Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Maxton and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall not follow the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, down the road of horseracing because I have a confession to make, which is that I have never been in a betting shop in my life as far as I know—unless I was taken in as a very young child. I have three points to make. The first is the question of what sport is, because it is vital to the amendment—which I will be supporting. Darts and snooker are considered sports. They are therefore covered by any legislation relating to sport. You have only to watch “Strictly Come Dancing”, however, to know that a lot more physical activity is involved in dancing than in either darts or snooker, yet dancing is not covered by this legislation because it is not considered a sport.

Secondly, there are differences in the drugs taken by snooker players, for instance. A snooker player would be banned if he took a beta blocker, because a beta blocker slows the heart down, slows the pulse down and slows everything down, but if any other athlete took it, it might be for medical purposes—although it would not be to his benefit or advantage to do so.

Thirdly, I gather that under this country’s present doping laws recreational drugs are banned by all sporting bodies and the UK sports drugs authority. In some countries, however, it is legal to take, for instance, cannabis—to be honest, I am one of those who think it should be legal in this country as well; it should be part and parcel of the legal system that we allow people to take cannabis. But it would be banned. If it is illegal—this question may be one for the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, directly—and an athlete comes to this country to take part in an international event, be it football or whatever, from a country where it is legal to take cannabis, and if he has taken cannabis in the last 24 hours and it shows up in a drugs test, will he be banned from taking part in that event? Some countries allow it. Why are recreational drugs part of that authority anyway? It is a police matter in this country, not a matter for sporting bodies, therefore we ought to take recreational drugs out of the equation altogether.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government must be quaking in their shoes whenever a Back-Bencher offers to come to their help. I looked across at the Dispatch Box when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, make that offer and I saw a definite quiver come over the Minister’s face. Clearly, we are in for something rather interesting. We were entertained by the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, with his worries about the BHA, but he said he thought that it is really quite simple at the end of the day—we need to keep the money out and sort out the betting influences that are affecting all our sports. He is absolutely right. The public have come to the end of their tether and it is time that we got this sorted: we have to keep sport clean and eliminate cheating. The data is key to this, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said.

We expect a great deal of our athletes in terms of their whereabouts and their strict liability, so we have to make sure that the systems under which they operate are fair, properly organised and regulated. In short, we have such high stakes in this that we have to be sure that we up our game—I am sorry about the puns. We should be clearer than we are at the moment about who has responsibility for what and how it is operated, and that is what this amendment is about. DCMS needs a stronger NDPB, in the form of UKAD or a successor body, and there needs to be an authority exercised with care and consideration as to how the rules will apply and to whom they apply. All these definitional points, all the concern about where it goes, are tied up in that set of constructs, which is what this amendment deals with. I think it is very powerful.

If noble Lords look back at the way in which a state was able to influence the way that the drug-testing system operated in the winter Olympic Games in Russia, they will understand how this thing has got to a new level of concern. We must have appropriate safeguards and ways of operating in place to insulate those who are trying to do the right thing from the charge that they are involved too closely. The public will stand for no less. I recommend this amendment very strongly and we will support it should it be necessary to take it to a vote. I hope that that will not be necessary, because as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, this is an area of such importance that the right thing to do would surely be for the Government to accept this amendment today and bring it back at Third Reading with a proper wording and proper consideration that will reassure any who still doubt it. In the interim, we will support it if necessary.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Maxton and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, once again your Lordships’ House is very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for raising this issue and, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, for doing so in such a comprehensive way. It is in the context of the much wider range of issues that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, has been pursuing regarding how sport, gambling and fairness are issues that all need to be taken together. We have been supporting him on those issues, which need legislation behind them.

Noble Lords may not be aware that we have been slightly accused of taking our time over the Bill. I resist that entirely because we are doing exactly what we should be doing in your Lordships’ House: going through line-by-line scrutiny and making sure that the Bill is as good as it can be before it leaves this House. We saw the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, at the very beginning of Committee and he then dashed off to Australia to do various things, no doubt not unrelated to sport. He has had time to come back and introduce these amendments—but, meanwhile, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and I were debating who was going to pick the straw that would require us to introduce them. We were very lucky not to have to do so because they were introduced so well on this occasion.

Our amendment in this group is a probing amendment that picks up on some of the points already made. It raises the issue of why we are restricting this section of the Bill to “sport”—whatever that is. If we are concerned about performance enhancement, we have to look at other competitive arrangements where people gain an advantage because of a performance-enhancing activity such as taking drugs. For instance, in musical competitions, for which the prizes can be quite substantial, it is apparently possible to enhance one’s performance—perhaps in high trills on the violin or playing the piano more brilliantly—if you take performance-enhancing drugs. Is that not somehow seeking to subvert these arrangements? Since that is clearly not sport, is it not something that we ought to be thinking about having in the Bill as well? I say that because, although the narrow sections of the Bill that relate to sport are moving in the right direction, they do not go far enough. As a society, we are going to have to think more widely about this as we go forward.

[Lord Maxton]

I am slightly confused by what is a performance-enhancing drug. We have seen athletes and other sportsmen banned in this country for taking what I would call non-enhancing drugs: in other words, cannabis or whatever it might be. In that case they are not performance-enhancing drugs but the reverse of them—yet people can be banned even if taking them is deemed legal in the country where they do so. Even if it is legal to take cannabis, the drug can still be deemed a banned drug by the anti-drug authorities.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My noble friend is quite right. He has obviously been careful to make sure that he has no personal experience of what he talks about and I would like to make it clear that I have none, either. But it is a very tricky area and we are wrong just to dance around it with the idea that we are somehow doing something important in relation to a particular aspect of drug enforcement.

To do this properly, we need a much clearer approach. I realise that I am in danger of rising above the detail here and going back to my high plain of intellectual approach to the Bill for which I have already been criticised—but I hope that when the Minister responds we can get somewhere on this. A meeting on the particular narrow points raised by the government amendment and by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is required. It would be helpful to see the context in which this might operate. I would be happy to attend such a meeting should that be the case.

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Lord Maxton and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, we return to an issue which we discussed in Committee. At that time my proposed amendment received support from the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for which I was grateful, and I know that he again supports the amendment today. The reason for returning to this is that I sense that we did not prosecute the amendment to the full extent possible at the time—that may have been our fault, but it was quite late in the evening—and, on reflection, there may be an issue here that needs a little more care and concern from Ministers before we leave it.

To go back over the issue, we are talking about the development of spectrum, which is a valuable national resource that—although there always seems to be more of it—is finite. Therefore, as a national resource, it is important that the Government have a firm grasp on how it should be distributed and the prices that should be paid for it. Currently, it is for Ofcom to introduce the necessary regulatory framework, which it does by considering how and on what basis additional spectrum can be made available and on what basis it can be released to operators who wish to use it. That has taken the form of auctions, which have been of varying types over the years—some have been spectacularly successful and some less so—and have been done under different rules.

The nature of the Government’s engagement with this is through Ofcom, and the amendment in no way aims to make a change to that basic structure. However, there is a question about whether we have reached the point where the Government should pay more attention to the issues concerned in this area than they have in the past. Why is this? It is because we have gone from a situation of having reasonably equitable spectrum holdings to having quite a significant imbalance in spectrum. This is partly because of the growth in one or two of the companies concerned. Some of that has been organic, but one of the main reasons has been the allowing of the merger between BT and EE, which has created a group that has been described as a,

“behemoth in the communications market”.

Therefore, we are not now in a situation where there are four companies competing for customers using broadly the same rates and amounts of spectrum; we are talking about only three companies—and possibly a fourth—and the problem is that two of those are very large indeed compared to the others. For example, BT/EE, the combined behemoth, has the largest proportion of all available spectrum, with 39%, while Vodafone has a significant but smaller 27%, Three has just 14% and O2 has only 13% of available mobile spectrum. In responding to this amendment, could the Minister reflect on whether this situation represents an optimum position for the market and, if it does not, whether the powers that he has are appropriate for how it goes forward?

However, it gets more complicated. There are, as one might expect, different sizes of companies and the individual spectrum bands are also of different value. It is therefore important not to look only at the overall figures but to be concerned with how the bandwidths that have the highest capacity—and therefore the best ability to offer innovative services to consumers—are going to be dealt with.

We have the prospect of a further auction this autumn, for which Ofcom is currently consulting on what will be the rules for auctioning off a total of 190 megahertz of high-capacity spectrum in the 2.3 gigahertz and the 3.4 gigahertz bands, which are particularly suited to higher-speed mobile broadband services—a topic that we have just been discussing. Clearly, for the future of UK plc and for the future of businesses and individuals in this country, how the spectrum is made available, how much of it is made available and on which bandwidths will be a crucial issue that we must get a handle on.

In this amendment we are proposing that more attention should be paid than in the past through a cap of, say, 30% on the individual holdings that any one company may have of the usable mobile phone spectrum. This is a figure which has been broadly discussed, and which Ofcom has been using in some of its discussions and debates around this issue, so it would not represent a very different approach.

However, before we go to the auction for this high-value additional spectrum, which will be crucial for 5G and further services going forward, there must be an evaluation carried out by the Government, not by Ofcom. This should look at: the impact on competition in the mobile telephony market of the current distribution of spectrum; the impact on consumers, who are often neglected, both in financial and coverage terms; the efficiency of the current spectrum usage; and the impact of preventing any one licence holder from owning more than 30% as a broad-brush approach. If this review is to be effective, it must be done quickly and brought to the House. I beg to move.

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, I shall be brief. I have in my pocket a mobile phone owned by Virgin Media. Virgin Media uses the EE spectrum. As far as I know, there is no financial connection between Virgin Media and EE, but Virgin uses the EE network. Could the Minister explain that to me?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, I too welcome the amendment; it is well worth while, but it is worth making a point I made earlier. Of course, there are now books that are written entirely as e-books and not published at all in printed form; they are published for the Kindle or similar devices. Does this amendment cover these as well? Does it give the author of such books exactly the same rights as the author of a book published in printed form?

Of course, e-books are now lent not just by public libraries. Amazon has its own public service—well, a service anyway; it is not public; you pay for it—whereby it can lend you a book that you can read on your Kindle for a limited time and that is available only as an e-book and not in printed or any other form. Do the same rights extend to authors whose books are lent in this form? Are these the same rights you would get through a public library?

My last point is also one I have asked about before. Public libraries in Scotland, of course, come under the local authorities, and local authorities in Scotland come under the Scottish Parliament. Is this a devolved matter or will it now be covered by the UK as a whole?

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, we welcome the Government’s tabling their amendment on this issue, as promised. In Committee, the Minister said she wanted to work with the sector groups involved to support a strong book sector that helps to promote opportunities for the public to read and learn, and she intended to table her own proposals for the necessary legislative changes as soon as possible. We sometimes hear that and then have to wait ages, but this time she has been able to get the Whitehall system to work to her agenda, and I congratulate her on that.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Maxton and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of your Lordships’ Select Committee on Communications and pay tribute to the stewardship of the former chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, who has just spoken. It was interesting to listen to the initial spat between the noble Lord and another former member of the committee about whether this amendment could be permitted. In truth, the whole of his speech appeared to be about moving the BBC into Schedule 7, not Schedule 1. The attack, as it was, on the current governance arrangements of the BBC was well made and echoed what was in the Select Committee’s report a few years ago, but it is really about change, not abolition. However, I will pass on because we are in tickling and teasing mode rather than worrying too much about exactly how these things are coming out at the moment.

Today’s debate has been, for those of us who are somewhat new to the arrangements for discussing Bills, a wonderful tour d’horizon of the far reaches of our constitutional arrangements in this country. I did not know enough about agriculture, justice, the Audit Commission or various things to do with shipbuilding. I may even have heard about aircraft—or was it the other way around? I was not quite sure at the end of that discussion whether we had in fact had an answer to the amendment earlier today, but, again, I will pass on. We were only tickling there. Underneath all this, however, does the discussion not raise one or two principles? It seems to me that, although a lot of the heat and energy in this debate has been about whether we are doing it right, the elephant in the room—that terrible hackneyed phrase—is really what this says about our constitutional measures.

Every Government and every governing operation has to work out how to deliver the services that legislatures create for them. In that, we have to think about subsidiarity—the lowest level to which we can devolve the operations which are to be carried out, and make sure they are done properly. We have to give protection from undue interference from those who have set up the arrangements and freedom to those who are charged with getting on with the duties to undertake reasonable stewardship. I do not hear those principles coming through very much in the debate we have been having, but they are surely underlined in what we are saying.

The amendment to which I am speaking is really, as I said, a teasing amendment—a hypothetical situation perhaps. But the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, brought out very well, and I am sure other speakers who will join us in this debate will also say, that nobody argues against the very special place that the BBC holds in this country. It makes entertainment programmes among so many other things, so it obviously affects every aspect of our culture, and it informs and therefore changes the terms of the political debate. It is absolutely at the heart of what we believe our country is about. It is important that we find some form of super-protection, and I think the noble Lord was saying the same thing, both within the environment in which the BBC operates, but also against Ministers and even against Parliament. One could not imagine, if the BBC were to be abolished, the DCMS accepting responsibility for all the various aspects of our life that the BBC influences. That must not be right.

We could not abolish the BBC, but how do we manage it? That is the question that we have to think about. Clearly, the state has to balance the interest it has in economy, efficiency and effectiveness, and apply that to all its public bodies. I worked in a similar body, the British Film Institute, some time ago; just before I arrived, it had negotiated very hard indeed against the then Government to achieve a royal charter, which was given to the BBC about 50 years after its incorporation in 1933. We celebrated that, because it felt as if we had received the gold standard in terms of freedom from interference from Ministers and those in authority. It was illusory, obviously, because Ministers are very persuasive and good at getting around anything that could possibly smack of concern about these sorts of issues; but it was something that we ritually touched every month or two, just to reassure ourselves that we did exist, that we had that protection and that we should have had it. The BBC is in a similar position. Its charter is renewable, as it was not in the BFI’s case, but there was sufficient public interest and discussion in the renewal process to ensure that the BBC would not be affected too badly.

My concern in this amendment—and I am not entirely sure whether I am speaking in favour of it or against it, but I suppose I am tickling it—is that this is really about how one would find in a constitutional settlement, perhaps a codified constitution towards which we are surely moving, a way of expressing some of the issues that appear in our day-to-day existence, which we take for granted, such as academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the ability to switch on our television and see unmediated news and entertainment. These things have to be written in somewhere, not be dealt with simply by a framework Bill, a subsequent affirmative order or in speeches made in this House or another place. That is more important than some of the points made around other bodies here. There are one or two organisations and bodies that we would recognise as being hard-wired in our operation of this country, but I have yet to find an appropriate place within the various organisations that we currently see.

In another debate at another time, I encouraged the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, to talk a little more about his ideas for a council of state, which might in some way take on the responsibilities of this Chamber. It may be that at some point we should think again about how we account for those senior bodies, such as the BBC, that we must have in our arrangements. I leave that thought with this House.

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, given that I waited 40 minutes for a bus last night in the cold, I do not intend to detain the House for long tonight. I do not think that this amendment could be part of this Bill. The BBC is part of the royal charter. To get rid of the trustees, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, you would need to put the BBC on a statutory basis in an Act of Parliament. I accept the tenor of his amendment, and I supported the report when it was published in terms of not wishing to have trustees but having a different type of governance. However, my worry is that, if we get to the point where the BBC is to be established by an Act of Parliament, it would mean passing an Act of Parliament to abolish the present situation—essentially abolishing the present BBC—and then re-establishing it. In those circumstances, given what the noble Lord said about the threat that is coming to the BBC from external forces, we would put the BBC under even greater threat. That would be the whole existence of the BBC in those circumstances.

Having said that, I have a lot of sympathy with what the noble Lord has said, not just because the governance of the BBC is wrong in terms of the trustees. This is no criticism of the trustees personally, but they have failed in one of their primary responsibilities—to hold the BBC, somehow independently of the BBC, to account. They have failed to do that job properly in one particular regard. The BBC, after all, is funded entirely out of public funds, and the trustees should say to the BBC that it should be accountable to the public in the same way as is every public body funded by the taxpayer. In particular, as the noble Lord will know, I believe that the whole BBC—every person, both employee and contractor—should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act in the same way as are all other public employees. Therefore, we should know exactly what some of the people in the BBC earn, and I do not mean the big entertainment stars. I am much more interested in knowing what some journalists earn, as they attack those of us who are public servants in other ways, including attacks on MPs about their expenses. In that sense, the BBC Trust has failed in its duty to hold the BBC to account. For that reason, I would support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, but I feel that if his amendment is carried it would put the BBC as a whole at some risk.