Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Earl of Dundee

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, very briefly, there were two Members of your Lordships’ House who were sitting in the House of Commons a couple of weeks ago listening to the debate: the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and myself. During that brief debate—as usual, it was time-limited—there were no fewer than 13 interventions on the Secretary of State from around the House. Of the 13, nine came from Labour’s own Back Benches. Every single one of those 13 interventions expressed concern to varying degrees; not a single person said, “You have got it right, we accept all these apologies and we are going in the right direction”.

If you read some of the comments by the somewhat hirsute Vice-President of the United States at the February AI summit in Paris, it is very clear what the White House and the Trump Administration are intending to do. It is America first, America second, America third, up to the power 10. That is their very clear intent.

If you look at the comments of OpenAI and Google when they talk about their input into the consultation that is taking place with our own Government, you see that their position and intent are crystal clear; they are against transparency and are basically saying that it is too late to act on all the information they have already taken as they have the ability to use it, and in fact they want and need even more.

However, the backdrop to that—as the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, said—is that there is an intense debate going on in the United States about this. Two weeks ago, the US Office of Copyright—if you like, the guardian of copyright in US law—issued a report which directly challenges many of the premises that these large AI companies are putting forth about their right to rob, rape and pillage intellectual property wherever they wish in the world. They are trying to subjugate the 50 states of the union to make sure the White House can override them, and they intend to do exactly the same with any foreign jurisdiction which chooses to stand up to what the White House views as its own best interest. That is the reality.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

Three months after the Government’s own report, this amendment allows Parliament to be informed on the scale of theft and the loss of revenue to United Kingdom companies, as it also enables a draft Bill on copyright infringement, AI models and transparency of input.

Does the Minister agree that those measures assist the process of copyright protection here while setting a useful standard abroad, including within the 46 states’ human rights affiliation of the Council of Europe, of which the United Kingdom remains a much-respected member and of whose education committee I am a recent chairman?

In sending out the right message from the United Kingdom, not least is this proposed amendment also consistent with Article 11 of the 2024 Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, safeguarding, privacy and personal data.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Earl of Dundee

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I also rise to speak in support of Amendment 30, to which I have added my name, and Amendment 68. By the end of this set of contributions, I think the Minister will feel that she is ensconced in an echo chamber from which she will find it hard to escape. She knows full well that the subject of citizenship fees has returned to haunt her, her colleagues and her predecessors, and will probably do the same to her successors. Why is this? The simple reason is that by any reasonable international comparisons, which are there to be looked at, our citizenship fees are punitively high and, for many, completely unaffordable.

At Second Reading, as others have mentioned, the Minister said:

“On the face of it, they seem high, particularly when we are talking about children, but application fees for border, immigration and citizenship services play a vital role in our ability to run a sustainable system … and substantially reduce the burden on UK taxpayers.”—[Official Report, 22/7/20; col. 2296.]


Perhaps I may gently draw the Minister’s attention to page 68 of the Windrush Lessons Learned Review. A former Home Office says:

“The basic resource for the management of the immigration system is wholly inadequate and always has been. And the fundamental reason for that is if you’re the minister and you go to the Chief Secretary and you say, ‘I want more money for the immigration service’, they say ‘you must be joking—you think the British public would support that?’”


I turn now to page 51 of the same review. This is from a member of the Home Office’s own staff:

“Staff from both Immigration Enforcement (IE) and UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) told the review they did not feel they had received adequate training; they also mentioned that the Home Office gave applicants minimal help, often referring people to the Gov.uk website, which staff themselves said they struggled to understand or navigate.”


What is described in the review is a cause of shame and embarrassment. I hope sincerely that the lessons that the Home Secretary has publicly stated would be taken on board and acted on will be demonstrated in the way in which the Government try to navigate their way through some of the complexities and inevitable consequences, many of them unforeseen, of this Bill.

Amendment 30 asks that EEA and Swiss nationals, who of course are eligible to apply for settled status, are not encouraged to go for this as the cheaper, easy option, because in many cases they are eligible for, and may wish to apply for, citizenship. The high fees make settled status a more realistic option for many but it is not necessarily a course of action that will be in their best interests.

I draw the attention of the Minister and her officials to the detailed submission made in July of this year by the PRCBC and Amnesty International to the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration for an inspection called “A Further Inspection of the EU Settlement Scheme”. The submission concludes by highlighting that:

“There is, therefore, a huge risk that many British children and young people of EEA/Swiss parentage will be wrongly led to not have their British citizenship confirmed or register for that citizenship to which they are entitled.”


I ask the Home Office, at the very least, to read that submission carefully and to digest its very detailed contents and case studies so that on Report we can have a discussion in which it is clear that the issue is better understood.

As reported on page 50 of the Windrush Lessons Learned Review document, a former Minister commented on the

“total lack of proper administrative competence, basically”

that the scandal had highlighted. Can we not do better than this?

Amendment 68 is more specific about the position regarding fees for the registration of British citizenship, particularly for children in care looked after by a local authority. It also asks the Home Office to raise awareness of people’s right to register their citizenship. I ask the Home Office, when looking at the document submitted to the independent inspector, to look very specifically at the case of a young lady called Mercedes, who was brought up in care, and to see the enormous complications that resulted from her situation and, frankly, the rather inadequate way in which both local government and the Home Office dealt with her parlous situation.

Both amendments have in common a challenge to the Home Office and the Government to live up to their responsibilities and core principles and values, which were often so lamentably absent during the sorry Windrush saga. As I asked earlier, can we please not do better than this?

We shall study the Minister’s responses carefully and hope and expect that at least some of the concerns and questions raised will, at the very minimum, be acknowledged. We are very happy to work with her, if she so wishes, between now and Report if she sees any merit in some of the arguments that we are putting forward. If not, she knows that all of us will be back at Report.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendments 30 and 68, as proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett.

Clearly, as prevented by Amendment 30, EEA and Swiss nationals should not be denied their British citizenship just because registration costs might have become too much for them to afford. Nor, of course, as protected against in Amendment 68, ought children looked after by a local authority to be caught up within the same anomaly.

However, although the corrective of Amendment 30, if accepted, might subsume that of Amendment 68, nevertheless the noble Baroness is quite right to spell out in its own right the threat to children looked after by local authorities, and the necessary remedy which she proposes within Amendment 68.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will agree and can accept these amendments.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Earl of Dundee

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 9th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con) [V]]

My Lords, Amendment 101 seeks to improve the Bill’s current definition of a producer. It broadens that definition, so that instead it reads

“starting, or improving the productivity of, an agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity”.

This would make clearer which relevant parties stand to benefit from financial assistance.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

I now call the noble Lord, Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale. There is a problem with connecting to the noble Lord. We move on to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.