Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jonathan Davies and Matt Rodda

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, and I am pleased to follow the powerful speech of the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson).

This wide-ranging Bill cuts across many aspects of Government and people’s lives. We must harness the power of data to drive economic growth, to support a modern digital Government and build more efficient, effective public services, and to support people to have improved lives more generally. For too long this potential has not been fully realised, holding back businesses, public services, learning and education, and people up and down the country more generally.

This mission-led Government’s plan for change—delivering economic growth, better public services and action on the environment—cannot be fully realised without some of the opportunities that this Bill creates. Measures in the Bill are expected to free up 1.5 million hours of police time, meaning officers will have more time to tackle crime rather than dealing with admin. This will be welcome in communities blighted by antisocial behaviour and among retailers who have been affected by shoplifting or violence against shop workers—the Co-op in Oakwood in my constituency is an example. It will also be welcomed in terms of the service victims of domestic violence receive from the police, as they will have more time to take preventive work and support victims, including my constituent Hayley who came to me to talk about her experience of domestic violence.

It is also estimated that measures in this Bill will free up a huge amount of time within the NHS for clinicians, potentially saving lives as well as making services more accessible and responsive to people’s needs. That is vital as the Government have inherited from their predecessors the longest waiting times in NHS history.

The Bill will also improve the information that regulators receive, enabling a real-time view of how a service is performing. Old models of regulation, where inspectors would go in on a periodic rolling basis, are often insufficient and not responsive to a service’s current situation. We have seen examples in the NHS and education where extremely poor services have not been of a standard that people have a right to expect—there has been abuse in some cases—but regulators’ oversight has not been modern enough to capture that and drive regulatory action.

[Matt Rodda]

I presume that my hon. Friend is moving on to a range of other benefits of AI. Has he considered the importance of AI in supporting medical and scientific research? There is a great deal of evidence to show that the power of AI applied to this area could speed up the development of new drugs and many other treatments. In addition to diagnostics, that is an important aspect of the benefits of AI to medicine, and is not always reported well in the media.

[Jonathan Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. There are tremendous opportunities to anticipate people’s needs throughout their lives and also drive scientific innovation, so that we can live longer and healthier lives. The Health Secretary and other Ministers have been clear that the huge investment that the Government are making in public services must go hand in hand with reform, since change will not be delivered solely by spending more money, and this Bill will help to make that possible.

I am also pleased that the Government will strengthen safeguards on personal data. That is key to ensuring that people have trust in the services that they use, and to preventing those who would exploit personal data from being able to do so. I look forward to following that aspect of the Bill as it progresses through its future stages.

I also wish to touch on the national underground asset register—a national map of the UK’s underground infrastructure. In Derbyshire, people find it so frustrating to find that their street, their road, or the highway that they use has been dug up again by yet another utility company, or another person who needs access to the cables or the infrastructure underground. Not only is that frustrating for people as they try to get around, but it is, I believe, undermining the integrity of the roads that we use and driving our pothole problems. I hope that, combined with our journey to local government devolution, our roads will be another area where people will be able to see a tangible difference.

During the Bill’s passage through the House of Lords, efforts were made to strengthen copyright protections for creators, including artists, photographers, authors, musicians, composers and lyricists. I welcome the work that the House of Lords has done to push those issues further up the agenda. Stronger protections for creators is something that I will always seek to support.

Artificial intelligence has benefits for sectors such as music, yet more transparency from AI firms on the music, art, and literature on which their systems draw is absolutely necessary. Although the technology is new, some of the arguments that we have heard here and today in the wider discourse on this Bill are decidedly not new. I am reminded of the 15th century—although I was not there—when Johannes Gutenberg rolled out his printing press for the first time. People were worried about the effect that that would have on scribes and the monks who transcribed the religious texts. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart), who is no longer in his place, spoke about the volumes of books that we have here in Parliament.