Internet of Things: Regulation

Debate between Liam Byrne and Chi Onwurah

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

What a fantastic debate we have had this afternoon. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) very warmly on securing it. I am extremely glad that she started with a brief account of the industrial revolution, which started in 1712 when the Newcomen steam engine was demonstrated at Dudley castle, a day that we commemorate every year on Black country day.

The debate that unfolded subsequently illustrated an important point. The steam engine was not perfected until James Watt joined Matthew Boulton at the Soho manufactory. It was 1789 before the first rotary steam engine was sold to a man called Peter Drinkwater, who created the first steam-powered textile factory and lit the spark on a textile revolution in Manchester, which was the beginning of Manchester’s claim. Peter Drinkwater’s factory manager was a man called Robert Owen, who went on to found New Lanark mill in Glasgow. It was 1825 before steam technology was incorporated into Locomotion No.1, which was set to work on the Stockton to Darlington railway. The point is that it was 113 years over which the steam revolution unfolded and began to transform every aspect of this country, including our economy.

The speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) was important in setting the wider stage and the bigger story, because the new technology required a revolution in law and regulation. Over the course of the 19th century there was not one factory Act but 22 different factory Acts and Bills, and over this century there will no doubt be just as many different attempts to reform, revise, regulate, legalise and make lawful or unlawful different aspects of the technology that we are debating here today. So my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham was right to say that what is needed from the Government is a plan for a just transition. We now understand what “just transition” means when it comes to climate change, but we need a plan for technology just as much, just as we need a plan for just transition given the new trade conflicts that are now ensuing. The rise of temperature, robots and conflicts will define our economy over the next 20 or 30 years, so we need not only just transition but just transitions, and at the moment we have nothing from the Government to tell us how that journey will be steered over the years to come.

As the Minister knows, because he was at the sharp end of these debates during the proceedings on the Data Protection Bill, which became the Data Protection Act 2018, our approach is rooted in a particular philosophy. Our inspiration is the work of Amartya Sen and the work that he set out first in “Development as Freedom”. Over the course of the revolution in this century, we must ask ourselves what capabilities we want every citizen in this country to have.

Adam Smith talked about how a man might need a linen shirt to go out in public. That was something that people needed in order to participate in civilised society at the time when Adam Smith was writing. These days the capabilities that people need will be different. We therefore have to ask ourselves what those capabilities are and how we turn them into rights. That is why, given the complexity and the regulation and re-regulation that is to come in this century, it would be wise now to set out a document of first principles. We believe that a Bill of digital rights will make the business of regulating far simpler over the next 50, 60, perhaps 113 years. Who knows what the life cycle of this debate might be?

We set out in the debate some of the rights that we think should feature in a charter. We set them out because we wanted to have a debate, and I am pleased to be able to have a bit of that debate this afternoon. I think that some of the issues are uncontested; I think we agree on equality of treatment and on the right to security. I also think we agree on the right of free expression, although we believe that we should incorporate lessons from Germany, which has pioneered the NetzDG legislation to take out hate speech online. I think we agree on equality of access, although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central said, ideas such as the national education service are important here, because of course they will transform rights to digital literacy. We believe in universal digital literacy; we believe that it is a fundamental right for the 21st century. We also believe in a right to privacy; I believe that is uncontested.

However, what is perhaps not agreed on is the kind of rights to algorithmic justice that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) insisted on during the Committee stage of the Bill that became the Data Protection Act 2018. Crucially, we also believe that there should be some kind of right of ownership and control of data that is created through our use of technology. That was absolutely at the heart of the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central. At some point, the Government will have to step up and provide some answers as to what they think about this issue. I hope that the Minister will begin that business of stepping up in about five minutes’ time.

These charters—these bills of rights—are meaningless without two further pieces of the puzzle. The first is an effective system of powerful regulation. We are now facing off against some of the biggest, wealthiest and most powerful companies on earth, yet the regulatory infrastructure that we have today would be described by Sidney Webb as a mish-mash: Ofcom; the Information Commissioner’s Office; the Competition and Markets Authority; the Payment Systems Regulator; the Financial Conduct Authority; the Advertising Standards Authority; and the Independent Press Standards Organisation. There is a slew of non-regulatory advisory bodies.

Something like 13 different advisers and regulators have some kind of bite in relation to what happens online. They all do an important job and they are all staffed by excellent people. My hon. Friend used to work for one of them—indeed, she helped to set it up—so she knows very well how long it takes to set up a regulator or to merge regulators. Consequently, we are not calling for some kind of bonfire of the quangos here. What we are asking for is for some proper thought about how those 13 different regulators and advisory bodies might number something closer to one—not one, but not 13, either. We believe that we will have to start bringing these regulators together, if we are to concentrate the firepower that is needed to take on the biggest and most complicated regulatory challenge in human history.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way and for the excellent comments that he is making, which have raised some of the key issues we face. In 2002-03, the then Labour Government held a wide-ranging review of the communications sector and the many regulators that existed for television, for radio and for spectrum, etc. Then, in concert with the industry sector, civil society and so on, they developed a plan to bring them all together in Ofcom. That process took time, but it also built consensus and agreement about what the key challenges were. In addition, it enabled the right technical talent to come together. Could that not be a model for developing the right regulatory approach to these challenges?

[Liam Byrne]

It absolutely could and it absolutely should, because the truth is that that work will have to happen at some point, so all we are arguing about is when and how. It is inconceivable that we will have 13— now 14—different regulators and advisers; the Data Protection Act 2018 brought in a new organisation, or institution, which is the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation. We cannot keep multiplying these regulators and allowing them to proliferate.

Equally, however, we cannot take the approach that was taken back in 2010-11, when the Government sought to wipe out many different quangos. They had their bonfire of the quangos and it sounded excellent in the pages of The Daily Mail. Of course, in practical terms, it was a bureaucratic disaster and many of the efforts to abolish organisations that were doing an important job had to be reversed. It was a complete waste of time, energy and money, at a time when civil service bandwidth was under tremendous pressure. So what we are asking for is a road map—a proper one—with a timetable to be debated, in order to bring together the regulatory firepower that is needed to hold to account the biggest companies on Earth.

There is a final piece of the puzzle. We have discussed rights and regulators; the third piece of the puzzle is redress. If we do not have accessible forms of redress, this debate is a waste of time. Yesterday, in the Court of Appeal, the three senior judges handed down a challenge to the Minister by saying that the process that we suggested during the passage of the Data Protection Act 2018 for class action should be implemented. My key question to the Minister is whether he will introduce what is required under that 2018 Act, which is the review that was promised of opt-out class actions, given the advice that was handed down to him in the judgment on Lloyd v. Google in the Court of Appeal yesterday.

For those who have not seen the case, it began in November 2017 and was brought by Mr Richard Lloyd on behalf of millions of iPhone users who, he alleges, had their personal data taken between 2011 and 2012. The Court of Appeal basically ruled that that representative action could now proceed. It found that personal data has economic value—the principle at the heart of the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central; that a violation of that right to privacy was a damage; that individuals do not need to demonstrate pecuniary loss and distress; that a loss of control of personal data is the same loss and the same interest, as if there had been economic loss or economic damage; and finally, and perhaps most importantly for the Minister, that representative actions, in which people opt out rather than opt in, are effectively the only way in which such claims could be pursued.

The judges have underlined the argument that we underlined a number of months ago in the Committee that considered the Data Protection Bill and which is at the core of this debate: if we do not have redress, those rights, even the rights that we have enshrined in the Act, are meaningless. We are talking about humble individuals taking on some of the biggest firms on earth. The only way those rights can be made a reality is if we allow effective remedies in court. We have now heard from the judges that those effective remedies are most likely to be class actions. I look forward to the Minister confirming that he will introduce that review forthwith, so that we can at least begin to make some progress on the critical issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central has highlighted to the Chamber.

Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Debate between Liam Byrne and Chi Onwurah

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne]

May I start by welcoming the new powers for the Information Commissioner, which we called for in Committee? Nobody who observed the debacle of the investigation into Cambridge Analytica will have needed persuading that that those powers are necessary—it took the court five or six days to issue the requisite search warrants, and that time might well have been used by Cambridge Analytica to destroy evidence—so I am glad that the Minister has heeded our calls and introduced the proposals this afternoon. We are happy to give them our support.

I will speak to a number of new clauses and amendments in the group, particularly new clause 4, which is our enabling clause for creating a bold and imaginative Bill of data rights for the 21st century. I want to make the case for universal application of those rights, including their application to newcomers, who need rights in order to challenge bad decisions made by Governments, which is why our amendment 15 would strike out the immigration provisions that have so unwisely been put into the Bill. I will also say a few words about new measures that are needed in the Bill to defend the integrity of our democracy in the digital age.

The Minister took the time to make a comprehensive speech, which included an excellent explanation of the Government amendments, so I will be brief. Let me start with the argument for a Bill of data rights. Every so often we have to try to democratise both progress and protections. In this country we are the great writers of rights—we have been doing it since Magna Carta. Over the years, the universal declaration of human rights, the UN convention on the rights of the child, the charter of fundamental rights, the Human Rights Act 1998, the Equality Act 2010 and, indeed, the original Data Protection Act have all been good examples of how good and wise people in this country have enshrined into charters and other legal instruments a set of rights that we can all enjoy, that give us all a set of protections, and that help us to democratise progress.

[Chi Onwurah]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Does he share my astonishment that the Government are not taking the opportunity to update our rights for the digital age? Does he think that that is because they are too captured by the tech giants, because they are too confused by Brexit to invest in change, or because they are too ideologically constipated regarding the free market that they can do nothing about it?

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. The answer, of course, is that it is for all three of those reasons that we do not have before us an imaginative bill of digital rights, but the times do call for it.

In the early days, when we were writing great charters such as Magna Carta, the threats to ordinary citizens were from bad monarchs. We needed provisions such as Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights and the Glorious Revolution to protect the citizens of this country and their wealth from bad monarchs who would seek to steal things that were not theirs.

What we now confront is not a bad monarch—we have a fantastic monarch—but the risk of bad big tech. The big five companies now have a combined market capitalisation of some $2.5 trillion, and they are up to all sorts of things. They are often protected by the first amendment in the United States, but their business—their bad business—often hurts the data rights of citizens in this country.

That is why we need this new bill of rights. We have to accept that we are on the cusp of radical and rapid changes in legislation and regulation. I often make the point that over the course of the 19th century there was not one Factory Act but 17 Factory Acts. We had to legislate and re-legislate as technology, economics and methods of production changed, and that is the point we are at now. We will have to regulate and re-regulate, and legislate and re-legislate, again and again over the decades to come. Therefore, if we are to give people any certainty about what the new laws will look like, it would be a sensible precaution if we were to write down now the principles that will form the north star that guides us as we seek to keep legislation up to date.