity to build digital credentials in education by using the same sort of technology that we use in open banking would also excite me.

I ask the Minister also to think about and deliver on a review of Tell Us Once, which, when I was a Minister in the DWP a long time ago, I was very happy to work on. By using Tell Us Once, on the bereavement of a relative, for example, you have to tell only one part of the public sector and that information then cascades across. That relieves you of an awful lot of difficult admin at a time of bereavement. We need a review to see how this is working and whether we can improve it, and to look at a universal service priority register for people going through bereavement in order to prioritise services that need to pass the message on.

I am concerned that we should have cross-sector open data standards and alignment with international interoperability standards. There is a danger in the Bill that the data-sharing provisions are protected within sectors, and I wonder whether we need some kind of authority to drive that.

It is important to clarify that the phrase used in the first part of the Bill, a

“person of a specified description”,

can include government departments and public bodies so that, for example, we can use those powers for smart data and net-zero initiatives. Incidentally, how will the Government ensure that the supply chains of transformers, processors, computing power and energy are in place to support AI development? How will we publish the environmental impact of that energy use for AI?

There is a lot more I could say, but time marches on. I could talk about digital verification services, direct marketing and a data consent regime, but those are all things to explore in Committee. However, there are two other things that I would briefly like to say before winding up. First, I have spoken before in this House about the number of people who are hired, managed and fired by AI automated decision-making. I fear that, under the Bill as drafted, those people may get a general explanation of how the automated decision-making algorithms are working, when in those circumstances they need a much more personalised explanation of why they have been impacted in this way. What is it about you, your socioeconomic status and the profile that has caused the decision to go the way it has?

Secondly, I am very interested in the role of the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum in preventing abuse and finding regulatory gaps. I wonder whether, after the perennial calls in this Chamber when debating Bills such as this for a permanent Committee of both Houses to monitor digital regulation, the new Government have a view on that. I know that that is a matter for the usual channels and not Ministers, but it is a really important thing for this House to move on. I am fairly bored with making the case over the past two or three years.

In summary, this is a good Bill but it is a long Bill, and there is lots to do. I wish the Minister good luck with it.

AI Technology Regulations

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to regulate artificial intelligence technologies.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)]

My Lords, as set out in the King’s Speech, we will establish legislation to ensure the safe development of AI models by introducing targeted requirements on a handful of companies developing the most powerful AI systems. The legislation will also place the AI Safety Institute on a statutory footing, providing it with a permanent remit to enhance the safety of AI. We will consult publicly on the details of the proposals before bringing forward legislation.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for her reply and congratulate her on her appointment. There is no doubt that AI will be an important part of the economic growth that is this Government’s priority, but there are also growing concerns about the potential harms being caused by this technology, in particular around the creation of deepfake content to pervert the outcome of elections. What is the Government’s view on that potential harm to democracy, and are there any plans to extend the regulation to political advertising, as recommended in the 2020 report to this House from the Democracy and Digital Technologies Select Committee?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for those good wishes. Of course, he is raising a really important issue of great concern to all of us. During the last election, we felt that the Government were well prepared to ensure the democratic integrity of our UK elections. We did have robust systems in place to protect against interference, through the Defending Democracy Taskforce and the Joint Election and Security Preparedness unit. We continue to work with the Home Office and the security services to assess the impact of that work. Going forward, the Online Safety Act goes further by putting new requirements on social media platforms to swiftly remove illegal misinformation and disinformation, including where it is AI-generated, as soon as it becomes available. We are still assessing the need for further legislation in the light of the latest intelligence, but I assure my noble friend that we take this issue extremely seriously. It affects the future of our democratic process, which I know is vital to all of us.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 29th January 2024 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

73A: After Clause 109, insert the following new Clause—
“CMA cooperation with work and labour market institutions(1) The CMA must take reasonable steps to consult with—(a) the Office of Labour Market Enforcement,(b) the Health and Safety Executive,(c) the Employment Agency Standards Directorate, and(d) HMRC where the CMA considers that the institution holds or has a right to request information, knowledge or documentation that may be relevant to the exercise of its regulatory functions.(2) The CMA must, following consultation under subsection (1), undertake a regulatory function analysis and make recommendations regarding the following additional questions—(a) whether action should be taken by the institution or others to materially affect competition in line with the CMA’s objectives, and(b) if so, what action should be taken.(3) The institutions named in subsection (1) may make a recommendation or other requests to the CMA where they consider that the CMA may exercise a regulatory function.(4) A recommendation or other request under subsection (3) must be accompanied by a statement of reasons which sets out the rationale and any substantial legal or evidential questions identified by the institution for consideration by the CMA.(5) In this section, a material effect on competition is deemed to include a significant impact on the creation, displacement or alteration in the conditions or quality of work and environment for work in the United Kingdom.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment enables cooperation between the CMA and work and labour market regulators.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, this group contains a range of amendments on competition reforms. They are fairly wide-ranging and I will leave it to the proposers of the other amendments to summarise them.

Amendment 73A, in my name and the names of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, returns us to an issue that we debated last Monday and on which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, moved an amendment. It is the issue of good work and the CMA. I apologise for returning to the issue, but that was stimulated by the Minister, the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, saying that

“the CMA may identify actions that other regulators or public bodies would be better placed to act upon. This may include the DMU referring issues such as workplace conditions to a relevant regulator”.—[Official Report, 22/1/24; col. GC 132.]

I reflected on it and thought that there may be some merit in seeing whether or not we can empower it in the Bill. Subsequent reading and events have reinforced that view. The purpose of these amendments is to promote cross regulator co-operation and information sharing.

Our current approach to regulation rests on domain or sector-specific action, which demands a high level of co-operation and co-ordination. This means sharing information and knowledge, as well as technical and non-technical skills and resources, exactly as was publicly requested by the director of labour market enforcement, Margaret Beels, in her letter of April 2023, to the BEIS Committee in the other place, on AI and the labour market. I remind the Committee that the director of labour market enforcement is effectively an arm’s-length body of the Minister’s department. Her letter said:

“There is a need for cross-cutting collaboration with regulation in this space … There is no vehicle or champion for doing this”


at present.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I need to write to the noble Lord on that.

I now speak briefly to the government amendments in this group, all of which are minor and technical in nature. First, Amendments 90, 91 and 92 ensure that extensions to the statutory deadlines for phase 2 merger investigations under the new fast track procedure for mergers operate correctly within the existing legal framework for deadline extensions under the Enterprise Act 2002.

Secondly, government Amendments 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100 and 102, will clarify that, in the civil penalty provisions introduced and amended by Schedules 9 and 10 to the Bill, references to maximum amounts of daily penalties are maximums per day and not in total.

Thirdly, Amendments 96 and 101 update cross-references in Section 120 of the Enterprise Act 2002, so that decisions made under the civil penalty provisions in Part 3 of that Act, as amended by the Bill, are carved out from that provision. Section 120 allows persons to seek a review of a CMA decision in the CAT on judicial review principles. Such a review is not required because penalty decisions are appealable on a merits basis.

Fourthly, Amendment 103 makes the equivalent amendment to Section 179 in relation to civil penalty decisions made under Part 4 of the Enterprise Act.

Finally, Amendments 104 and 105 have been introduced to take account of an amendment made by the Energy Act 2023 to Section 124(5) of the Enterprise Act 2002, which is also amended by the Bill.

I hope noble Lords will support these government amendments.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a useful debate. I was very much persuaded by the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie—far more so than the Minister was—and I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, made some useful points around asymmetry in respect of search and media.

I am very grateful to all noble Lords who responded to my amendments. I kind of feel that my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, and the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, were in many ways responding to last week’s debate—I think as the noble Baroness admitted. It is perfectly possible to argue that it is an encumbrance to extend the remit as we were arguing last week; that is a perfectly reasonable position. Indeed, just yesterday in the Observer, I read Torsten Bell from the Resolution Foundation responding to the CMA chief executive’s speech around the labour market and competition, saying that this is not a case for minimum labour standards nor a case for extending regulatory reach. They have friends in all sorts of places.

The EU announced a fine of £27 million against Amazon for oversurveillance of workers. These are real problems, and there is a regulatory gap that would be best addressed, I am sure, by having a single powerful labour market regulator. At the moment, we have a multiplicity of relatively weak regulators. That might solve some of the regulatory gap problem.

The debate this week was much more about collaboration between regulators. I feel that the Minister failed to really address and respond to the point. He might want to follow up by having a meeting just to sort out whether, in essence, Margaret Beels, the director of labour market enforcement, is wrong. In her letter to the BEIS Select Committee on 6 April 2023, under the bullet point on regulation, she said that:

“There is a need for cross-cutting collaboration with regulation in this space to bring different aspects together both within the UK and across the international playing field. There is also a need to learn from each other. There is no vehicle or champion for doing this”.


If the Minister had been listening, I said that earlier. He performs his notes brilliantly, but one of these regulators is saying that there is “no vehicle or champion” for regulatory co-operation in respect of AI. We need to fill that regulatory gap, and this Bill is an opportunity for us to do so. It is urgent because of the exploitation of some workers. We need to get on with it and I hope that, as this Bill proceeds, we find an opportunity to do so. I would be delighted to do so in collaboration and co-operation with the Government Front Bench.

On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 73A withdrawn.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 5th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure, as ever and once more, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell. I particularly endorse the comment she made about having a Joint Committee, which I also made repeatedly during the course of the Online Safety Act. I am pleased to note the precedent she noticed, which I did not, and I support what she had to say. I remind your Lordships of my interests in the register, particularly as the chair of tech company CENTURY Tech and a co-owner of Suklaa Limited, which has a number of tech clients.

Like all other speakers so far, I very much welcome the Bill but, like everybody else, I think except for the Minister, I question whether it goes far enough in creating a sufficiently robust regime to hold the large tech companies to account. I do not necessarily want to bash them, but it is notable that they are particularly wealthy and particularly litigious. If we want to have a meaningful regime, we need a robust set of regulators to take them on. In September, the European Commission listed six of them—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and ByteDance—as the gatekeepers under its new Digital Markets Act. That feels like roughly a good list of companies for us to keep in mind.

I was amused to look back, just over 20 years ago, to the anti-trust case taken against Microsoft. At that time, Microsoft was the gatekeeper as everyone was using personal computers to access the internet, and the likes of Apple were pushing for the competition authority in the US, the Federal Trade Commission, to take action, so that it could free up browsers and operating systems to allow consumers to access the internet through other sources. Happily, that pressure won out, and Microsoft had to yield and lost the anti-trust case. It is now time for us to take action, in particular on the issue of app stores. I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, is in her place, because she and I collaborated a little, and she led, on trying to get app stores included within the competence of the Online Safety Act. There is no doubt that we are now all accessing the internet predominantly on phones and iPads. The latest data that I have seen from Statista for this country says that, in the UK, 60% of us use smartphones as the most important device to access the internet, and another 12% use tablets such as iPads. That is 72% of us going through either the Apple App Store or the Android store to access the applications that we need to access content.

How do those app stores work? If you want to collect money through them, they take a percentage of that money—roughly 30%. That is on top of VAT at 20%, assuming you are liable to pay VAT, so you have lost 50% of your revenue before you have even started. That is a massive constraint on small businesses being able to get set up. We see that Spotify—one of the companies which have tried to come to talk to me—has, as I read in the newspaper, cut 1,500 jobs today. Perhaps if it was able to keep some more of its revenue and not have it taken by one or the other of those two platforms, some of those jobs would not be lost.

But it is about more than the money: it is also about the data that those two companies can collect through their app stores and analyse to see what applications, and what features within those, are doing well. Then, if they choose to, they can create competitor applications or block applications that they are concerned about. They will not block them overtly: they will just delay the process of approval through their systems—lo and behold, another release of iOS or other operating system is published, and the apps go to the back of the queue in the test pilot system before they can get approval to get on to the app store. All that is a massive constraint on small businesses being able to access and enter the market. I was struck by the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on planned obsolescence—that use of the release of the operating systems to make our devices obsolete is something that a powerful regulator could really help with, in ensuring that our devices remain current.

We need to act urgently in this country, and we need to be able to act internationally as well. Does the Minister honestly believe we have enough powers in the Bill for us to take on the really tricksy issue of these app stores? Will we be able to force them to offer alternative payment systems, so they do not cream off all the money, or systems so that, if I wanted to download an application on my iPhone, I would not have to go through the app store if I did not want to, so that we could then open up to more competition?

I move on to the issue of data a little more. In this House, I have previously raised my concern that an individual such as Elon Musk has all that data on transport movements through Tesla, on communications through his satellite company and on sentiment through his ownership of the company that used to be known as Twitter. That is just one example of a consolidation through horizontal integration, if you like, of data ownership. He, or others in similarly powerful positions, can point the same artificial intelligence machine at each of those individual data lakes, even if they are kept discrete, and get the benefit of being able to train the AI on the different sources of data and create power that nobody else has access to. That would give him a massive competitive advantage.

But it is bigger than just Musk: if you look at the amount of data that Google is collecting about us all at any given time, with all the integration that it has —or any one of the six tech giants that I listed earlier —it is a massive issue. Again, the CMA needs to have some ability to go after this data ownership issue, which is not about verticals but horizontals. I am not sure that it is within the regime or the thinking at the moment, and I would love to hear the Minister’s reassurance on it.

Like the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, I have concern around the competitive landscape for digital advertising. In the second quarter of 2022, Meta and Google made up 87.3% of total ad spend in the UK. It has fallen slightly since, with a greater share being invested in mobile-first platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok. This is in the context of online advertising spending making up 25% of total ad spend in this country. The DCMS has reviewed it and said that there is a lack of transparency and a need for action. However, at the end of its report, the DCMS says:

“In order to be ready to bring forward legislation to implement these reforms when Parliamentary time allows, we will be issuing a further consultation seeking views on these proposals”.


We have a vehicle here in the Bill. Why are we not taking action now to open up competition in digital advertising? Why are we waiting for parliamentary time when we have time now? Where is the sense of urgency from the Government around this important issue that the noble Viscount referred to?

Like others, I have looked at the correspondence on gift aid and would support action to be taken on it.

I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who will be speaking later, has also raised the important issue of researcher access, which we came to in the Online Safety Act. Again, if we could use this vehicle to open up researcher access via the regulator to these large companies, then we could have some oversight over what is going on, so that we could inform better parliamentary scrutiny and regulation of these large, powerful and litigious organisations.

In the end, this is about the power of the internet for good and for ill. As we have heard, we have a suite of legislation before us, of which this is just one Bill, in order to create, hopefully, powerful, agile regulators who can collaborate and give confidence and safety for consumers to realise the transformational potential of technology and not the harms that we are all concerned about.