Digital Economy Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Chris Skidmore and Matt Hancock

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Hancock]

Q Mr Shah, what do you see as the impact of the data sharing clauses?

Hetan Shah: I completely agree with Charlie Bean that we are really in danger of being left behind compared with where other countries are on this agenda. The European statistics peer review, which happened last year, said that this was the key weakness in our statistical system. If you look at bodies like New Zealand, Finland and Canada, they all have this ability to access, so we have got to have it. We are spending £500 million on the census and you have got a lot of that data that you could be using through administrative data.

Similarly, on inflation, which is a critical economic indicator, at the moment we send out people with clipboards to take price points of 100,000 items in 140 locations around the country every month, but there is scanner data that tells you the price that people paid. This could really revolutionise. It is not statistics for statistics’ sake; it is to answer the questions that parliamentarians and policy makers have on issues about social mobility and productivity. For all these questions you are asking yourselves, we need the data. And if we are criticising the ONS about not being quick enough, we need to give them the powers to be quicker.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chris Skidmore)]

Q In terms of the provisions in the Bill on sharing data for research purposes, could you shed a bit more light on how that will benefit the wider research community? I was also wondering what the immediate priorities will need to be for the UK Statistics Authority as the accrediting body for the infrastructure provided by the research powers in the Bill.

Hetan Shah: The Bill creates a permissive power and it really streamlines what at the moment is quite a complex legal environment for researchers accessing Government data. This makes it much clearer that if a researcher meets a set of conditions—the research is in the public interest, the researcher is accredited and it will use the research in a safe haven, as it were, and so on—they are able to access that Government data.

We gave some case studies in our evidence of research that is obvious, such as what affects winter mortality and understanding the productivity gap. Those are questions that researchers want to investigate, but they cannot get hold of the data from Government Departments. To be fair to the Government, there is concern from their side about handing over data when the legal framework is not clear enough. I think this process will really streamline that.

One caveat is that it is slightly odd that health data are out of scope. Most of the biggest concerns that researchers have are in trying to build the relationship between survey data and, often, the health outcomes in certain areas. I understand the reasoning behind this: because of care.data there were some concerns. Health is very important. Our view is that the Bill should build in the scope for health data and then allow for future legislation to say how that will be dealt with, in particular once Fiona Caldicott, the national data guardian, has consulted on her framework, which is happening right now.

Professor Sir Charles Bean: I would endorse a lot of that. I should say that in Canada, where I spent some time talking to Statistics Canada in the course of doing my review, they have exactly this model. There are clearly defined criteria under which researchers can get access, with a sort of prescribed laboratory where they can use it. I think there is something like 30 requests a year to use information, so it is quite heavily used.

Certainly when I was talking to people here during the statistics review, the issue was raised during the consultation process by people such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who wanted access to the microdata to be able to study the impact of tax structure on decisions and so forth. The difficulty of getting that microdata inhibited good research. I am sure the demand is there.

Digital Economy Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Chris Skidmore and Matt Hancock

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Skidmore]

You were closely integrated into this approach.

Mike Bracken: Of course. The first thing is to recognise the positive sentiment in the Bill. There is much in it to admire and applaud and I believe it builds on some of the sentiment for providing better public services that certainly ran through my time in Government, pressed by various Ministers in the Cabinet Office, one of whom is sitting next to you now.

As I said earlier, I think the concern is not the sentiment and support, but in the lack of detail and the operational change that goes with that. Much of the work done previously, to date, has centred around things like single, canonical sets of data, so that there are accurate datasets about individuals, about place, about location, and that they are used within Government. That sentiment too often flies in the face of Whitehall’s demand to own its own data, or what it perceives to be its own data, in every piece of Government. That leads to the current sharing agreements around Whitehall, which are opaque at best and create friction for our members, friction for members of society and friction for business. It is harder to find accurate data, it adds an economic downside to people dealing with Government. The Bill currently seems to move away from the sentiment of sorting that problem out. It seems to reinforce the primacy of Whitehall’s willingness to share more data in ways that it has been sharing data over time. So while the sentiment of the Bill overall is positive, this area of how data are shared does not seem to be looking at the sort of open registers, those single approaches, that we started to look at in the latter part of the previous Parliament.

[Matt Hancock]

Q Do you agree that those areas in addition that you are looking for are essentially administrative rather than legal changes? That is to say, the Government need to move in that direction, I would argue that they are moving in the direction that you set out, but you would not put that in a Bill; you need to make it happen.

Mike Bracken: Yes. Absolutely, Minister. Too often, there was an assumption that those things would need regulatory or Bill backing. My experience was pretty much 100% that that was not the case; these are largely about administrative and operational management of data across Whitehall and across Departments. Clearly, there are some areas, security being an obvious one, where you need more legal oversight, but primarily it is not so much about a Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Skidmore]

Q The research power for data sharing, as presented, has been welcomed by many academics and civil society groups as a means of unlocking data for research for public benefit. Looking particularly at that data sharing with non-public bodies, do you recognise the benefits of that power? In terms of your point about communicating the value of the Bill, we have the research power and other things. Looking at vulnerable groups, such as troubled families, we have other powers that are there for public benefit. How do you feel we should express that public benefit?

Jeni Tennison: The benefits of each of the individual pieces of the Bill are different kinds of benefits to different kinds of people. I think they need to be separated out in some ways and not be muddled up together. That is one of the challenges with the Bill.

[Matt Hancock]

Q Can you set out what some of those might be?

Jeni Tennison: The benefits?

Rolls-Royce (Aerospace Group)

Debate between Chris Skidmore and Matt Hancock

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Those are wise words from a former Secretary of State. Rolls-Royce is not only a global success for British industry but a vital part of our industrial landscape, and, as has been pointed out, it also plays a crucial part in our defence capability. Of course we work very closely with the company, whose success is in the national interest as well as the interest of those who are employed there.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

The Minister mentioned a talent retention group that would help to redeploy engineering talent. How will he ensure that the group is sent to Bristol and Filton quickly and with the maximum resources available, and will he arrange for its members to meet me, my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) and any other willing Bristol Members of Parliament, so that we can assist our constituents who are affected in any way that we can?

[Matthew Hancock]

Yes, I can certainly do that. While the main focus may be on Derby, there will be concerned employees and their families in many other sites, including Bristol. No decisions have yet been made on the locations of any redundancies, but, as well as consulting local stakeholders, we will ensure that local MPs are heavily involved in the consultation process.