Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Daniel Zeichner

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 19, in clause 3, page 2, line 20, at end insert—

“(2) On or before the date that an annual report is laid before Parliament in accordance with paragraph 15(4) of Schedule 1, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament, and publish, a statement containing the required information about details of funding and ARIA’s tolerance to failure.

(3) In this section, the required information about ARIA’s tolerance to failure is—

(a) how this section has been interpreted by ARIA during the relevant financial year,

(b) the number and value of projects funded by ARIA which have been terminated or disbanded on the grounds of failure during the relevant financial year, and

(c) details of ARIA’s funding in the relevant financial year and its proportion of Government research and development expenditure.”.

This amendment would require the Secretary of State to make an annual statement regarding ARIA’s tolerance to failure.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. Before I speak to amendment 19, I want to say that that in the intervening time between the previous sitting and today, I have managed to break my foot, which was truly an achievement, given that all I was doing was running. If I am not as quick to rise as I would otherwise be, I hope you will be forgiving, Mr Twigg. The Minister said on Tuesday that the Advanced Research and Invention Agency might contribute to being able to “Beam me up, Scotty!” That would have been highly desirable as I tried to make my way into this place this morning. I am sure we wish ARIA luck in that. I am grateful to everyone for their indulgence as I deal with my new-found injury.

Amendment 19 would require that the Secretary of State makes an annual statement about ARIA’s tolerance to failure, in order to provide greater oversight and responsibility. It is very much in keeping with all the amendments that the Opposition have tabled. It is a constructive amendment that seeks to ensure that ARIA’s mission, when it has one, and its workings are understood by the public in general and that we have the right oversight to ensure that ARIA is not in any way subject to or tainted by the sleaze that is all too common and evident in the current Government’s procurement dealings with their mates. We believe that it is right that ARIA should be given operational independence from Government. We support the idea of specifying that it has a high tolerance to risk and failure, but the challenge is to establish what that tolerance is and to ensure that it is scrutinised properly and that there is public understanding of it.

We believe that ARIA should have a high-risk appetite, but we need greater clarity in order to understand how that appetite will be determined, calibrated and explained, and how Ministers will be accountable for ARIA’s failure and success with public money. That is critical and it was a theme of the evidence sessions that, if we are to maintain public support, we must be open and honest about ARIA’s tolerance to failure.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good introduction to today’s proceedings. I express my sympathy to her for having to stand up and sit down; I will not make her do it too often.

The evidence sessions brought some of this out, but does she agree that attitudes to failure in our country are very different from those in America in particular, which is where we are learning lessons from in establishing the agency? Given that, does she also agree that this is a particularly important amendment? The British attitude towards failures is not very tolerant; we do not necessarily view them as being positive. There is a risk here because unless we get this right, it will be difficult for those establishing the agency to be able to explain what they are doing to a wider audience.

[The Chair]

Ms Onwurah, if it becomes uncomfortable standing, please remain seated.

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[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which I hope does not reflect a lack of understanding of the ways in which science research and our national interest work. On national security, a direction could be given to ARIA not to work in nuclear energy with a Government whose interests did not align with our own, for example. That is quite a relevant example, because we know that, rather than investing in it themselves—even though interest rates are so low at the moment—the Government have welcomed, and even encouraged, investment in our nuclear energy by the Chinese. Some kind of direction might well be given on that basis. There are many ways in which climate change is essential to our national security, so I do not think that example was very well chosen.

More generally, if the hon. Member is asking how trade-offs between national security and other priorities should be made, which is a very important question, we have already said that we believe in national security, and national security should always be the priority. However, when such a direction is made for reasons of national security, which we support, the fact is that we will not know why it was made. Perhaps that is right, because if it is an issue of national security, those concerns should not be shared publicly; none the less, somebody needs to scrutinise them. I hope everybody on this Committee will agree that someone in Parliament should be scrutinising decisions on national security, particularly when those decisions are taken by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. As I have already said, neither the Department nor the Secretary of State has long experience of making national security decisions.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I fully take the point made by the hon. Member for North Norfolk, but we Opposition Members have a degree of prescience in being able to predict the way that votes in this Committee might go. We anticipated that the Government might not accept our suggestion about giving ARIA this mission. Does not that the lack of a mission create this further problem? If we had had that clear mission around climate, this would be far less of an issue.

[Chi Onwurah]

Once again, my hon. Friend raises an excellent point, and indeed he brings together the themes of our amendments. He is right to say that if ARIA had a clear mission, there would be better understanding of the kinds of decisions and trade-offs that might well need to be made, and we could have a much better informed discussion around that. However, the fact is that we have neither a mission for ARIA, nor any opportunity to scrutinise the national security directives that might be made in the interests of addressing climate change, but also might be made in the interests of ensuring that we have oil drilling rights, or that we continue to fund minerals extraction around the world in order to support other research objectives. It is clear to us that we need to have this scrutiny.

As I indicated, there have been a number of debates on Intelligence and Security Committee scrutiny of other Departments, including in relation to the National Security and Investment Bill and the Telecommunications (Security) Bill. In those cases, despite that Committee being keen to scrutinise national security decisions, the Government have shown a great reluctance to allow parliamentary scrutiny of issues of national security. Some believe—I am not one of those cynical people—that this is because the Government are not happy with Parliament’s choice of Chair of the ISC. I am loath to believe that the Government would be so petty when it comes to such an important matter as national security, so I hope the Minister will clarify how we will have appropriate scrutiny of national security decisions made by the Secretary of State, as set out in this Bill, and why the ISC is not the right vehicle for that.

I will finish with two brief quotes in support of the amendment. In the National Security and Investment Bill Committee, we had the great privilege of taking evidence from Richard Dearlove, former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service.

He said:

“My view would be that the annual report has as much transparency as possible, but you are probably going to require a secret annexe from time to time. It is a bit like the reports of the Intelligence and Security Committee, which I dealt with frequently as chief. They and we were keen that they should publish their reports, but there comes a point where it is not in our national interest that some of this stuff is put in the public domain.”

––[Official Report, National Security and Investment Public Bill Committee, 24 November 2020; c. 21, Q23.]

That is the case here as well.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) has said:

“I do not want to give the impression that the ISC is looking for work, because I have been a member for a number of years and we are busy with a lot of inquiries—I have three or four hours’ reading every week looking through reports from the agencies. However, it is important that the ISC can at least look at the intelligence that lies behind decisions.”––[Official Report, Telecommunications (Security) Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2021; c. 143.]

That is all that we are seeking to achieve through this amendment.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Daniel Zeichner

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

I am disappointed in the Minister’s response, but I will not push the amendments to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I beg to move amendment 25, in clause 12, page 5, line 13, at end insert—

““Invention” means the process by which ideas are converted into value in the form of new and improved products, services and approaches.”

This amendment would establish the meaning of “invention” as referred to in the title and functions of ARIA.

The amendment is about defining “invention.” Before the sharp-eyed hon. Member for North Norfolk points out that, at the start of these proceedings, I tried to take the word “invention” out of the title, I repeat my earlier observation that we are quite prescient on this side of the House. I had rather anticipated that, despite all the fantastic strength of our arguments, Government Members were not necessarily persuaded, strangely enough.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Daniel Zeichner

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chi Onwurah]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point and it raises two issues. First, how the CEO will be recruited and which rules for public appointment that process will follow is not clear in the Bill, so perhaps the Minister will provide that information. If the Secretary of State has to follow those rules, surely the amendment simply makes it clear what he—he in this case—has to do, and ensures focus on and recognition of the requirements. I do not feel that those two considerations are incompatible.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a fundamental issue. There is a real problem particularly around design, as Caroline Criado Perez identified in her book “Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men”—some of us attended the book launch here a couple of years ago. Extraordinarily, she pointed out that a swathe of design was done without women in mind at all, so crash tests and so on do not work because they are tested on the wrong people. That reflects the danger of having a board without a wide range of people. I read somewhere the other day that the armed forces in some country had only just discovered that women require different underwear from men. There is a blinds pot here, and it goes back to blokes in sheds I am afraid.

[Chi Onwurah]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I agree wholeheartedly. The fact that most technology and science has been designed and developed by a narrow demographic minority has great implications for our society. Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking of the wonderful inventions and technologies that we might have in the world had women and minorities been able to play a full part in our scientific development. My hon. Friend gave the example of how, as Caroline Criado Perez said in her book, so much of our world has not reflected the needs or interests of women, which is really important. I say to the Minister: the agency, which we will come back to a number of times, will fail. It is designed to fail. When it fails—not in general, but particularly—it needs to have the support of the public to understand the reason why it failed. To lock women out of the board, which is what it will effectively do, and not reflect the importance of diversity, will be a factor in public trust.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Daniel Zeichner

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

This is an opportunity; we can help spare the Government future embarrassment. Quite frankly, if we have this set of out-there people running the organisation and they then choose to appoint someone highly controversial, it could be extremely embarrassing. I remember occasions when Labour Secretaries of State had difficulties with scientific advisers. These are controversial areas, and I can foresee an extremely difficult situation. Without an ability to intervene, where does it lead?

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is important to understand that ARIA will be an independent agency, but it will be spending taxpayers’ money and it will therefore reflect the public and the national interest. If somebody is recruited who, at the time or later on, is found to have views that are abhorrent to society, or not fit to serve on the board for other reasons, by what process could or would such a person be removed from the board? If, for example, after appointment of a member to the board, it was found that they championed eugenic research or that they believed in anti-vaccination mythologies, for example, would there be any means by which they could be removed?

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[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution, which I think was made in a constructive sense.

I think the Chair of the Liaison Committee is making a point about that guidance. Clearly, it was not sufficient for David Cameron and it is clearly not proving to be sufficient in other cases. I hope that, as this amendment sets out, it is not simply about declaring. This is a critical part and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to emphasise it. The amendment does not say they should declare conflicts of interest; it states that the Secretary of States makes regulations—detailed, I would say—establishing the procedures to deal with conflicts of interest. That is the key thing. This stems from the need to have a close working relationship with the private sector, which will give rise to conflicts of interest that may be quite complex, especially with new and evolving technologies, which may go on to complex and potentially international supply chains. Those conflicts of interest may be complex, involving equity stakes and so on. We need procedures to deal with them that are more detailed than the current general ones and which are specifically targeted at ARIA’s unique role.

Dr Regina Dugan, the chief executive officer of Wellcome Leap, effectively supported that proposal:

“The particular way that we work is through contracts; we do not actually do grants. I also think that this position of not taking equity is important, because the non-profit element of it is part of the differentiation, and we have an entire commercial sector that is good at assessing value and figuring out return on investment.”—[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 48, Q43.]

What is different with ARIA is that it is, potentially, going to be taking equity, which can raise more complex conflicts of interest.

Professor Pierre Azoulay of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that

“the programme managers at DARPA and also at ARPA-E—the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy—have a fixed expiration date, which means they will need to go back to academia or to the venture capital firm or large firm that they left, and generally they want to do so with their head held high and their reputation intact. I think that that has created over time a norm of correct behaviour, if you will, and the absence of cronyism.”—[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 38, Q30.]

We want to see that norm of correct behaviour established through supporting processes and procedures. I asked Dr Highnam,

“What should we be looking for in the directors and programme managers as the key positive part of the culture that ARIA should seek to build?”

He answered:

“Honour in public service is top of the list.”––[Official Report, Advanced Research and Invention Agency Public Bill Committee, 14 April 2021; c. 39, Q32.]

I should say that I have not heard any Government witness or Minister emphasise the importance of honour as a key characteristic of board members. I think it is really important that procedures to deal with conflicts of interest are established. That view is shared by the Chair of the Liaison Committee, who has said

“After the dust settles over the Greensill affair, I suspect that we will find that the lack of judgment over David Cameron’s approaches to ministers is less important than the general failure to address what has become a casual approach to conflicts of interests amongst many in government and in politics…All can see now the general inability of the various codes and systems”—

to the points made—

“of oversight, such as the toothless advisory committee on business appointments, to provide sufficient transparency and accountability, which is why even its chair, Lord Pickles, wants reform.”

When the Chair of Liaison Committee, who is much respected on the Government Benches, says that, and when we are mired in scandals as a consequence of a lack of appropriate conduct and clear processes and procedures, I urge the Minister to accept the need at the very least for greater detail when it comes to avoidance of conflicts of interest. I urge her to accept the amendment to establish processes and procedures to avoid conflicts of interest in this new body, which is critical to our future economic and scientific prosperity.

[Daniel Zeichner]

It is a pleasure to be part of a Committee that you are chairing, Mrs Cummins. I fully endorse what my hon. Friend has said about the amendment. In fact, she has pretty much said it all, but there are one or two points that I want to add.

We are considering a profound set of issues. The evidence sessions showed some fundamental differences in culture between our country and the Americans, and it is their example on which we are largely modelling our initiative. To some extent it goes to the problem that we are facing as a country at the moment. For a long time, we rather considered ourselves not to be prey to such conflicts; we had a British way of doing it. Procedures were not necessarily written down, but there were understandings and people behaved properly. The sad truth is that over the past 20 to 30 years, somewhere that changed. That is the truth, and that is why we are in the current situation.

In the evidence session with the Americans, I was very struck at one point when we were pressing them on how they avoided conflicts of interest. Their response was a kind of American swelling of patriotic pride, as they said that they would not do that because it would somehow harm the American dream. [Interruption.] Exactly. People in Britain are different; it is not that we are not proud of our country or patriotic, but I would say that our patriotism is different from theirs.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Perhaps the fact that DARPA is part of the US defence establishment, with all the military honour and commitment to the defence of the nation, is one of the reasons why honour was held so high by the Americans. Does he agree that the absence of any mission and any departmental ownership of ARIA means that will not be the case in the UK?

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend has touched on a very important point. It was something that I tried to draw out in some of the evidence sessions. I would point Members to an excellent book written a few years ago by Lord Sainsbury, an esteemed former science Minister. He talked about the differences in culture between Europe, America and the UK, and warned against just trying to transpose one system to another, unless one really understood the cultural context. We have not mentioned it so far today, as it has very much been about natural sciences and perhaps, mea culpa, engineering at the beginning, but the social sciences may be biggest challenge of all. That was touched on at one point in the evidence sessions when one of the witnesses said it is not just a matter of the technologies, but public acceptance and understanding of them. It will require some really innovative work from social scientists to understand how that will work.

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[Daniel Zeichner]

I feel passionately about this issue because I represent a part of the country that often comes in for criticism, in the sense that some people, even some of my colleagues, say to me, “You’ve already got everything—you shouldn’t be getting any more.” This is a complex argument. If some areas have a long tradition of doing well and competing internationally, we can hardly deny them the resources to carry on with their work. However, we are painfully aware that there is a danger of overheating in some parts of the country.

I chair the all-party parliamentary group for the UK’s innovation corridor, which is, essentially, London-Stanstead-Cambridge, and there is much discussion at the moment about the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford arc—the so-called golden triangle. The discussion seems to have been going on for years and years—certainly for as long as I have been in this place, and long before that. There is this hope that through the clustering effects we can do much better than we already do, and we look to examples in other parts of the world to see how it is done.

The reason I support this amendment is that this is not simple or easy. There have been many attempts to spread the Cambridge cluster effect. In fact, ironically, it often seems to cluster more and more in particular bits of Cambridge. It is very hard to get people to go to other places, but that is what we want to try to encourage. One of the ways in which we will do that is by having the data and the information. This is a great opportunity for ARIA to be mindful of that in its report. It is not a difficult thing to do. It should tell people what is going on and where it is putting its resources. If it is not working in the first few years, that would give us the opportunity to intervene and make a change.

[Chi Onwurah]

Once again, my hon. Friend has reminded me in his excellent contribution of an important point that I should have made, which was that the regional development agencies, abolished by the Conservative coalition in 2010, did report on regional innovation and science spend. Whenever I speak to the North East England chamber of commerce, I am told that one of the difficulties in making the knowledge exchange framework accessible or understandable is the lack of data on regional science spend. Part of the point of this amendment is to help restore some of that data.

[Daniel Zeichner]

That is absolutely right. One of the many tragedies of the last 10 or 15 years has been the fact that strong attempts by the last Labour Government to have a positive regional policy were swept away. Vince Cable, I think, described the destruction of the regional structures in 2010 as positively Maoist. Astonishingly, Lord Heseltine later came to Cambridge to bang the drum for regionalism outside the very offices that had been shut by his own Government a few months earlier.

We do not have a good record on regional policy in this country. We need to do better in future, for everybody’s benefit. Frankly, my city can do without the overheated house prices and the problems that come with everything being clustered in one place. It would be good for us, but also for everybody else, to get more balanced economic growth across the country.

We could do one small thing today—and I really do not see how it would be difficult for the Government to concede. I do not know how many Bill Committees I have been on—I have never yet had any success, although I live in hope. I make this plea, however, because I really do not see how the concession could be that painful.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Daniel Zeichner

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q To summarise slightly—I do not want to become a grim AREPA—what we need is not only an ARIA that can do the things that we have been talking about today, but possibly other things alongside it to make it work. Would you agree with that?

David Cleevely: It is fine tinkering around with the engine and putting another turbocharger on it, but if the chassis, the transmission system and the wheels will not deliver what you need, all that energy and power is going to go somewhere. In an international system, all we will do is to help to accelerate other countries that are willing to buy our stuff from us. That is fine; I am all for international co-operation, but I really would like to see a bigger contribution to economic growth and productivity improvements in the UK.

Bob Sorrell: To pick up on what David is saying, ARIA is part of the solution. We need all the things that we have, effectively, to put us in a position to lead against the challenges that we face. We would not be in this position if we did not have such a brilliant research community in the UK to start with. It is fantastic that we are having a conversation about how we capitalise on that. It is not just £800 million for ARIA, which is just seed money to start it, but the investment in the overall infrastructure that will make many of these things possible. We need to commit to doing that as well, if the UK is really going to lead and be the test bed and demonstration centre for the technologies that it can lead in and deploy globally.

David Cleevely: I think Bob and I are absolutely in agreement on that.

[Chi Onwurah]

Q If nobody else has a question, I will take the opportunity to come back on that point, particularly on procurement. I remember having a great deal of difficulty persuading the Prime Minister that the American Department of Defence was far better at buying stuff from UK small businesses than the UK Ministry of Defence, as the figures show. What do you think we could do, or what should Government be doing, to enable, require or ensure that ARIA, or AREPA, better supports small business growth and, at the same time, addresses the issue of market pull?

David Cleevely: The general thrust of what AREPA—if we are going to adopt that word—is trying to do is right. There are a number of things going on in bits of defence, for example. You have DASA and various others playing around with projects within the different services, for acquiring different kinds of technology. I think the phrase “a bit more coherence” was used by Felicity. I think we need to understand what the map of that innovation system looks like.

I am pretty convinced that people are pretty smart—they will make the right decisions. You just need to give them the right structure, hence my point that serendipity does not happen by accident. These kinds of things happen because you have constructed systems and processes so that people bump into and talk to each other, and will exchange ideas. ARIA is fine as it stands, but it sits within quite a complex system. I would like to see much more recognition within Government about how complex that system is, and how it actually operates. I completely agree with you that it has been far easier, in all my companies, to sell stuff into the United States—particularly into the United States defence market—than it has ever been to sell into the UK.

Bob Sorrell: To build on that, I did a couple of terms at Innovate UK and we tried stimulating public procurement during that period. I think a lot of it is about the culture and getting it right, to allow people to invest in those smaller companies and different technical solutions, to move them away from the existing ones. We got that to work during covid. We managed to get it to work, and we managed to get ourselves investing and procuring things in a different way. That is why I keep coming back to that and looking at what we did differently then that allowed people to make those different choices. I think we have to take some of that learning to see how we can get public procurement to work in a better way going forward.

Internet of Things: Regulation

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Daniel Zeichner

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered regulating the internet of things.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes, in a debate on such an important subject. I am a tech evangelist. I believe that technology is an engine of progress. Growing up in the north-east, in Newcastle, the home of the first industrial revolution—although I know that some from the north-west may debate that—gave me a love of science, technology and innovation. The achievements of local greats such as Armstrong, Stephenson and Parsons—that is Rachel Parsons, the world’s first female naval engineer—inspired me to study electrical engineering and embark on a two-decade career as a chartered engineer working in telecoms all over the world.

Newcastle’s experience of the industrial revolution was captured in the excellent BBC series “A House Through Time” with David Olusoga, which showed a mixture of life-changing technological progress and huge social problems, as in many other cities. We are now in the midst of what some consider to be the fourth industrial revolution—although how to count them is not agreed—powered by data and renewable energy, instead of labour, discipline and steam.

Last week the Prime Minister made what I can only call an interesting speech to the United Nations on technology, with this historical analysis:

“When I think of the great scientific”—

I cannot pretend to do his way of speaking, so I will just quote—

“revolutions of the past—print, the steam engine, aviation, the atomic age—I think of new tools that we acquired but over which we—the human race—had the advantage”.

The industrial revolution radically changed society, but it is a mistake—one, if I may say, of privilege—to say that the human race had the advantage. The steam engine rapidly increased productivity but also powered factories and mills with brutal working conditions that produced textiles from slave-milled cotton. Those new tools brought benefits, but the benefits were not equally shared. Of course, that happened before the United Kingdom had universal suffrage or a labour movement and a Labour party, and when many in the world were colonial subjects. Our opportunity, and our duty, in the fourth industrial revolution is to make those technologies work for the many, not the few. In that context, I will today set out what the internet of things is, the benefits it brings, the concerns and the current state of regulation.

What is the internet of things? I was surprised to see that in the Prime Minister’s speech on the gov.uk website, the internet of things was in inverted commas. I am sure that the Minister is aware that IOT is not sci-fi, but a reality of our daily lives. I was the first Member of Parliament to mention the internet of things, in my Westminster Hall debate on machine-to-machine communication in June 2011, just a year after I entered Parliament. One of the Minister’s predecessors, the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), responded, so I think he was the second MP to mention it.

I called that debate because my experience as a chartered electrical engineer and as Ofcom’s head of telecoms technology had brought home to me, even then, the opportunities and threats that the internet of things represented. At the time, Ericsson estimated that 50 billion things would be connected to the internet of things by 2020. In fact, that was a bit of an exaggeration, because we have about 7 billion. However, global spending on IOT is forecast to reach $745 billion by the end of this year, Ericsson now estimates that by 2023 we will have 31 billion things connected to the internet, and the Government’s own estimate is that there will be 420 million internet-connected devices in the UK within the next two years.

The internet of things is basically things connected to the internet—it does what it says on the tin, for once. That allows everyday objects to talk to each other and to people. In fact, the first internet-connected toaster was revealed in 1989. While there has been speculation for years about how the internet of things will change our lives, it is now that we are really beginning to see its full implications for how we live, work, play and do everything in between.

Smart homes and connected appliances are perhaps the most commonly understood applications. Smart meters mean that we can turn our heating on when we leave work, whatever time that is. A fridge can tell someone when they are out of milk. More poignantly, a child’s teddy bear could record their first words and share them with the whole family.

However, IOT is about much more than household gadgets and cuddly toys. Scaling up IOT will bring us smart cities, where bins can signal when they are full, parking spaces can tell us when they are empty, and traffic lights can tell an autonomous car how fast to drive, so that it never has to hit a red light. Every time I wait at a bus stop—despite the ridiculously high cost of bus travel in Newcastle, that is still quite often—I look forward to an IOT-enabled and truly integrated public transport system, which will mean buses stopping when and where people want them to, and not stopping if there is no one at a bus stop. That means a saving in fuel efficiency, and a saving in all our time.

IOT is also transforming industry. The fourth industrial revolution has at its heart smart factories, and intelligent and flexible automation, making manufacturing cheaper, quicker, more efficient, more personalised and more reliable. Indeed, the smart factory might be in someone’s home—3D printing plus IOT could equal home manufacturing.

I am an internet of things believer. I have studied it, lived it and effectively built bits of it all over the world. It has huge economic and social benefits, as well as environmental benefits, ranging from energy management to tracking endangered species. We cannot address climate change without the internet of things. It allows the monitoring of energy usage but also enables a smart grid. IOT can literally save the planet, which is just as well now that it accounts for 8% to 10% of European electricity consumption.

However, I hope that the Minister will agree that people, and not technology or things, must be at the heart of the internet of things revolution. An IOT that works for everyone requires action—action that this Government seem unwilling to take. IOT will be as pervasive as electricity, and found in every home and handbag. And, like electricity, IOT is an enabling technology, only the enabler is not electric current but data—people’s data—and right now we have no idea who owns that data.

Take personal health tech. A company called OrCam has developed discreet camera glasses for the visually impaired, which can read text and recognise people, while the L'Oréal UV sensor, which detects ultraviolet exposure, is small enough to be worn comfortably on someone’s fingernail. However, who owns and controls the data gleaned by these devices? I hope that the Minister can tell us that, and say why it is not the people who generate that data.

As companies bring more IOT devices to market, this is a pressing issue. Although the GDPR represented progress, it is already years out of date: it addresses privacy, not control; it barely takes account of artificial intelligence and algorithmic management; and it ignores completely the internet of things. The Information Commissioner’s responsibilities over IOT are unclear.

The more interconnected things are—which in itself is a good thing—the bigger the potential for cyber-attack, which is already a huge area of concern. In 2018 there was a 500% increase in the average size of a botnet attack. There are more than 7 billion IOT devices in circulation, and that number is only going to grow. Given that each IOT device is always on, it is possible to build and deploy large-scale attacks within minutes.

In 2017 the US Food and Drug Administration recalled almost half a million pacemakers due to fears that they were vulnerable to hacking, while a Chinese IOT firm recalled 4 million cameras for the same reason. November 2018 saw the first scaled botnet attack using smart TVs. Other household appliances can also be used not only to bring down internet platforms such as Spotify, Amazon and Twitter, as happened in 2016, but to take control of our homes or any networked utility. Back in 2010 an Iranian nuclear facility was targeted by a malicious computer worm, which led to the shutdown of multiple gas centrifuges, and in 2015 blackouts in Ukraine were caused by cyber-attacks. Although we call them “cyber-attacks”, they have very physical consequences. In 2017 the Federal Network Agency, the German communications regulator, told parents to destroy a talking doll called Cayla, because its smart technology can reveal personal data. A couple of years ago I wrote about the implications of internet of things security for sex toys, but today I will spare Members’ blushes.

The lack of security on IOT devices is not only a risk to the individual user; it threatens huge economic and social damage. Importantly, security for IOT devices does not just need to be built in at the start, even though that in itself takes time and money; it needs to be upgradeable over time as threats evolve. However, producers of IOT devices are simply not incentivised to consider security concerns, with global supply chains competing mainly on costs for devices that can be sold for only a few cents or even less. Of course, the lowest-cost device is, inevitably, the lowest-security device. This is one problem that the market cannot and will not solve on its own, which means that it is up to Governments to correct.

In his speech, the Prime Minister used quite lurid language on the issue of internet of things surveillance:

“But this technology could also be used to keep every citizen under round-the-clock surveillance. A future Alexa will pretend to take orders. But this Alexa will be watching you, clucking her tongue and stamping her foot”.

The Prime Minister shows both his lack of respect for women and his lack of understanding of technology in caricaturing it as a nagging housewife arguing with an unfaithful husband. That sort of gendered view is, sadly, far from uncommon. Technology is far too often the creation of well-off men and, unsurprisingly, it reproduces their biases and prejudices.

There is an important issue of surveillance to address, both in the private and public domain. The recent book by Shoshana Zuboff, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”, addresses the ways in which data is used not just to monitor us but to direct and control what we do. We see it already in the practices of Amazon, Sports Direct, Uber and Deliveroo, to name just a few, where the companies’ control of data can control work life.

Research by Defend Digital Me shows that the internet of things has an increased presence within our classrooms, from direct monitoring through biometrics to facial recognition and tracking technologies as part of a smart campus project, in some cases run by the Office for Students. Many of the applications that are marketed claim noble aims around improved health or scholastic performance, but they are rather less clear when it comes to consent. When we consider how the internet of things can be used to monitor children in compulsory education, how can the child or parent be said to consent if it is a generalised practice?

The Government have repeatedly ignored warnings on cyber, much less done anything to ensure that small businesses and citizens, as opposed to big businesses and national security agencies, are protected. There are no current regulations that require a security standard for internet of things devices. About 30 groups are developing security standards for the internet of things, but if we have 30 standards, we do not have a standard. Our public response needs to be as joined up as our networks, but it is not. Responsibility for cyber-security lies across several disconnected Government silos. The Home Office publishes cyber-security stats; the cyber-security strategy comes from the Cabinet Office, although it was launched with a speech by the then Chancellor; the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport takes care of cyber-skills for young people; and the cyber-essentials scheme sits in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Responsibility for cyber-security is defused across Government. There is a lack of leadership and, even worse, a lack of concern. The policies seem largely to ignore mobile devices and the internet of things.

At the same time, and for some years now, the Government have been encouraging us to take up smart meters, for example, without a regulatory framework to protect us from attack. Personally, if a device is called smart, I do not buy it, at least not without a one-hour technical interrogation, which few customer service agents can pass.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very important speech. I, too, have spent time reading the Zuboff book, and the more I read it, the more alarmed I became. Does she agree with me that the real issue is the one she started with: whose data is it? Without that being resolved, there is an inevitable drift towards big tech companies using it for profit. Why wouldn’t they? But it is our data, and on every one of these issues, if we could pin that down, it would completely disrupt their business model. That is why it is a tough thing to do, but it would ultimately resolve the issue.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend, who is a great champion of innovation and technology—coming from the constituency that he represents, it is appropriate—makes a critical point. I could not have put it better. Although this debate is about regulation of the internet of things, it is impossible to talk about protection and security in the internet of things without talking about the data that is its lifeblood: the flows of data that both drive and enable the internet of things. We are in a confused state about who owns and controls the data and how it can be shared. The Government, for example, had at the last count at least 80 different ways of sharing data with themselves. As long as that is the case, we cannot have real security or integrity within the internet of things.

Last year the Government finally took some action with their Secured by Design voluntary code of practice on the security of the internet of things, as well as guidance for consumers, which was later codified as ETSI TS 103 645. In May this year, the Government announced a consultation on the introduction of some mandatory legislation on labelling. For example, retailers would have to label internet-of-things products as complying with varying levels of the Secured by Design code. Labelling is necessary because the Government will not decide what is secure and make it mandatory—if everything were secure, it would not need to be labelled. We await the outcome of the consultation. However, there are at least five major issues, and many others besides.

First, the tone of the consultation is, “Regulation is very, very bad and stops innovation, so let’s just have as little as possible.” Secondly, there is no enforcement or sanction. Thirdly, while some mandatory requirements are proposed, they would simply be a declaration of adhering to standards. That approach puts a major emphasis on the consumer to understand these increasingly complex problems and does not account for the use of the devices in public spaces.

The fourth major concern is that the regulations deal only with consumer things. The clue is in the name: it is an internet of things. We need an architecture of standards and a regulatory framework that enables security and interoperability across the internet and also considers the lifeblood of the internet of things—data. Fifthly and finally, there are billions of insecure old-generation IOT devices already enmeshed in our digital infrastructure. The regulations do nothing to address them.

The Government need to recognise that technology is not something that happens to us; it is something that we actively participate in, or should do. That does not mean stifling innovation. Instead, it means using Government influence to look forward to the impact of technologies and to shape them for the public good. The Government must understand technologies in terms of social purpose, rather than just profit margins. That must be done with the tech sector, but the Government must recognise that it is their job to protect the interests of the people. During the first and second industrial revolutions, it was the trade unions, organised workers, the nascent Labour movement, feminists, abolitionists and former slaves who pushed law makers into putting legislation in place that would direct the use of technology to more egalitarian ends. I fear that it will be for a Labour Government to ensure that that is what happens here.

Technology can be used for good or ill. My hope is that intervening now to set up a framework for data and the IOT will mean that we do not face problems and resistance further down the line.

Last year, I was at CES, which is the largest computer electronics show in the world, in Las Vegas. An American start-up literally begged me to put in place security regulations for IOT devices, so that it could compete on a level playing field with the cheap but totally insecure exports from less reputable manufacturers. It is cheap and, frankly, lazy to set up a sort of binary choice between regulation and innovation. A clear regulatory framework and strong governance allows good companies that are making socially useful products to succeed without markets being flooded with poor quality and potentially dangerous products that threaten security.

I want to say a little on Labour’s plans as I understand them—I know that the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), will set them out in more detail—and I want to put that in context. I am a technology evangelist. Before becoming an MP, I worked all over the world building out the networks that now form the internet. One of my proudest moments was when I rolled out the first global system for mobile communications network in Nigeria and saw how mobile communications could really make a positive difference to people’s lives. Fisherman in the delta could now know the market price in Lagos and could not be cheated out of the right price for their fish; pregnant women could phone for a doctor instead of having to send vital requests on foot, which took hours. The internet of things will bring more and better benefits.

I have also seen the flip side of new technology. When I worked for Ofcom, I was asked to report to the board on internet security in 2005. When I came back with stories of bot attacks, honey traps, distributed denial of service, white hat wizards, Trojans, worms, phishing and pharming, it was as if I was describing a war in a galaxy far, far away. More than 10 years on, however, those threats are very real. They are part of everyone’s daily lived experience. Online fraud is the most common crime in the country, with almost one in 10 people falling victim to computer misuse or one sort of fraud or another. The same may happen with the internet of things—in fact, to an even greater extent—and we must not allow that.

I talk about the internet of things for everyone, because I believe that technology can be democratising and enabling, but just as cyber-crime seemed so foreign only a decade ago, we do not yet fully understand the new risks posed by the internet of things. To fully realise its benefits, we need to be able to deal with the increasingly pervasive security threats it presents. To address them, we need regulation as well as action in other areas. For example, we need to invest properly in skills and adult learning to help people to become digitally literate citizens. Labour’s pledge to create a free truly universal national education service, the NHS for the innovation age, will help everyone to become part of an innovation nation in which everyone is a creator, not simply a user, of technology.

We also need the power of Government to address our creaking infrastructure, and close the productivity gap at the same time, by enabling businesses across the country to invest in the internet of things. Our national transformation fund will do what it says on the tin—transform our infrastructure to bring it up to OECD levels.

We need to address a critical part of the tech sector that I referred to earlier, which is a lack of diversity. Diversity is not an optional add-on; it is an economic imperative. It needs to be at the heart of economic and technological policy, because we cannot build a more prosperous economy without making use of everyone’s talents. We need a more comprehensive sector-wide approach to diversity, particularly in the tech sector. It is key that the creators of new applications for the internet of things come from diverse backgrounds, so we have technologies that work for all and make use of the full array of talent in our society.

Finally, an internet of things requires the right digital rights and responsibilities to exist across our nation. That is why Labour plans to introduce a bill of digital rights that will provide strong and easily understood protections for citizens and will give us all rights and control over our own data.

As I draw to the end of my comments, I want to make sure that the Minister understands the questions that I am asking, so I will list the ones to which I would like him to respond. First, as I have mentioned, who owns and controls the data flowing to and from internet of things devices? Why is it not the people who are generating the data? The Prime Minister said that data is the new oil, but we have seen what the corruption around the oil industry did to many developing economies. Our citizens deserve to be in control of their own data.

Secondly, what steps is the Minister taking to ensure that insecure internet of things devices cannot be sold? Thirdly, will the provisions of the online harms legislation, specifically the duty of care, apply to the internet of things? I asked his predecessor that question, but the answer was not clear. Fourthly, when the internet of things is combined with facial recognition to monitor people, whether in education or on our streets, what requirements are there on consent? Fifthly—this was raised by TechNorthWest—internet of things devices take data for one stated purpose. What prevents its being used for various others? How does consent work in that case? Is the general data protection regulation sufficient?

Sixthly, I believe that all our critical national infrastructure is connected to the internet of things. I have mentioned the blackouts in Ukraine and attacks on an Iranian power station. What regulation is there of the internet of things in critical national infrastructure?

Seventhly, what analysis has been made of how the Government should respond to the misuse of internet of things devices? What scenarios are being considered and what plans are in place?

Eighthly, for the purposes of internet of things regulation, what is the nature of the relationship between the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the National Cyber Security Centre, the Cabinet Office and the Information Commissioner’s Office?

I expect the Minister to respond to the five criticisms of the current consultation.

[Chi Onwurah]

We have an hour and a half, which will be more than adequate. I should perhaps have said that the Minister has a background in technology, as a tech correspondent, so I am sure that he has the answers to all the questions.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Loth as I am to interrupt the exam paper, which I am sure will come to an end soon, a practical application of the questions came up not long ago with the facial recognition monitoring of my constituents at King’s Cross station. I hope that the Minister will be able to explain how they can be protected in future.

[Chi Onwurah]

That is another excellent intervention from my hon. Friend. I look forward to the Minister’s response about facial recognition technology and consent.

I have asked the Minister nine questions and here is the 10th and final one: can we have a comprehensive forward-looking review of digital rights and responsibilities to deliver a regulatory framework fit for the future, which encompasses data rights and delivers an internet of things security architecture in which citizens can have confidence?

I hope that the Minister noted that when US presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren talks of regulating the tech giants for the benefit of consumers Facebook trembles—so much that Mark Zuckerberg has promised to “go to the mat” and fight her over it. However, when the Prime Minister talks about “pink-eyed terminators” the world laughs. That matters, particularly as the Minister advocates a hard Brexit, after which we would not have the support of our European friends and colleagues in establishing internet of things regulation.

The internet of things could represent a more profound technological change than anything since electricity, as I have said. To make it work we need to understand the problems that it raises, and lay out a clear framework for technology companies to work in. However, to take advantage of the changes, we need a Government who understand the opportunities of the internet of things, and who work with industry to mitigate the threats. That is a question not primarily of technology but of standards, interoperability, protocols, control, industry co-operation, self-regulation, legislation and enforcement. If we get that right we can look forward not just to a future of the internet of things but to a prosperous future of innovation that works for all, and things that have yet to be thought of, the benefits of which will be shared by everyone.

Terms and Conditions of Employment

Debate between Chi Onwurah and Daniel Zeichner

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffiths]

The hon. Lady mentioned VAT. Is it her party’s policy to lower VAT, should it ever come into power?

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Wait and see!

[Chi Onwurah]

As one of my colleagues helpfully says, the hon. Gentleman must wait and see. In our 2017 manifesto, we set out our fully funded taxation and spending policy. The hon. Gentleman needs to recognise that a fairer taxation policy would not only enable us to fund our public services better but ensure that our economy was growing and that the growth was shared by all those who contributed to it, unlike what is happening at the moment. Last month, we learned that household debt was at its highest rate ever. Many people are reliant on borrowing, not for luxuries but for essentials such as putting food on the table for their children, and food bank use has skyrocketed.