Business and Planning Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 13th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con) [V]]

I will speak to Amendment 44 on digital age verification and thank my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones for his support. I raised this at Second Reading and thank my noble friend the Deputy Leader for his courteous and timely letter. I am especially grateful to him and the Minister for Crime and Policing at the Home Office for publishing on GOV.UK the government response to the call for evidence on violence and abuse toward shop staff. That certainly helps to put discussions today into perspective. I am glad to hear that the Minister for Crime will work with business, the police and other partners to tackle this serious issue, including underreporting. I know the British Retail Consortium is disappointed about some aspects of the government response, but that is for another day.

Today is about emergency measures to deal with life under Covid-19, and they are all most welcome. As my noble friend Lord Holmes said, we need to get the economy motoring again. That includes measures that encourage business to revive and grow, as his amendments have proposed. In that context, I remain concerned about the absence of digital age estimation and verification for sale of alcohol. Our amendment enables the use of such verification, provided that the licensed seller in a shop or pub takes reasonable precautions and applies due diligence to ensure the purchaser is over 18.

The obvious example is the Yoti app used in a number of European countries, such as Estonia— a real digital leader—and some parts of the UK. It means there is no need to show paper ID and wash your hands or resanitise—or perhaps not—or to remove a mask to engage in a physical conversation and a physical check of the customer’s ID. It works brilliantly at automatic checkouts, as their videos show, and would help to speed up queues in pubs and elsewhere. Other apps will no doubt be developed, making the technology more widely available. Interestingly, I see from the Yoti website that NHS England and NHS Improvement have begun deploying a secure digital ID card from Yoti to put employees’ NHS ID cards on to their phones. The killer argument for this Business and Planning Bill is that this system is already in use in shops to verify sales of knives—arguably much more dangerous than drink—and other age-restricted products such as tobacco, lottery tickets and fireworks.

It has been argued that we cannot introduce a digital system for alcohol outside the Proof of Age Standards Scheme—PASS—which is being developed for card issuers. However, that has got bogged down and delayed by Covid and is not producing the solution required when it is so desperately needed. It is of great significance that the British Retail Consortium, which set up PASS, no longer has faith in it. It rightly believes that no scheme should be skewed to a particular interest group.

Ours is an open amendment that overnight would improve things hugely and allow more enforcement of the drinking rules than I believe is taking place at present. A sunset clause can be included allowing the opportunity to simply trial these new app-based methods, at the same time avoiding the need for young people to carry passes—and lose them, as they often do. I hope my noble friend the Minister will look favourably at this amendment and be open to agreeing a simple enabling provision before Report.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 36, 39, 40 and 43, to which I have added my name. I fully support what the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, said in his introduction and will not preface what my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark may say when he introduces his amendment later. While supporting and fully agreeing with the view of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, that we should all get back to work in the Chamber, I do not really agree that the increased number of outlets will improve the environment of Cambridge. You could then argue that we had better get back to prohibition days, and I do not think anybody wants that.

My amendments are intended to increase the choice of products and balance the smaller number that can be inside a pub or restaurant with more space outside. I commend the Government on allowing many outlets to put more space on the pavements or even roads and increase the space for cycling at the expense of polluting cars. The amendments would also allow a greater choice of suppliers, which I think is important.

My interest is encouraging small brewers and limiting the bullying tactics we have seen over the years from the pubcos, which are very much to the detriment of the small landlord. As the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, said, small brewers have lost a large proportion of their trade during the Covid lockdown, and 65% of breweries have apparently been mothballed because they could not sell their product direct to the public. Some of the smaller breweries do not have premises licensing and without these amendments cannot offer takeaways or deliver direct to the public. I believe that small breweries have really reinvigorated the hospitality sector in recent years. Allowing off-sales on a fair, proportionate and reasonable temporary basis, subject to the various conditions put in these amendments and the existing legislation, is surely a good thing.

I certainly believe that the amendment is not a licence for street raves. It is just a means of providing similar spaces outside due to the shortages inside because of the lack of social distancing space, combined with adding the possibility of much more competition within the brewing industry generally.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 44, so well introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. As she emphasised, it is a deregulatory amendment that entirely fits within the context of this Bill. Given her experience running the Better Regulation Unit and on the board of a major retailer, she should know.

This amendment is designed to give retailers the option of carrying out contactless age verification at a distance and automatically. It is supported not only by those representing and directly providing digital solutions, such as techUK, NCR and digital identity providers such as Yoti, but by the leaders of the key organisations involved in the retail trade, the British Retail Consortium and the Scottish Grocers Federation. It has the twin benefits of keeping retail staff and customers safe by assisting compliance with coronavirus guidelines and social distancing, and preventing the sales of age-restricted goods to minors, upholding the principles of Challenge 25—the retailing strategy that encourages anyone who is over 18 but looks under 25 to carry acceptable ID if they wish to buy alcohol.

The relaxation of coronavirus lockdown measures will now see an increase in in-store footfall, a potential rise in abuse and social distancing challenges with queues. Queues in supermarkets in particular create a point of potential congestion that can put staff at risk. Retailers have noted that almost 24% of baskets contain an age-restricted item. As a result of current rules, many customers wait longer than necessary. It can typically take 63 seconds to alert a staff member and carry out an age check when a basket includes an age-restricted good.

Age verification has a British standard, BSI PAS 1296 —Online Age Checking: Provision and Use of Online Age Check Services—which has been approved for use for all products apart from alcohol and has received assured advice from the Association of Convenience Stores. The standard has been worked on by age-verification experts and covers all the aspects important for designing and building a robust age-verification system—namely data protection, security, transparency and effective operation. Such a contactless method would take pressure off store staff, at a time when they are busy and pressured, and when wrong decisions can be made and there is temptation not to ask for ID.

The current conditions of customers wearing face coverings and social distancing make checking physical ID documents for age-restricted goods, in a retail context, much harder for staff. Staff have enough problems with aggressive customers without asking them to remove a mask or face covering that they are wearing under government guidance. As a result, there is a heightened risk of increased verbal, physical and racial abuse, increased coronavirus transmission risk when physically examining Challenge 25 approved ID documents, and the difficulty of matching documents to a customer wearing a face covering.

I have, for some time, been a supporter of age verification through digital identity systems, first legislated for in the Digital Economy Act 2017. It is clear that highly accurate digital age-proofing and identity-checking solutions are available off the shelf in the UK today that can significantly help alleviate issues facing retail staff. They are trusted for right to remain without a formal standard for 3 million-plus people and approved by the Joint Money Laundering Steering Group for financial services in the UK. In-store use of these technologies has been successful in the US and Europe—integrated into self-checkout and automated dispensing machines—but not in the UK, purely due to the current inconsistent regulatory requirements. We are behind other nations as a result, which is ironic given that the UK is playing a leading role in this technology.

In summary, the amendment would protect customers’ health, help with the development of a leading UK technology, reduce cost to retail because it reduces time taken at checkout and self-service, and reduce regulatory burden significantly because it removes the need for a second paper check of ID after the digital check. What can the Government conceivably object to in this amendment?