Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th March 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 144 in my name, which is supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady Harding and Lady Jones, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. The amendment would introduce a code of practice on children and AI. Before I speak to it, I declare an interest: I am working with academic NGO colleagues in the UK, EU and US on such a code, and I am part of the UN Secretary-General’s AI advisory body’s expert group, which is currently working on sections on both AI and children and AI and education.

AI drives the recommender systems that determine all aspects of a child’s digital experience, including the videos they watch, their learning opportunities, people they follow and products they buy. But it no longer concerns simply the elective parts of life where, arguably, a child—or a parent on their behalf—can choose to avoid certain products and services. AI is invisibly and ubiquitously present in all areas of their lives, and its advances and impact are particularly evident in the education and health sectors—the first of which is compulsory and the second of which is necessary.

The proposed code has three parts. The first requires the ICO to create the code and sets out expectations of its scope. The second considers who and what should be consulted and considered, including experts, children and the frameworks that codify children’s existing rights. The third defines elements of the process, including risk assessment, defines language and puts the principles to which the code must adhere in the Bill.

I am going to get my defence in early. I anticipate that the Minister will say that the ICO has published guidance, that we do not want to exclude children from the benefits of AI and that we are in a time of “wait and see”. He might even ask why children need something different or why the AADC, which I mention so frequently, is not sufficient. Let me take each of those in turn.

On the sufficiency of the current guidance, the ICO’s non-binding Guidance on AI and Data Protection, which was last updated on 15 March 2023, has a single mention of a child in its 140 pages, in a case study about child benefits. The accompanying AI and data protection toolkit makes no mention of children, nor does the ICO’s advice to developers on generative AI, issued on 3 April 2023. There are hundreds of pages of guidance but it fails entirely to consider the specific needs of children, their rights, their development vulnerabilities or that their lives will be entirely dominated by AI systems in a way that is still unimaginable to those in this Room. Similarly, there is little mention of children in the Government’s own White Paper on AI. The only such references are limited to AI-generated child sexual abuse material; we will come to that later when we discuss Amendment 291. Even the AI summit had no main-stage event relating to children.

Of course we do not want to exclude children from the benefits of AI. A code on the use of children’s data in the development and deployment of AI technology increases their prospects of enjoying the benefits of AI while ensuring that they are protected from the pitfalls. Last week’s debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, showed the broad welcome of the benefits while urgently speaking to the need for certain principles and fundamental protections to be mandatory.

As for saying, “We are in a time of ‘wait and see’”, that is not good enough. In the course of this Committee, we will explore edtech that has only advertising and no learning content, children being left out of classrooms because their parents will not accept the data leaks of Google Classroom, social media being scraped to create AI-generated CSAM and how rapid advances in generative AI capabilities mark a new stage in its evolution. Some of the consequences of that include ready access to models that create illegal and abusive material at scale and chatbots that offer illegal or dangerous advice. Long before we get on to the existential threat, we have “here and now” issues. Childhood is a very short period of life. The impacts of AI are here and now in our homes, our classrooms, our universities and our hospitals. We cannot afford to wait and see.

Children are different for three reasons. First, as has been established over decades, there are ages and stages at which children are developmentally able to do certain things, such as walk, talk, understand risk and irony, and learn different social skills. This means that, equally, there are ages and stages at which they cannot do that. The long-established consensus is that family, social groups and society more broadly—including government—step in to support that journey.

Secondly, children have less voice and less choice about how and where they spend their time, so the places and spaces that they inhabit have to be fit for childhood.

Thirdly, we have a responsibility towards children that extends even beyond our responsibilities to each other; this means that it is not okay for us to legitimise profit at their expense, whether it is allowing an unregulated edtech market that exploits their data and teaches them nothing or the untrammelled use of their pictures to create child sexual abuse material.

Finally, what about the AADC? I hope that, in the course of our deliberations, we will put that on a more secure footing. The AADC addresses recommender systems in standard 12. However, the code published in August 2020 does not address generative AI which, as we have repeatedly heard, is a game-changer. Moreover, the AADC is currently restricted to information society services, which leaves a gaping hole. This amendment would address this gap.

There is an argument that the proposed code could be combined with the AADC as an update to its provisions. However, unless and until we sort out the status of the AADC in relation to the Bill, an AI kids code would be better formed as a stand-alone code. A UK code of practice on children and AI would ensure that data processors consider the fundamental rights and freedoms of children, including their safety, as they develop their products and perhaps even give innovators the appetite to innovate with children in mind.

As I pointed out at the beginning, there are many people globally working on this agenda. I hope that as we are the birthplace of the AADC and the Online Safety Act, the Government will adopt this suggestion and again be a forerunner in child privacy and safety. If, however, the Minister once again says that protections for children are not necessary, let me assure him that they will be put in place by others, and we will be a rule taker not a rule maker.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with the advantage over the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, in that I will speak to only one amendment in this group; I therefore have the right page in front of me and can note that I will speak to Amendment 252, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and signed by me and the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Wyre Forest and Lord Maude of Horsham.

I apologise that I was not with the Committee earlier today, but I was chairing a meeting about the microbiome, which was curiously related to this Committee. One issue that came up in that meeting was data and data management and the great uncertainties that remain. For example, if a part of your microbiome is sampled and the data is put into a database, who owns that data about your microbiome? In fact, there is no legal framework at the moment to cover this. There is a legal framework about your genome, but not your microbiome. That is a useful illustration of how fast this whole area is moving and how fast technology, science and society are changing. I will actually say that I do not blame the Government for the fact of this gaping hole as it is an international hole. It is a demonstration of how we need to race to catch up as legislators and regulators to deal with the problem.

This relates to Amendment 252 in the sense that perhaps this is an issue that has arisen over time, kind of accidentally. However, I want to credit a number of campaigners, among them James O’Malley, who was the man who draw my attention to this issue, as well as Peter Wells, Anna Powell-Smith and Hadley Beeman. They are people who have seen a really simple and basic problem in the way that regulation is working and are reaching out including, I am sure, to many noble Lords in this Committee. This is a great demonstration of how campaigning has at least gone part of the way to working. I very much hope that, if not today, then some time soon, we can see this working.

What we are talking about here, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, is the postal address file. It is held as a piece of private property by Royal Mail. It is important to stress that this is not people’s private information or who lives at what address; it is about where the address is. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, set out, all kinds of companies have to pay Royal Mail to have access to this basic information about society, basic information that is assembled by society, for society.

The noble Lord mentioned Amazon having to pay for the file. I must admit that I feel absolutely no sympathy there. I am no fan of the great parasite. It is an interesting contrast to think of Amazon paying, but also to think of an innovative new start-up company, which wants to be able to access and reach people to deliver things to their homes. For this company, the cost of acquiring this file could be prohibitive. It could stop it getting started and competing against Amazon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Yes, I am happy to commit to that. As I said, we look forward to talking with the noble Baroness and others who take an interest in this important area.

Clause 33 already includes a measure that would allow the Secretary of State to request the ICO to publish a code on any matter that she sees fit, so this is an issue that we could return to in the future, if the evidence supports it, but, as I said, we consider the amendments unnecessary at this time.

Finally, Amendment 252 would place a legislative obligation on the Secretary of State regularly to publish address data maintained by local authorities under open terms—that is, accessible by anyone for any purpose and for free. High-quality, authoritative address data for the UK is currently used by more than 50,000 public and private sector organisations, which demonstrates that current licensing arrangements are not prohibitive. This data is already accessible for a reasonable fee from local authorities and Royal Mail, with prices starting at 1.68p per address or £95 for national coverage.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Some 50,000 organisations access that information, but does the Government have any data on it? I am not asking for it now, but maybe the Minister could go away and have a look at this. We have heard that other countries have opened up this data. Are they seeing an increase? That is just a number; it does not tell us how many people are denied access to the data.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

We have some numbers that I will come to, but I am very happy to share deeper analysis of that with all noble Lords.

There is also free access to this data for developers to innovate in the market. The Government also make this data available for free at the point of use to more than 6,000 public sector organisations, as well as postcode, unique identifier and location data available under open terms. The Government explored opening address data in 2016. At that time, it became clear that the Government would have to pay to make this data available openly or to recreate it. That was previously attempted, and the resulting dataset had, I am afraid, critical quality issues. As such, it was determined at that time that the changes would result in significant additional cost to taxpayers and represent low value for money, given the current widespread accessibility of the data. For the reasons I have set out, I hope that the noble Lords will withdraw their amendments.