Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee stage
Monday 22nd April 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 199, I will also speak to the other amendments in this group. In so doing, I declare an interest as the principal proprietor of the Good Schools Guide; we make a lot of use of cookies on our website.

I am completely in favour of what the Government are doing in this part of the Bill as an attempt to reduce cookie consent pollution. It is a tiresome system that we all go through at the moment. The fact that it is tiresome means that, most of the time, we just click on it automatically rather than going through to the details. In a way, it is self-defeating. What the Government are trying to do will very much improve the quality of people’s response to cookies and will make them more aware, in situations where they are asked for consent, that this is important.

However—this will be the request at the end of my speech—between Committee and Report, I would really like to sit down with any noble Lords who are interested and are representatives of the relevant industry to discuss how we should deal with cookies that relate to supporting advertisement delivery. A lot of the web relies on advertisements for the revenue to support itself. By and large, for a lot of sites that you are not asked to pay but from which you get a lot of value, that value is supported by advertising. As a website, if you are going to charge someone for delivering advertising, you have to be able to prove that the advertisement has been delivered and to tell them something about the person to whom you are delivering it. In this process, you are not interested in having individual information. What you want is collective information; you want to know that you have delivered 24,000 copies of this advertisement and know what the audience looks like. You absolutely do not want to end up with personal information.

Within that envelope—absolutely excluding the sorts of cookies that chase you around the internet saying, “Do you want a deckchair?”, just because you bought one two days ago—this is a vital part of the way the internet works at the moment. In Amendments 199 to 201, I suggest ways in which the clauses could be adapted to make sure that that use of cookies—as I say, it does not involve the sharing of personal information; it very much involves collective information—is allowed to continue uninterrupted.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My apologies to the noble Lord but his microphone does not seem to be working. I wonder whether he could speak more clearly.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I am sorry. I assumed that my microphone was on.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

It is but I do not think it is working. I do not know whether anybody else is having problems with it.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

Okay. It does not quite reach me up here; I could sit down if that would be helpful.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

No, carry on.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I will try to line up with it better. Amendments 202 to 205 flag concerns with proposed new Regulation 6B, which sets out to remove cookie banners automatically when the technology is available. The concerns very much relate to that last phrase: “when the technology is available”. How will this work? How is it to be managed? There is only a thin layer of controls on the Government in the way that they will use these new powers; it is also unclear how this will affect consumers and advertisers. There could be some far-reaching effects here. We just do not know.

I am looking for, and hope the Government will agree to, wide consultation because, on something such as this, it is never true that everybody knows everything. You want to put the consultation out to a lot of different people with a lot of different experiences of how to use the net to make sure that what you are doing will have the sort of effects that you want. I want to see proper, thoroughgoing impact assessments, including of the impact on competition and on the economic health of participants in the net. I would like to see a real analysis of the readiness of the technology, not just an assumption that, because somebody likes it, it will work, but a real, critical look at whether the technology is actually up to what it is hoped it will do, and proper testing, so that, in giving the Government the carte blanche that they have asked for with these clauses, we do not end up letting ourselves in for a disaster.

As I said, most of all, I am looking for a meeting between now and Report, so that I can go through these things in detail, and we can really understand the Government’s position on these matters and, if necessary, discuss them further on Report. I beg to move.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 74 I will speak also to Amendments 75 and 78. It is important in the context of the relationship between local authorities and home educators that there is a very clear statement of that relationship. I have set out a couple of versions of that in Amendments 74 and 75. I would be content if this was to find its way to the top of the guidance, which is a document that both local authorities and home educators will need to be able to refer to and get clear guidance from. Amendment 74 contains a statement of the fundamentals of the relationship which seem important to me.

On Amendment 78, I will defer to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, when she speaks to Amendment 77. I am thoroughly in support of what she is proposing. That home-educated children should be enabled to take exams has been a long-running problem and ought to be one of the things that we and local authorities are doing to support them.

I am also very much in favour of the amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Storey, and look forward to hearing from them. If we happen to have the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on the line, which I hope we do, I think her direction of asking local authorities to take account of expert advice is important. I know of several occasions when local authorities have said, “It doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter. We’re interested only in what we hear directly from the parent. Expert advice is not something we listen to.” I do not think that is the right attitude; the attitude described by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is right. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 77 is in my name, and I am delighted to have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. This is a very modest amendment so I hope the Minister can agree it without too much difficulty—one always lives in hope in this place.

Home educators save the country thousands of pounds because they are not using state-funded education systems, but they often have difficulty finding a test centre for their children when they want to take public examinations, and when they do find one they have to pay exam fees, which can amount to hundreds of pounds, for the privilege of doing so. Of course, many home educators are not wealthy and struggle to find the money for the fees, but surely home-educated children are as entitled as other children to have public recognition of their learning in the form of examinations. This amendment would guarantee that home-educated pupils had a place at which to sit their national exams and financial assistance to ensure that no child is denied recognition of achievement because their parents cannot afford the fees.

As I say, it is a very modest amendment and I hope the Minister will look on it favourably.

Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I shall move Amendment 120 and speak to Amendments 122, 123 and 134 in my name. I can be brief because we have effectively discussed all this already. The first three amendments all refer to wishing to lengthen the relevant period from 15 to 28 days in a number of different situations but, of course, I would be very happy to accept the amendment that suggests 30 days. I really will not go into detail on each of them, although Amendment 134 does ring the changes, as here, for some reason, it is 14 days. One wonders why, when we have had 15 all along, suddenly here only 14 days are given to challenge a monetary penalty. Could the Minister explain how these periods are arrived at? It would be helpful if we knew how the Government decided that some should be 14 and some 15. Anyway, my amendment does not waver. We still consider 28 days a reasonable time for such representations. I will not repeat previous arguments but will just say that that is a much more reasonable period in which to challenge and work out an appropriate response. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have a couple of amendments in this group. My noble friend covered the government arguments on this subject clearly under the previous group. I expect to come back at her in one form or another when I have the time to analyse the detailed timescale she is looking at—in other words, the whole distance between a worried local authority saying that a child is not being looked after properly and being able to enforce, and how that all works together. But I shall not move my amendments at this time.

Environment Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for his comprehensive replies, but there are a number of areas I would like him to expand on—if he chooses, by correspondence. In the case of the first, it may be best to have an online meeting, should that be possible.

I would really like to walk through with him what happens if we have a medium-sized housing development with on-site diversity gain and, 10 years later, someone questions whether that gain has been maintained, or even achieved. What information will be available to that person? How will they, in practice, be able to challenge it? Exactly what will that information look like? Professional good practice guidelines do not seem a very strong basis for challenging whether something comes up to standard; they are pretty woolly at the moment. Will something be set that can actually be judged against?

If there is a question over whether the gain has been maintained, who will be responsible for taking action? How can an ordinary citizen kick them into taking action? Where, in practice, will the money from a housing estate of maybe a couple of hundred houses be extracted from to make good the lack of performance? How is this actually going to work? As I said, this may be best dealt with as a meeting, but if the Minister chooses to burst into print on it, I shall be delighted.

Secondly, can my noble friend share with us his concerns about perpetuity rather than 30 years? There are lots of aspects of land where perpetuity is normal. No one expects to get out from under an SSSI or building listing, and I do not expect to get out from under the covenants that apply locally to the Duke of Devonshire. Those go with the land and one expects them to be there forever. If one has made improvement to the biodiversity of a piece of land, maintaining that forever or compensating for a failure to do that by providing additional biodiversity elsewhere or onsite seems to fit well with perpetuity, and I cannot comprehend where this opposition is coming from in practice. We are all [Inaudible].

Thirdly, can the Minister answer on whether the biodiversity gain in a particular development will be linked to the local nature recovery strategy or be independent from it, and if it is linked, how does it work?

Lastly, I should be grateful to understand the Minister’s response to the letter that the department has received from my right honourable friend Bim Afolami.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

Minister, I think that it is your turn now.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 8th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

[Inaudible.]

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

We cannot hear you.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

It will be immensely helpful to have a process of gathering information ahead of the Law Commission report on whether extension of hate crimes to embrace misogyny will work, and how. At present, we do not have good information. This is a really difficult area; I do not think that any of us has trouble with the concept of hate crimes, but the Scottish Parliament is currently undergoing extreme difficulty with the concept of hate speech. Many police forces in the UK are doing some very strange things with “hate incidents”, where these can be recorded just on the say-so of one person and then appear in another person’s DBS check. There are some difficult things happening around hate crimes and hate incidents generally; having good data must, surely, be at the core of reaching good conclusions.

Here, we have a difficulty in that the police have changed their recording of crimes and reports so that they record only the reported gender of a person and not their natal sex, as is the protected characteristic under the Equality Act. Recently, we have seen extraordinary rises in the reported level of sexual abuse by women. Is this real? Is there something happening to women in our country that we really ought to understand, or is this a fiction of the change in the police reporting method? Not having accurate data disables us in understanding what to do.

I very much hope that, if something comes of this—I hope it will—the police will not only record the natal sex but will record the gender of all the people concerned so that we can understand exactly what is happening. It really does not help trans people that the hate they are subject to is subsumed under misogyny if they are trans women. We need to know whether this is happening to them because they are trans. We are trying to gather data and understanding; the better the data we have, the better our response.

I support, but would like to see extended, the definition at the end of this. It is really important that we have clarity and completeness. Let us record sex as per the Equality Act definition because that is, as my noble friend on the Front Bench has confirmed to me on previous occasions, the basis on which the Government are working. Let us also record self-identified gender or whatever other formulation works best—we could perhaps adopt the one from the forthcoming census—so that we have a complete picture of misogyny and trans misogyny and can, when the time comes, craft effective laws about it.