Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I support these amendments and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. Not to do so would be, to quote some of her earlier work, beyond the edge of reason.

I support the noble Baroness because I support creatives. They are the individuals who bring such sweet sound where otherwise there would be silence, who fill a blank page with words that can move our hearts, our souls and our minds, and can change the course of history. I support the amendments because I support the rule of law. IP and copyright are well established over centuries.

This is not complex or controversial. There is an extraordinary tedium to the whole question of TDM. Ultimately, I could do this in three words when addressing big tech: “It’s not yours. Take your audacious hands off other people’s work”. And that is from someone who is pro-innovation, pro-AI and pro-technology—but in a way where there is a negotiation and agreed conclusion as to how artists, rights holders and creatives want to engage with these technologies.

We have already heard many times, rightly, that there has been no economic impact assessment. I ask the Minister for his views on that. While on that subject, I ask him, out of genuine interest, what is the genesis of the £400 billion figure in the AI opportunities plan? Where does it come from, what is it based on and how does it sit against the impact that not acting will have on our creative sector?

I support these amendments, and I urge everyone in your Lordships’ House to do so. To misquote the late, great Dennis Potter, “Vote, vote, vote for Beeban Kidron”.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I have come specifically to the debate on this part of the Bill especially to support these amendments. I regret that I have not played a part in any other part of the Bill, but this subject is so important that I have come—and I shall speak briefly because I support what everyone else has said.

I am coming from a totally different angle. As a judge, I tried these cases, and they worked perfectly well. We never had a problem in coming to a decision on copyright or intellectual property. I did not do very many, but I sat with judges who did it all the time. I am absolutely astonished that the Government are setting aside long-established law; whether it goes back to 1709 or 1710—whether it is the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, or the noble Earl, Lord Devon, who is right—I do not think matters. The point is that it goes back a long way, and it works. Why are the Government setting it aside instead of strengthening it, for all the reasons that have been given so far?

I wonder whether, in the absence of an impact assessment, the Government have put their mind to what is going to happen on the ground, and not just with regard to the £1.76. Is the £128 billion going to exist to go into the coffers of the Treasury? I suspect that, whatever they think they are going to make, no one from the government Benches has thought about what they are going to lose. Basically, I am asking the Government to sit back, think again and reflect with the greatest possible care on the brilliant speech of noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the unanimity across this House. Having been in this place for many years, I cannot remember another occasion where I have not heard a single voice supporting the Government. Are the Government going to listen to that?

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 5th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)]

I simply want to endorse, but not repeat, the propositions of law advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I will do exactly the same. It is extremely important that magistrates should have the power to imprison as well as to fine.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

I have spoken to these amendments at every stage of the Bill. One of the unfortunate outcomes of being a campaigner for online safety is the abuse that we get directly from people who do not want the online world to be safe. That abuse comes in all forms, including that which the noble Baroness is trying to criminalise. I say to the House that we must support the noble Baroness. I am so disappointed that the Government are not here with us. Support the noble Baroness.

--- Later in debate ---

We support the creation of this new criminal offence. In many other aspects of law, we are looking at how to combat this evil developing in the online world, but the approach we have outlined is the best one, and I urge noble Lords not to support the noble Baroness in Amendments 5 and 6.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him about the aspect of deterrent? You may have someone—or a company—who is inordinately rich, or someone who is extremely poor, for whom, as he knows, a fine will not work because they do not have any money. There will be instances where a fine would not do but the deterrent would be the possibility of prison.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

The noble and learned Baroness makes a fair point. In practice, this offence is very likely to be charged with the threat to share and other offences, which are of course imprisonable in their own right. As I said, there is no limitation to the number of offences that can be charged. We think it more appropriate that this be a fine-only offence, given the plethora of other offences which can be charged in this field.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 12th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I am a latecomer to this debate; I have not participated heretofore. I am doing so only because of conversations I had over the weekend. They related to the amendment from my noble friend under Motion 32A. I am not going to oppose my noble friend’s amendment—it may well be right—but I do want to express my anxieties because they were anxieties expressed by my friend who came to see me.

On the judgment of the Supreme Court, I am pretty much in favour of it. I think it was wholly right and I am very glad that the Government are accepting its finality, but it raises problems which I do not think have yet been fully considered, and that is what makes me reluctant to support my noble friend. The friend who came to see me is someone who I have known for a number of years and was born a male. In fact, she married and had a child, and she then transitioned—and transitioned fully—to the female gender and she is fully certificated. We discussed the implications of the judgement for her, and although I strongly support the judgment of the Supreme Court, a number of the points that she made were very troubling, most particularly as regards people who have not fully transitioned and how they are going to be dealt with; for example, in prisons, in hospital wards and so forth.

She then came to a very specific point—which has been touched on by a number of your Lordships—regarding passports. This is a woman whom I have known for 10 or so years. In every material respect, she passes as a woman and that is what I have always treated her as being; she is a friend of mine. Her passport at the moment shows “female”, but where there is the requirement “sex”, she is deeply concerned that the passport may have to be altered to state “male” because that is her natal gender. She raises the question very clearly as to what happens when she goes to immigration control or passport control, either in this country or somewhere else, where there will be a manifest divergence of appearance. On the one hand, there is the passport, which says that she is male; on the other hand, there is what she appears for all purposes. The point that I took away from that is that there are still lots of things that we are going to have to address.

My suggestion to your Lordships’ House is that we should set up a Select Committee in due time—and this House is well versed to do that—to consider what the implications of the Supreme Court judgment are across a broad spectrum of consideration. Therefore, returning to Motion 32A, if my noble friend will forgive me, I am not going to support him today, not because I think he is wrong but because I think it is premature to come to statutory interventions when there is still a lot to be considered. I would be fearful that, if this House accepted my noble friend’s amendments—and they may be right—they would be treated as a precedent that it is at least conceivable we would come to regret.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I wonder if I could go back to the wording proposed under Motion 52A. The whole purpose of it is limited. From a very practical and basic point of view, once the Supreme Court has told us that biological sex is to rule, the points that the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, makes, which I entirely understand and sympathise with, really do not arise in this issue. If we are to have data, the data must be accurate. The only point that I am asking your Lordships’ House to consider—this is what the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, is asking—is:

“For the purposes of this section, sex data must be collected in accordance with the following category terms and definitions”.


That seems eminently sensible. If we do not have it, I see real problems of a different sort from those that the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, has raised.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Motions 32A and 52A which, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, appear eminently sensible.

The Minister—to whom I am also grateful for the meeting that I was able to join—assured us that we can trust the digital verification services because they will be based on the data accuracy principle of the GDPR, but that principle has been in place for a decade during which, as Professor Alice Sullivan recounted in her important report that the Minister welcomed earlier, statistics have become utterly muddled and confused. That is particularly so in this area, because sex and gender identity have been collected and conflated in a single data field such that the meaning of sex has been obscured.

I welcome the Minister’s support for the Supreme Court judgment, but, as he said, that judgment confirmed that sex in the Equality Act can only mean and has only ever meant biological sex. However, that has been the case for 15 years, during which all this muddle has taken place. The Minister tells us that we can trust the Government to respect the judgment and to reject the amendments but, before considering that, can he answer a few questions?

First, why is it not appropriate to ensure that in this Bill, on data use and access and which specifically talks about a digital verification system, unreliable datasets are not used for digital verification? If it is not in this timely data legislation, then when? The Minister referred to the forthcoming Equality and Human Rights Commission guidance, but I suggest that we do not have to wait for that guidance in this area. We have this Bill, this vehicle, and it is surely appropriate to enshrine everything that the Minister said in this legislation.

Secondly, have the Government considered how the digital verification system will work with regard to an estimated 100,000 people who have a different record for their sex across different public bodies—for example, the birth register, Passport Office, driving licence authority and NHS? How is that going to pan out? How will the Government ensure that this mixed data, such as so-called passport sex, is not relied on as an authoritative source to provide an answer to the sex question in the DVS? I respect the concerns that the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, rightly raised; my point is how we will ensure that the data verified for the sex field in the DVS, irrespective of any other field, is accurate and corresponds to biological sex.

Will the Government publish clear guidance for data users so that they know which sources of sex data can be trusted and which remain conflated? How will they put technical measures in place to ensure that unreliable sources do not come through the information gateway? Is it impossible that a person who expresses themselves as gender fluid or non-binary could have two different digital verification services apps—one that shows them as female and the other as male, but both bearing the digital verification trust mark? That may not seem terribly common, but it is a possibility for which we need an answer.

Finally, the Government have argued that it is very unlikely that digital verification services will be used for applications such as single-sex services. The point was well made about a woman who wants a woman healthcare provider and health screening—by the way, that is also important for trans people to make sure that they are appropriately treated in services such as health. If the aim of the DVS is to provide trusted, interoperable, reusable digital identities that people can use to prove facts about themselves, is it not likely that this will be used in the services spoken about in the Supreme Court judgment and which advised should legitimately be kept as single sex and based on biological sex?

If the Government do not like these amendments from the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, but they agree with their aim, I cannot honestly see why the Minister should object to enshrining them in more than the data accuracy principle, which, as I have said, has been, in the last decade, respected more in the breach than in the reality. I am not yet reassured that his assurances, as much as I respect his personal sincerity and integrity, are enough for us to rely on, as opposed to having something on the statute book.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Baroness Butler-Sloss Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Wyre Forest (Lab)]

My Lords, it’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside, as I rise to support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—which my Front Bench so clearly opposes—but I’m still standing, because I do not yet believe that Ministers have heard the clarion cry from our country’s creators that they need more from this Bill.

In supporting this amendment, I draw the attention of the House to my declaration in the register as the proud chair of UK Music and as an author; although I say to my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, that, sadly, I have not had the benefit of a rightsholder’s cheque to rub across my ample bosom for several years. I support this amendment because it brings a measure of balance. I understand the Government’s reticence in getting this right, but I believe it is entirely possible to offer a concession to the creative industries without jeopardising the Prime Minister’s commitment to the AI revolution.

Elton John was wrong yesterday to personalise this debate but, as one of this country’s greatest ever songwriters, he is entitled to ask: what has he got to do to make you love him? More importantly, what has he got to do to make you hear him? The Minister might not like this amendment but, if not this one, then what? No credible alternative has been offered so, reluctantly but firmly, I shall be voting for the only protection on offer today. When you fail to listen, you leave people with no choice but to sing another tune.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I am very well aware, as so many others in this House are, that we are on the second round of ping-pong. Up to now, I have never voted against the Government on a second round of ping-pong, but this is rather special. This is actually crucial. There is an outcry across the country. There is unanimity across this House. Having listened to Labour Peers, I must say that I follow the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in having, like him, no artistic or creative ability whatever, but I care about it because I am a recipient of it. What I find so difficult is that this Government are not listening to what is being said across the country. This is their last chance to recognise the damage they are doing. I ask the Minister to go back and tell her department that there is unanimity in the House that this amendment should pass.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall be brief. We are in a pickle. This is an important Bill that needs to gain Royal Assent quickly, for EU data adequacy reasons if nothing else. Incidentally, I do not believe that the Bill does active harm to the creative sector as it is written, but, since the copyright consultation preferred the wrong option, the sector’s trust in the Government on this issue has collapsed. I pay tribute to the way the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has represented the sector. That distrust means that Ministers’ subsequent words of reassurance are not trusted by the sector. We therefore need campaigners and Ministers to meet and find a way through with meaningful action. I believe that Ministers are trying to act in good faith and are sincere in wanting both to create a benign environment for AI in this country and to protect copyright and the remuneration of the creative industries that are so important to this country. Artists are raising their voice in good faith, although I agree with my noble friend Lord Watson about it being unhelpful to personalise some elements of the debate.

It is important to give the Secretary of State himself another opportunity to speak in the other place, on the record, at the Dispatch Box, having had a few days to reflect, and negotiate a way of reassuring the sector that Ministers see the urgency in protecting the livelihoods of artists from big tech while taking advantage of the creative and economic opportunities of AI. The amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, is a good basis for proceeding. In order to give the Secretary of State that opportunity, I will be supporting the noble Baroness’s amendment if she chooses to divide the House.