Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Josh Simons Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Josh Simons (Makerfield) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow that great contribution from the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), much of which I will echo. Like him, before I was elected to this place I worked a lot with data—understanding it, using it, deploying it—in tech companies, academia and then politics. I am a huge supporter of the Secretary of State’s and the Minister’s agenda, and broadly of the enormous potential for data and data-driven tools such as AI and machine learning, because they can drive productivity growth, boost earnings and, crucially, save constituents’ time and money—whether it is registering the birth of children, kids going through school, accessing a GP or entering the workplace.

I would like to underscore a few aspects of the Bill that have not been spoken much about, but I would also like to make a wider argument about the importance of this agenda and about going further in some areas in the years to come, particularly in the connection between data and risk. So, Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope you will forgive a slight and quick diversion.

The word “data” has its roots in the word for “fact”, but in the world of machine learning and AI it means something broader—the information we choose to record about our world to analyse and use to make decisions. Data began as demographic information, because a state that wanted to build an army or fight wars wanted to know what kinds of people comprised its populace. Now we collect data about driving, sleep and clicks online to help us navigate or get fitter, but also to push us mindless advertising. What data we collect depends on what we want to use data for, and that requires constant judgments about risk: where we are willing to take risks, how much risk and what kinds of risks.

In many ways, we have become a society and a country too averse to risk—to failure. We create new regulators and give them enormous discretion because we want to minimise risk. We create new tsars for this, that and the other, and give them broad powers because we want to minimise risk. The effect is that we avoid failures on 1,000 small things, but we also lose the opportunity to maximise our output and our success, because success requires risk, and data often forces us to make clear and confident judgments about risk.

The topic of this Bill is an opportunity to begin to shift our culture in our economy and, crucially, in our state too, but also for politicians like us in this House to be clear about where we welcome and embrace risk and where we do not, and to take responsibility as elected Members for failure. I will focus on two areas in this Bill where I believe data is forcing to the surface different appetites for and judgments about risk: healthcare and social media.

Briefly, I will say something about copyright, which has been well covered in powerful contributions by others. I am pleased that the Secretary of State said that he is looking at this area in the AI consultation, and I look forward to hearing more about the details of that consultation and what comes from it. We should be optimistic. It is possible to do what others have argued for and place our creative industries on a secure and stable footing, while also ensuring that AI is unlocked in this country. I hope that the Secretary of State will hear the powerful contributions of my colleagues today.

The two examples I will focus on are those that matter to many of the working people in my constituency of Makerfield. As the Secretary of State said, data is at the heart of how this Government must break through barriers and inertia to deliver for working people. That is why I am so glad that this Bill is not about killer robots or space-age AI, but is focused on the transformation of Government and services that impact my constituents every day.

The first example is healthcare, and this is an area where we should embrace more risk. Systematising the collection and recording of data in healthcare unlocks the possibility of using data to spot patterns, of contacting people ahead of time—instead of fining them if they miss their appointment, as they do in my borough of Wigan—and of saving people time that they do not have. To unleash the full potential of data in healthcare, we need to be confident about building population-level datasets controlled and owned by the public, anonymised through tools such as encryption, and then using those datasets not just for academic research, but to improve services and delivery. This Bill takes initial steps in that direction, which I welcome. In Greater Manchester, my constituents benefit already from a shared patient care record between primary and secondary care, and a data science platform that brings in data across local hospitals. Patients already feel the benefit of that every day.

In healthcare, we can go further and faster. We must be cautious about inadvertently slipping into risk aversion, caution and stagnation, particularly in relation to concerns about privacy. For much of the past 20 years and the period I have been involved in this debate, debates about data have been dominated by concerns about privacy, but whose interests does the privacy lobby serve? Often, think-tanks and NGOs fight in the name of working people to stop data being used to do things that working people want done. There is a lot of good evidence that the public are relaxed about population-level anonymised data being used to save them time and money and improve the services they use, especially in healthcare.

Does the elderly woman I saw in my constituency surgery last week, who has been struggling to see her GP for weeks now, care if her data sits in an anonymised database and is used to unlock more facetime for her GP to see patients and to make it faster for her to get an appointment? I do not think she does. I therefore welcome the changes in this Bill to the EU’s sprawling GDPR framework. If one of Brexit’s much-famed opportunities is to lead the way in diffusing the collection and use of data, we should embrace it wholeheartedly, subject to the data adequacy requirement. More generally in healthcare, we must ensure that we do not inadvertently build barriers that block the collection and use of data controlled by those accountable to the public for the public good, where data can drive better outcomes and improve experiences.

The second case I will consider is social media. Social media collects data about our unthinking scrolling to build highly optimised engagement algorithms that rake in advertising revenue. That contributes little to growth, national security or, indeed, the welfare of humanity. The digital verification market that this Bill creates will be vital. Digital age verification is central to protecting our children, especially once the Online Safety Act 2023 is in force. I want my young kids to grow up in a country that protects them from harmful content, such as sexualised violence, and from spending hours mindlessly scrolling through content, wasting their time and corroding their minds.

I also welcome the Bill’s provision to allow researchers to access online safety data held by technology companies, and I hope that we will continue to deepen those provisions. This is one area where I actually think we should be more worried about risk—a rare exception to my general view that we have become too risk-averse—because it is about the minds and character of our citizens and the strength of our democracy. At present, the information environment of our nation is being polluted, sometimes deliberately and often by foreign adversaries. Governments communicate with citizens, and citizens with each other, in spaces designed to drive them apart. As we have seen in past months, knowing what is circulating online, and how, is in the public interest.

I hope that the Bill is just the beginning of our Government using every possible lever to rebuild the fabric of trust in government, politics and each other in this new digital environment. Historically, states collected data to wage wars and raise taxes. This Government should harness data to put money in the pockets of working people, to make public services more efficient and easier to access, and—crucially—to rebuild our public realm and restore trust in our great democracy.