Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

48A: Clause 109, page 139, line 19, at end insert—
““service message” means a communication necessary for an administrative or servicing purpose including the performance of a contract to which the recipient is party, or in order to take steps at the request of the recipient prior to entering into a contract which does not contain any direct marketing content;“regulatory communication” means a communication necessary for the compliance with a legal obligation or legislative measure, including those provided by a statutory regulator, which aims to improve customer outcomes and avoids active promotion or encouragement where possible following careful assessment of the risk of harms caused, or likely to be caused, to the recipient;”

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 50A. I have sent the Government a reasonably lengthy explanation of what I am up to here, so I will restrict myself to a summary for the purposes of Report.

To my mind, there is a necessary distinction between a service message and a regulatory communication. A service message is to do with an existing contract, and you do not want them full of marketing material, but regulatory communications often have to contain something that would be judged by the ICO as marketing material—they are required to. Under those circumstances, there should be a required balancing between harms: the harm of not complying with what the regulator would like and the harm of issuing a marketing communication without permission.

This is never going to be simple. It is always going to be case-by-case, but we should recognise that there are times when regulators want to encourage people to take particular actions and want the service providers to be part of that. We should allow for that in the wording of the Bill. I beg to move.

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[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

My Lords, I will start with Amendments 48A and 50A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. The Government are aware that some financial services firms have raised concerns that the direct marketing rules in the privacy and electronic communications regulations prevent them supporting consumers in some instances. I appreciate the importance of the support that financial services firms provide to their customers to help them make informed decisions on matters such as their financial investments. The Government and the FCA are working closely together to improve the support available to consumers.

In December, the FCA launched an initial consultation on a new type of support for consumers with their investments and pensions called “targeted support”. Through this consultation, the FCA will seek feedback on any interactions of the proposals and direct marketing rules. As my noble friend Lady Jones explained in the debate in Grand Committee, firms can already provide service or regulatory communication messages to their customers without permission, provided these messages are neutral in tone, factual and do not include promotional content. Promotional content can be sent if a consumer consents to receiving direct marketing. Messages which are not directed to a particular individual, such as online adverts shown to everyone who views a website, are also not prevented by the rules. I hope this explanation and the fact that there is ongoing work provide some reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that the Government are actively looking into this issue, and that, as such, he is content to withdraw his amendment.

Amendment 48B from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is aimed at banning cookie paywalls. These generally work by giving web users the option to pay for a cookie-free browsing experience. Many websites are funded by advertising, and some publishers think that people should pay for a viewing experience without personalised advertising. As he rightly pointed out, the ICO released updated guidance on how organisations can deploy “consent or pay” models while still ensuring that consent is “freely given”. The guidance is detailed and outlines important factors that organisations should consider in order to operate legally. We encourage businesses to read this guidance and respond accordingly.

I note the important points that the noble Lord makes, and the counterpoints made by the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose. The Government will continue to engage with businesses, the ICO and users on these models, and on the guidance, but we do not think there is currently a case for taking action to ban the practice. I therefore hope the noble Lord will not press his amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. I will, for the moment, be content to know that the Government are continuing to discuss this. There is a real problem here that will need to be dealt with, but if the Government are engaged they will inevitably find themselves having to deal with it. There are some occasions in regulatory messages where you need to make options clear: “You need to do this or something else will happen and you’ll really disadvantage yourself”. The regulator will expect that, particularly where things such as pensions are concerned, but it is clearly a marketing message. It will be difficult to be resolved, but I am happy to trust the Government to have a go at it and not to try to insist on the particular formulation of these amendments. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 48A withdrawn.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much encourage the Government to go down this road. Everyone talks about the NHS just because the data is there and organised. If we establish a structure like this, there are other sources of data that we could develop to equivalent value. Education is the obvious one. What works in education? We have huge amounts of data, but we do nothing with it—both in schools and in higher education. What is happening to biodiversity? We do not presently collect the data or use it in the way we could, but if we had that, and if we took advantage of all the people who would be willing to help with that, we would end up with a hugely valuable national resource.

HMRC has a lot of information about employment and career patterns, none of which we use. We worry about what is happening and how we can improve seaside communities, but we do not collect the data which would enable us to do it. We could become a data-based society. This data needs guarding because it is not for general use—it is for our use, and this sort of structure seems a really good way of doing it. It is not just the NHS—there is a whole range of areas in which we could greatly benefit the UK.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, all our speakers have made it clear that this is a here-and-now issue. The context has been set out by noble Lords, whether it is Stargate, the AI Opportunities Action Plan or, indeed, the Palantir contract with the NHS. This has been coming down the track for some years. There are Members on the Government Benches, such as the noble Lords, Lord Mitchell and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who have been telling us that we need to work out a fair way of deriving a proper financial return for the benefits of public data assets, and Future Care Capital has done likewise. The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, has form in this area as well.

The Government’s plan for the national data library and the concept of sovereign data assets raises crucial questions about how to balance the potential benefits of data sharing with the need to protect individual rights, maintain public trust and make sure that we achieve proper value for our public digital assets. I know that the Minister has a particular interest in this area, and I hope he will carry forward the work, even if this amendment does not go through.

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Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

67: After Clause 132, insert the following new Clause—
“Data dictionary(1) The Secretary of State may make regulations establishing the definitions and associated metadata for core personal data attributes, and may require that these definitions are used in relation to—(a) Part 2 of this Act (digital verification services);(b) Part 4 of this Act (registers of births and deaths);(c) Part 7 of this Act (other provision about use of, or access to, data);(d) personal data recorded by public authorities in general.(2) Regulations under this section are subject to the negative resolution procedure.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is to ensure consistency of definition of key personal attributes across government and over time, e.g. definition of “sex”.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, if we are to live in a data-rich world, we really need a set of well-understood, good definitions for the basic information we are collecting. At the moment, age is about the only stable personal characteristic, in that we generally know where it comes from, where it is recorded and can trust it. Name has become unstable: people are using name changing to hide previous criminal convictions, because we do not have a system of linking one name with another. Residence is widely abused by people who want to get their kids into the school of their preference.

Disability, ethnicity, sexuality and religion are all self-identified. We really need to understand why we are basing policy on something that is self-identified and whether we are collecting the right information for the policy uses we are making of it, particularly when, in areas such as employment, we are encouraging people to make particular choices because they are favoured in the employment advertisements. There is a collection of information there which we really ought to make an effort to be clear about if we are to make proper use of it and understand data going down the decades.

The definition we ought to do something about now is the protected characteristic of sex, because the misuse of sex and its conflation with gender has caused a whole suite of disadvantages and corruptions in the system. Basically, sex is simple: there are only two sexes. For the huge majority of humans, you can easily determine which sex they are. There are some for whom it is harder, but there are still only two sexes. We are in a situation where we record sex and use it to provide safe spaces for women, to have female sports, to know which prison to put someone in, to know how to record crime and, presumably, to know what action to take as a result of it.

Sex and knowing how women are doing is a really important thing to collect accurately, because there is a whole suite of areas in which women have been historically disadvantaged, such as in employment. It is well known that the standards in medical care have been set on men, not women, which has led to a series of disadvantages. We need accurate data. To my mind, rules based on reality and truth that are then adapted to people are much better than rules based on the way we wished things were, then trying to reconcile that with the truth.

We would do better for everybody—women in particular, but also people who identify as trans—if we based our description of them, when it comes to sex, on the truth. We would provide better healthcare, better protection, a much easier attitude to integration into society and proper provision for them. We should seek to do this. Truth should be the base of how we collect data; we should really insist on that. We should not corrupt our data but adapt our practice. I beg to move.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, this one should be easy. Last week, we passed amendments that said that the public authorities, in recording data on matters including sex, should do so accurately. Some might think that that should not be particularly controversial. This amendment says that the Government “may make regulations” about definitions of that sort of thing—that is “may”, not must. It is a negative resolution, not a positive one. It is not difficult, so let us do it.

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[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Amendment 67, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would require terms relating to personal attributes to be defined consistently across government data. The Government believe that public sector data should continue to be collected based on user needs for data and any applicable legislation, but I fully recognise the need for standards and consistency in data required for research and evaluation. Harmonisation creates more meaningful statistics that allow users to better understand a topic. It is also an important part of the code of practice for statistics; the code recommends using harmonised standards unless there is a good reason not to.

As I set out in last week’s debate, the Government believe that data accuracy is essential to deliver services that meet citizens’ needs and ensure accurate evaluation and research as a result of that. I will set out to the noble Lord some work that is ongoing in this space. The Office for Statistics Regulation published guidance on collecting and reporting data about sex and gender identity in February 2024, and the Government Statistical Service published a work plan for updated harmonised standards and guidance on sex and gender identity in December 2024 and will take into account the needs for accurate metadata. The Sullivan review explores these issues in detail and should be published shortly; it will be taken into account as the work progresses. In addition, the Government Digital Service has started work on developing data standards on key entities and their attributes to ensure that the way data is organised, stored and shared is consistent between public authorities.

This work has been commenced via the domain expert group on the “person” entity, which has representation from organisations including the Home Office, HMRC, the Office for National Statistics, NHS England, the Department for Education, the Ministry of Justice, the Local Government Association and the Police Digital Service. The group has been established as a pilot under the Data Standards Authority to help ensure consistency across organisations.

As I said last week, it is the Government’s belief that these matters are crucial and need to be considered carefully, but are more appropriately considered holistically outside this Bill. The intention of this Bill is not to define or remark on the specific definitions of sex or gender, or other aspects of data definition. It is, of course, to make sure that the data that is collected can be made available, and I have reiterated my point that the data needs to be both based in truth and consistent and clear. There is work going on to make these new regulations and approaches to this absolutely clear. As such, I urge the noble Lord to consider withdrawing his amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for that explanation. I am particularly glad to know that the Sullivan review will be published soon—I look forward very much to reading that—and I am pleased by the direction the Government are moving in. None the less, we only get a Bill every now and again. I do think we need to give the Government the powers that this amendment offers. I would hate noble Lords opposite to feel that they had stayed here this late to no purpose, so I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

6: Clause 28, page 30, line 28, at end insert—
“(2A) In preparing the DVS trust framework the Secretary of State must assess whether the public authorities listed in subsection (2B) reliably ascertain the personal data attributes that they collect, record and share.(2B) The public authorities are—(a) HM Passport Office;(b) Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency;(c) General Register Office;(d) National Records Office;(e) General Register Office for Northern Ireland;(f) NHS Personal Demographics Service;(g) NHS Scotland;(h) NI Health Service Executive;(i) Home Office Online immigration status (eVisa);(j) Disclosure and Barring Service;(k) Disclosure Scotland;(l) Nidirect (AccessNI);(m) HM Revenue and Customs;(n) Welsh Revenue Authority;(o) Revenue Scotland.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is to ensure that there is oversight that the public authorities that provide core identity information via the information gateway provide accurate and reliable information.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 6 in my name I will also to speak to Amendment 8. This section of the Bill deals with digital verification services, and the root word there is verify/veritas—truth. Digital verification input must be truthful for the digital system to work. It is fundamental.

One can find all sorts of workarounds for old analogue systems. They are very flexible. With digital, one has to be precise. Noble Lords may remember the case in November of baby Lilah from Sutton-in-Ashfield, who was registered at birth as male by accident, as she was clearly female. The family corrected this on the birth register by means of a marginal note. There is no provision in law to correct an error on a birth certificate other than a marginal note. That works in analogue—it is there on the certificate—but in digital these are separate fields. In the digital systems, her sex is recorded as male.

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[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I can be absolutely clear that we must have a single version of the truth on this. There needs to be a way to verify it consistently and there need to be rules. That is why the ongoing work is so important. I know from my background in scientific research that, to know what you are dealing with, data is the most important thing to get. Making sure that we have a system to get this clear will be part of what we are doing.

Amendment 6 would require the Secretary of State to assess which public authorities can reliably verify related facts about a person in the preparation of the trust framework. This exercise is out of scope of the trust framework, as the Good Practice Guide 45—a standard signposted in the trust framework—already provides guidance for assessing the reliability of authoritative information across a wide range of use cases covered by the trust framework. Furthermore, the public authorities mentioned are already subject to data protection legislation which requires personal data processed to be accurate and, where relevant, kept up to date.

Amendment 8 would require any information shared by public authorities to be clearly defined, accompanied by metadata and accurate. The Government already support and prioritise the accuracy of the data they store, and I indicated the ongoing work to make sure that this continues to be looked at and improved. This amendment could duplicate or potentially conflict with existing protections under data protection legislation and/or other legal obligations. I reassure noble Lords that the Government believe that ensuring the data they process is accurate is essential to deliver services that meet citizens’ needs and ensure accurate evaluation and research. The Central Digital and Data Office has already started work on developing data standards on key entities and their attributes to ensure that the way data is organised, stored and shared is consistent.

It is our belief that these matters are more appropriately considered together holistically, rather than by a piecemeal approach through diverse legislation such as this data Bill. As such, I would be grateful if noble Lords would consider withdrawing their amendments.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken on this. I actually rather liked the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones—if I am allowed to reach across to him—but I think he is wrong to describe Amendments 6 and 8 as “culture war”. They are very much about AI and the fundamentals of digital. Self-ID is an attractive thought; I would very much like to self-identify as a life Peer at the moment.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

However, the truth should come before personal feelings, particularly when looking at data and the fundamentals of society. I hope that the noble Lord will take parliamentary opportunities to bring the framework in front of Parliament when it appears. I agree with him that Parliament should take an interest in and look at this, and I hope we will be able to do that through a short debate at some stage—or that he will be able to, because I suspect that I shall not be here to do so. It is important that, where such fundamental rights and the need for understanding are involved, there is a high degree of openness. However expert the consideration the Government may give this through the mechanisms the Minister has described, I do not think they go far enough.

So far as my own amendments are concerned, I appreciate very much what the Minister has said. We are clearly coming from the same place, but we should not let the opportunity of this Bill drift. We should put down the marker here that this is an absolutely key part of getting data and government right. I therefore beg leave to test the opinion of the House.

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Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

8: Clause 45, page 42, line 23, at end insert—
“(5A) A public authority must not disclose information about an individual under this section unless the information—(a) is clearly defined and accompanied by metadata, and(b) the public authority is able to attest that it—(i) was accurate at the time it was recorded, and(ii) has not been changed or tampered, or(c) the public authority is able to attest that it—(i) has been corrected through a lawfully made correction, and(ii) was accurate at the time of the correction.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is to ensure that public authorities that disclose information via the information gateway provide accurate and reliable information and that if the information has been corrected it is the correct information that is provided.

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[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, we are playing a bit of Jack-in-the-box. When I was being taught law by a wonderful person from Gray’s Inn, who was responsible for drafting the constitution of Uganda’s independence, Sir Dingle Foot, he said a phrase which struck me, and which has always stayed with me: law is a statement of public policy. The noble Viscount, Lord Coville, seeks that if there is to be scientific work, it must be conducted “in the public interest”. Law simply does not express itself for itself; it does it for the public, as a public policy. It would be a wonderful phrase to include, and I hope the Minister will accept it so that we do not have to vote on it.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, the regulator quite clearly needs a standard against which to judge. Public interest is the established one in FOI, medicine and elsewhere. It is the standard that is used when I apply for data under the national pupil database—and quite right too. It works well, it is flexible, it is well understood and it is a decent test to meet. We really ought to insist on it today.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to add very quickly that we have got a problem here. If someone did take all this private data because we did not put this block on them, and they then had it, it would probably become their copyright and their stuff, which they could then sit on and block other people getting at. This amendment is fairly essential.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Lords Chamber

If the House can be given reassurance along these lines, the Minister will go a long way towards allaying the fears of many people in this country. In the process, it would help the rollout of AI across the public sector.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, said. Her maiden speech was a forewarning of how good her subsequent speeches would be and how dedicated she is to openness, which is absolutely crucial in this area. We are going to have to get used to a lot of automatic processes and come to consider that they are by and large fair. Unless we are able to challenge it, understand it and see that it has been properly looked after, we are not going to develop that degree of trust in it.

Anyone who has used current AI programs will know about the capacity of AI for hallucination. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, uses them a lot. I have been looking, with the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, at how we could use them in this House to deal with the huge information flows we have and to help us understand the depths of some of the bigger problems and challenges we are asked to get a grip on. But AI can just invent things, leaping at an answer that is easier to find, ignoring two-thirds of the evidence and not understanding the difference between reliable and unreliable witnesses.

There is so much potential, but there is so much that needs to be done to make AI something we can comfortably rely on. The only way to get there is to be absolutely open and allow and encourage challenge. The direction pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and, most particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, is one that I very much think we should follow.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I will very briefly speak to Amendment 30 in my name. Curiously, it was in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, in Committee, but somehow it has jumped.

On the whole, I have always advocated for age-appropriate solutions. The amendment refers to preventing children consenting to special category data being used in automated decision-making, simply because there are some things that children should not be able to consent to.

I am not sure that this exact amendment is the answer. I hope that the previous conversation that we had before the dinner break will produce some thought about this issue—about how automatic decision-making affects children specifically—and we can deal with it in a slightly different way.

While I am on my feet, I want to say that I was very struck by the words of my noble friend Lady Freeman, particularly about efficacy. I have seen so many things that have purported to work in clinical conditions that have failed to work in the complexity of real life, and I want to associate myself with her words and, indeed, the amendments in her name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones.

Science and Technology: Economy

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, for giving the chance of this debate, and I really enjoyed the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman. I totally agree with her on the need for trustworthiness and openness. I very much hope that the Government will give her the job of writing the story of the road to net zero, which is currently not displaying those characteristics.

There are three things that I want to urge on the Government. The first is that they really put money and effort into the international standards and regulations by sending really good people to the conferences which set the standards. By doing regulation really well in this country, we make this a really good place to do business. Look at the opposite; look at what happened to telecoms. When I was young, we were top of the tree and now we are nowhere. We started sending rubbish people to the standards conferences and we just became irrelevant.

The second point I wanted to make to the noble Lord is that science must challenge. We spend billions on string theory and dark matter: lots of scientists cuddled up in the comfort of an unfalsifiable consensus. It may be that this is right, and that the universe is as cold and uninteresting as those theories offer, but there are alternatives. Faced by consensus, our bias ought to be to challenge. We ought to be looking at things like quantised inertia, because of its explanatory power and the hope it offers for things such as motion and power. We ought not to be leaving that on the sideline, as we are doing now with its tiny bit of funding. This applies to lots of other interesting alternatives to the consensus and to many other bits of consensus which have established themselves around science.

We must be better at supporting challenge. We must help the Civil Service to be better at dealing with failure. We ought to reward good failure and to encourage the Civil Service to go for the kill factor. Do first what is really difficult and dangerous, and leave the easy things. If you fail early doing something difficult and dangerous, you learn from it and you do not spend a lot of money doing things that will only fail later, because you did not tackle the main subject.

To pick up on something that I think my noble friend Lord Markham was aiming towards, let us have more pull mechanisms—prizes for success and advance market commitments. Give Innovate UK a clear mandate to do those things, because that way will really crowd in private sector interest and investment and end up rewarding success, leaving the cost of failures to the private sector.

I know that the noble Lord is keen on resilience and fire drills. I hope that we have a serious fire drill in the course of this Government. To engage the country in understanding the vulnerabilities of, say, the electricity supply system will really help us to understand the need to have and benefit from having manufacturing in this country in a serious way, so that we can recover from a setback. To have a fire drill will give the public confidence that we will react well when something happens. Suppose we were to have a Carrington Event—a huge solar storm knocking out the transformers in the electricity network. There would be no power for a year or two, because we do not have the capacity to rebuild the transformers. Having a fire drill means that we do not make that mistake, because we will have the courage to turn off the transformers in time and the public will know that we will do it and do it well.