Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Robin Millar

Report stage
Wednesday 29th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

indicated dissent.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

He does not—great.

Finally, new schedule 1 would grant the Secretary of State the power to require banks or other financial institutions to provide the bank account data—unspecified—of any recipient of benefits to identify

“cases which merit further consideration to establish whether relevant benefits are being paid or have been paid in accordance with the enactments and rules of law relating to those benefits.”

It is a very broad and, I would argue, poorly delineated power. My understanding from the Commons Library, although I note that the Minister was unable to answer the question properly, is that it includes the bank accounts of anyone in the UK in receipt, or having been in receipt, of state pension, universal credit, working tax credit, child tax credit, child benefit, pension credit, jobseeker’s allowance or personal independence payment.

The Minister says that the Government do not intend to go down some of those routes at the moment, but why, in that case, are they seeking that power? They could have come to us with a much more tightly written piece of legislation, and we would have been able to help them draft it properly. The proposed new schedule would mean that millions of bank accounts could be trawled without the Department for Work and Pensions, as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) referred to, even suspecting anything untoward before it asked for the information. The 19-page new schedule, which was tabled on the last day for consideration, would grant powers to the Government without our having any opportunity to scrutinise it line by line, assess its implications or hear evidence from expert witnesses.

We should of course be tackling fraud. The Government have completely lost control of fraud in recent years, with benefit fraud and error skyrocketing to £8.3 billion in the last financial year. The Minister seemed to think that it was a good thing that he could cite that figure. The year before, it was even higher—a record £8.7 billion. On the Conservative party’s watch, the percentage of benefit expenditure lost to fraud has more than trebled since Labour was last in power.

Let me be absolutely clear: Labour will pursue the fraudsters, the conmen and the claimants who try to take money from the public purse fraudulently or illegally. That includes those who have defrauded the taxpayer over personal protective equipment contracts, or have not declared their full income to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. My constituents in the Rhondda know that defrauding the taxpayer is one of the worst forms of theft. It is theft from all of us. It undermines confidence in the system that so many rely on. It angers people when they abide by the rules and they see others swinging the lead and getting away with it.

I back 100% any attempt to tackle fraud in the system, and we will work with the Government to get the legislation right, but this is not the way to do it, because it is not proper scrutiny. The Minister with responsibility for this matter, the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, who is present in the Chamber, is not even speaking in the debate. The Government are asking us to take a lot on trust, as we saw from the questions put earlier to the Minister for Data and Digital Infrastructure, so I have some more questions for him that I hope he will be able to answer.

As I understand it, the Government did a test project on this in 2017—all of six years ago—so what on earth have they been doing all this while? When was the new schedule first drafted, and why did the Minister not mention it in the discussions that he and I had two weeks ago? How many bank accounts does it potentially apply to? The Government already have powers to seek bank details where they suspect fraud, so precisely how will the new power be used? I have been told that the Government will not use the power until 2027. Is that right? If so, how on earth did they come to the figure of a £600 million saving—that was the figure that they gave yesterday, but I note that the Minister said £500 million earlier—in the first five years?

What will the cost be to the banks and financial institutions? What kind of information will the Government seek? Will it include details of where people have shopped, banked or travelled, or what they have spent their money on? The Government say that they will introduce a set of criteria specifying the power. When will that be introduced, how wide in scope will it be, what assessments will accompany it, and will it be subject to parliamentary scrutiny?

There is clearly significant potential to use data to identify fraud and error. That is something that Labour is determined to do, but it is vital that new measures are used fairly and proportionately. The Department for Work and Pensions says that its ability to test for unfair impacts across protected characteristics is limited, and the National Audit Office has also warned that machine learning risks bias towards certain vulnerable people or groups with protected characteristics. Without proper safeguards in place, the changes could have significant adverse effects on the most vulnerable people in society.

On behalf of the whole Labour party, I reiterate the offer that I made to the Government yesterday. We need to get this right. We will work with Ministers to get it right, and I very much hope that we can organise meetings after today, if the Bill passes, to ensure that the debates in the Lords are well informed and that we get to a much better understanding of what the Government intend and how we can get this right. If we get it wrong, we will undermine trust in the whole data system and in Government.

Broadly speaking, Labour supports the changes in the Bill that give greater clarity and flexibility to researchers, tech platforms and public service providers, with common-sense changes to data protection where it is overly rigid, but the Government do not need to water down essential protections for data subjects to do that. Our amendments set out clearly where we diverge from the Government and how Labour would do things differently.

By maintaining subject access request protections, establishing a definition of high-risk processing on the face of the Bill, and defending the public from automated decision making that encroaches too significantly on people’s lives, a Bill with Labour’s amendments would unlock the new potential for data that improves public services, protects workers from data power imbalances and delivers cutting-edge scientific research, while also building trust for consumers and citizens. That is the data protection regime the UK needs and that is the protection a Labour Government would have delivered.