Digital Economy Bill

Baroness Byford Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Byford (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 85, which is linked with this group. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for his introduction. I believe in data sharing; I declare that straightaway. However, it needs to be well managed, because, as the noble Baroness has just stressed, we do not want information to be used in a way that is, unfortunately, not fair to some of the very vulnerable families of which she has spoken.

Although the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, deals with Clause 30, my amendment relates to Clause 33. I have asked that Clause 33(2)(c) to (f) be deleted, if only to give me an opportunity to express my concerns about this aspect of the Bill. In these two clauses, we are talking about information being disclosed by gas and electricity companies and information being given by other authorities to gas and electricity suppliers. That is why one or two of my thoughts went searching as to why they would be in this group.

My amendment is very much a probing amendment and seeks clarification. The Explanatory Notes state that these paragraphs are included to enable personal information to be used in,

“criminal investigations, civil or criminal legal proceedings or the prevention or detection of crime or the prevention of antisocial behaviour”.

My amendment refers particularly to subsection 2(c) in that group. Will the Minister explain in what way the gas and electricity suppliers will be involved in such activities other than reporting persons and their behaviour to the police? I do not quite see what responsibility the gas or electricity suppliers have with this part of the Bill in that context.

I also confess considerable alarm at the prospect of power suppliers having access to very personal and private information to enable them, as I understand it, to investigate, detect, prevent or prosecute anything outside the realm of their normal expertise. Surely, their original expertise was the supply, maintenance and, where necessary, repair of power lines and pipes, but in this part of the Bill it seems to go very wide. I shall speak to other amendments later, so I will not go on at great length at this stage, but this part of the Bill raises questions for me. I can see some of the advantages of data sharing, but how do we define antisocial behaviour and what does that have to do with gas and electricity boards? I may be wrong; I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

On that basis, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment. I say very fully that these are well-intentioned amendments because we understand what lies behind them and why the probing amendments in this group have been tabled.

[Baroness Byford]

I specifically asked why the responsibility has been placed on gas and electricity suppliers to have regard to some of the things stated in the Bill, and I would be grateful for an answer. I do not mind if the answer is not given now, but if that could be clarified I would be grateful.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am perfectly prepared to write to my noble friend to clarify that point, and I will place a copy of any letter in the Library.