Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Ann Davies Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

I welcome the Bill. Given its potential to boost the economy by £10 billion, it is a huge win for so many sectors, and a brilliant example of the difference that this Labour Government can make. Technological innovation will improve efficiency and reduce unnecessary administration, allowing our key workers to focus more on the things that matter most. Police officers and NHS workers, for example, protect us and save lives, and in freeing up 1.5 million hours of police time and 140,000 NHS staff hours every year by cutting out excess administration work, the Bill will help them to do that. How many police officer equivalents could we make from 1.5 million hours of additional work? It is incredible.

Our NHS has been broken by the Conservative party. That requires funding to fix, which is why, in the Budget, this Government rightly pledged an additional £22.6 billion in resource spending for our health service. However, it also needs reform, and I have been pleased to hear that message clearly understood and prioritised by the Government through Bills such as this. At present, each part of the system finds it difficult to communicate with the others, partly because of issues relating to data sharing, which puts more strain on patients and more strain on our NHS staff. The Bill would change that. Medical records would be shared between health professionals, which would mean quicker diagnosis and treatment, and those records would be subject to strict security protocols: only the most relevant staff would have access to non-anonymised patient data.

These changes are hugely important, and cannot come soon enough. In North West Cambridgeshire, the improved data access in the Bill will allow for greater connectivity between all the health services that my constituents use. Whether they have an appointment at Peterborough city hospital, at Hinchingbrooke hospital or further afield, and whether their GP’s surgery is at Old Fletton, Lakeside, Botolph Bridge or beyond, the Bill will ensure that their healthcare professionals have all the information they need to do their jobs quickly and effectively.

On our streets, people are rightly concerned about crime. Police were stretched to the limit and stripped to the bone under the last Government, and the percentage of people seeing officers on the beat has dropped by two thirds over the past 14 years. We are giving police their time back by reducing the administration burden and allowing them to do their actual jobs, protecting the public and making our communities safer.

As someone from a science background, I am particularly interested in the Bill’s reforms to data access for researchers. This has huge potential to help scientists to conduct more impactful research and drive critical innovation in everything from pharmaceuticals to manufacturing, technology and more, and the benefits that that could bring to our economy are enormous. When working in the research space, I could see significant problems with data sharing and access, so I know that this Bill will make a real difference. Colleagues in the university sector have given me their feedback on the Bill, emphasising that providing researchers with secure access to Government data is crucial for research that drives economic growth, productivity and inclusivity.

Linking academic and Government data enables better research. Take my field of pathology, critical work is going on to understand the genetic causes of diseases so that we can develop new treatments. We need huge datasets for that, and it makes complete sense for the Government to work with partners to provide them. In response to the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed), a lot of our scientists, particularly those working in genetics, rely on datasets from other countries, particularly Nordic countries, which have known about this issue for quite a long time and have made a lot of data available to researchers.

We need enormous datasets to be able to do the necessary analysis, particularly around drug development. There are a lot of inclusivity problems, because particular ethnic groups are lacking from the countries on which we are dependent for the data. For example, there is often not enough information about how particular drugs affect black people. In order to deal with that, we need the data to be available so that we can look at the genetics. If we get too caught up in not allowing anonymised data to be shared with researchers for that purpose, it will really harm inclusivity; it will not help at all. It is worth making those points.

University colleagues have highlighted the new national data library, spearheaded by the Department. If designed effectively, it has the potential to facilitate research from the outset, and to help drive improvements in public services for the benefit of all UK citizens. I hope the Government will make sure that we get universities and private sector research partners around the table when we set up the library, to make sure that it will work for them and their needs.

This Bill will allow researchers to seek broad consent for areas of scientific research, while ensuring high standards of data protection. Notably, personal data will be able to be used for research purposes only if it was processed in a manner that does not permit the identification of the data subject. That goes back to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Josh Simons). We talk about risks to privacy and personal rights, but this is anonymised data, usually at a very large scale; no one is looking at individuals’ records. In my field, we look at thousands and thousands of genomes at the same time to identify associations between certain areas of genetics and diseases. This Bill poses no risk to patients, and we do people a disservice if we engage in scaremongering, so I am glad that Members have not done that. The Bill will give scientists more tools for innovation and discovery, and people can be reassured that their data is safe and their privacy respected. The quantity of data that we need to draw strong conclusions in research is huge, which has historically been a barrier.

I am really pleased that the Government have published a 250-page impact assessment with this Bill. I welcome the particular emphasis on trust, but we need to make sure that we get the comms right, particularly around protecting privacy and ensuring that what we have said in this House becomes more widely known by the public.

The Bill makes important clarifications about the use of AI in decision making. We know that this is the direction in which a lot of organisations are moving, and there is a lot of potential, but strong safeguards are essential, so I am pleased to see the Bill place a serious emphasis on putting them in place.

[Ann Davies (Caerfyrddin) (PC)]

Wales’s creative industry is a cornerstone of our culture and economy. It generated £3.8 billion in the last financial year—5.3% of our GDP—and much of that success relies on strong copyright protections. Creatives must be paid when their work is used, including for AI training. Too often creative data is being scraped without permission, undermining livelihoods. Does the hon. Member agree that clauses 95 and 135 to 139 of this Bill are a vital step in safeguarding our creative industries?

[Sam Carling]

The hon. Lady makes her point well, and we have already heard from the Minister about the rationale behind those clauses. There are real issues with putting such measures through in secondary legislation, because this House should have more ability to scrutinise them. We know there is a consultation at the moment, and we have heard from the Secretary of State that he is very open to having a conversation on this issue and making sure that we address it. I am sure we all agree that we need to do that properly.

On safeguards, the Bill makes it very clear that where an organisation makes automated decisions, an individual has the right to a proper explanation of those decisions and the right to make representations about the decision taken, to obtain human intervention and to contest the automated decision. Those are really robust safeguards, but they are key provisions that must be shown to work in practice. We cannot enter a situation in which automated decisions are made wrongly, with no recourse. I strongly support the Bill and these safeguards, but I note that the British Medical Association has raised concerns around clause 77 and clause 70. I would be grateful for the Minister’s response to those concerns around diluting protections for health data held by non-public bodies. I am sure that he has a response, and it would be good to hear it.

To wrap up, the innovative use of data, following strict guidelines and data protection rules, will massively improve the efficiency of public services and grow our economy. It is right that the Government take this route. The UK should be leading the way in innovative technology and fully utilising technological developments to improve people’s lives, and I believe that this Bill will do that.