Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Puttnam and Baroness Kidron

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron]

I support the amendment. I was on the House of Lords Communications Committee, to which the noble Lord just referred. We recommended that digital literacy be given the same status as reading, writing and arithmetic. We set out an argument for a single cross-curricular framework of digital competencies—evidence-based, taught by trained teachers—in all schools whatever their legal status.

At Second Reading, several noble Lords referred to data as the new oil. I have been thinking about it since: I am not so certain. Oil may one day run out; data is infinite. What I think we can agree is that understanding how data is gathered, used and stored, and, most particularly, how it can be harnessed to manipulate both your behaviour and your digital identity, is a core competency for a 21st-century child. While I agree with the noble Lord that the best outcome would be a single, overarching literacy strategy, this amendment would go some small way towards that.

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, I add my voice to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. President Clinton memorably said that the first step in solving a problem is recognising there is one. If anyone does not believe there is one, we rehearsed some of it in the previous debate; I would also advise them to watch two very recent TED Talks by Zeynep Tufekci and Sam Harris. If, having seen these, they can convince themselves there is not a serious and urgent problem, then their judgment is very different from mine.

I will speak for a couple of moments on this because I regard it as a very significant issue. Karl Marx—who knew a thing or two—said that if you change the dominant mode of production that underpins a society, the social and political structure will change, too. I believe we have changed the fundamental mode of production that underpins society. It is now called digital. We have to address that and we are not addressing it anything like seriously enough. There are two issues I would like to raise, and if there is a note of frustration in my voice, I apologise.

In 2003, through very torturous processes in this House, we managed to persuade the then Labour Government to impose a duty on Ofcom—and I spend most of my life defending Ofcom—which was very clear; it was laid out by the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, at Second Reading. Ofcom was given the specific duty of promoting media literacy. The wording was that Ofcom was required,

“to bring about, or to encourage others to bring about, a better public understanding of the nature and characteristics of material published by means of the electronic media”,

and,

“to bring about, or to encourage others to bring about, a better public awareness and understanding of the processes by which such material is selected, or made available, for publication by such means”.

Fifteen years later, in respect of these duties, Ofcom has wholly failed. By taking a very narrow, technical view of its responsibility, it has done almost nothing to promote notions of digital literacy in the electronic media. If we are not careful, the same will happen in the digital world. The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, used a much better phrase than “digital literacy”. She used the phrase “digital understanding” in a recent debate in your Lordships’ House. That is really what this is about.

To emphasise something that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, this is all about data. Ten days ago in Los Angeles, Lachlan Murdoch—who I think also knows a thing or two about this business—said the following:

“We’re in the beginning of an incredible transformation … we’re in the first months of something that will have a multi-decade life and future. Businesses that have large data sets and robust data sets will be the companies that win in the future”.


Every company in Silicon Valley and every communications company in the world knows that. This is why this is such a fundamental issue.

To my delight and surprise, the Italians appear to have picked up on this. In the New York Times of 18 October there is a long piece about a new law that was passed on 31 October by the Italian parliament that entirely acknowledges that young people have to have a far greater understanding of the modes of information, the nature of information and the ramifications of information than is presently the case. Some 8,000 schools in Italy are now receiving instructions on how to get across to children the seriousness and importance of, first, the manner in which they give and use their data and, secondly, the means by which they are informed.

Finally, in a very recent book Move Fast and Break Things by Jonathan Taplin, a man I happen to know, he says:

“Part of our role as citizens is to look more closely at the media surrounding us, think critically about its effects, and whose agenda is being promoted”.


I put it to your Lordships that every single front page of every newspaper over the past four months has made this extraordinarily evident. In the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, we are “sleepwalking” into a situation over which we have little control and of which the companies that do have control are not taking sufficient notice. As proved by the Communications Act 2003, you can crunch out the best possible wording and it is still possible for that wording to have absolutely no lasting effect on society as a whole.