Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Kidron and Lord Lucas

Committee stage
Monday 16th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 201 in this group. At the moment, Action Fraud does not record attempted fraud; it has to have been successful for the website to agree to record it. I think that results in the Government taking decisions based on distorted and incomplete data. Collecting full data must be the right thing to do.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I had expected the noble Baroness, Lady Owen of Alderley Edge, to be in the Room at this point. She is not, so I wish to draw the Committee’s attention to her Amendment 210. On Friday, many of us were in the Chamber when she made a fantastic case for her Private Member’s Bill. It obviously dealt with a much broader set of issues but, as we have just heard, the overwhelming feeling of the House was to support her. I think we would all like to see the Government wrap it up, put a bow on it and give it to us all for Christmas. But, given that that was not the indication we got, I believe that the noble Baroness’s intention here is to deal with the fact that the police are giving phones and devices back to perpetrators with the images remaining on them. That is an extraordinary revictimisation of people who have been through enough. So, whether or not this is the exact wording or way to do it, I urge the Government to look on this carefully and positively to find a way of allowing the police the legal right to delete data in those circumstances.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I have Amendment 135A in this group. The Bill provides a new set of duties for the Information Commissioner but no strategic framework, as the DPDI Bill did. The Information Commissioner is a whole-economy regulator. To my mind, the Government’s strategic priorities should bear on it. This amendment would provide an enabling power, such as that which the Competition and Markets Authority, which is in an equivalent economic position, already has.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I have huge sympathy for, and experience of, many of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, but, given the hour, I will speak only to Amendment 145 in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, my noble friend Lord Russell and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. Given that I am so critical, I want to say how pleased I am to see the ICO reporting requirements included in the Bill.

Amendment 145 is very narrow. It would require the ICO to report specifically and separately on children. It is fair to say that one of the many frustrations for those of us who spend our time advocating for children’s privacy and safety is trying to extrapolate child-specific data from generalised reporting. Often it is not reported because it is useful to hide some of the inadequacies in the level of protection afforded to children. For example, none of the community guidelines enforcement reports published for Instagram, YouTube, TikTok or Snapchat provides a breakdown of the violation rate by age group, even though that would provide valuable information for academics, Governments, legislators, NGOs and, of course, regulators. It was a point of contention between many civil society organisations and Ofcom that there was no evidence that children of different ages react in different ways, which, for anyone who has had children, is clearly not the case.

Similarly, for many years we struggled to understand Ofcom’s reporting because older children were included in a group that went up to 24, and it took over 10 years for that to change. It seems to me—I hope the Government agree—that since children are entitled to specific data privacy benefits, it follows that the application and enforcement of those benefits should be reported separately. I hope that the Government can give a quick yes on this small but important amendment.