Libraries: Closures

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I was not aware of that, but I will ensure that the Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism is made aware, if he is not already. It is sad when local authorities sell public artworks, but I accept that they have difficult decisions to make, and that is what local authorities are for. The important thing is that decisions that affect local communities should be taken locally.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a question in which all Members of this House can take a personal interest. Each of us could give testimony on what libraries have meant to us. When they were small, our children relied on them often, and even in the age of social media, it is the same thing all over again with our grandchildren. When local authorities have had to cut their budgets by 60% in recent times, closing libraries offers an easy way of saving money, but simply to say that the Government have outsourced responsibilities to local authorities is not good enough to address this question.

Even if the DCMS has not conducted its own impact assessment, the unions have, and without repeating the statistics, it is a horrendous picture of dissatisfaction from those working in libraries at the service they are obliged to offer the public with fewer and fewer resources. Do the Government not feel it appropriate to put this further up the priority list and address this question with urgency, for the good of us all, and our families?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

It is very easy to blame the Government when devolved decisions are not to the liking of people living elsewhere, such as noble Lords. I accept that when difficult decisions have to be made, they cause issues. We support local libraries by providing things such as wi-fi. Through Arts Council England we provide the Libraries Opportunities for Everyone Innovation Fund, the private finance initiative and the Libraries Taskforce; all are examples of DCMS centrally supporting the library service. I accept that local authorities have had to make difficult decisions. Libraries actually have been retained and it is worth bearing in mind that many local authorities have refurbished or opened new libraries. Therefore, it is a question of priorities and what a local authority thinks is important for its area.

Data Protection, Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendments etc) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 18th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

The noble Baroness raises a very important question, to which the Minister should respond: how long will it take to consider this? Noble Lords who woke up to the “Today” programme this morning will have been astonished to find that Dr Liam Fox and the Foreign Secretary had written to the Japanese Prime Minister telling him to get a move on in signing a trade deal with Britain—as if we, because we are putting ourselves in a position of great jeopardy and undermining existing international agreements in five weeks, can now start instructing foreign Governments on the timescales in which they should conduct international negotiations. This is utterly humiliating to us as a country. It is a fundamental breach of the proper conduct of public affairs. What the noble Baroness said about it taking another two years even to get the basis of data adequacy agreements with the EU, because of our act of withdrawing from the European Union, simply underlines the point.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, in the middle of all that I shall provide a still, small voice of calm for a moment—perhaps—in keen anticipation of the response of the Minister, who will have to orchestrate the energies that have been released and deal with the blood pressure of my noble friend Lord Adonis.

I have looked at this statutory instrument. I can see 65 pages of intricate cross-stitching, as an untold number of lawyers for untold numbers of hours have pored over pieces of legislation, harmonised what can be harmonised, tweaked what can be tweaked and produced at the end an unreadable pastiche, leaving us reliant on the Explanatory Memorandum. As I sat at my kitchen table on the sunniest weekend we have had this year so far, with pieces of legislation spread out all around me, there was no other method available to me.

I read of changes to the GDPR and the law enforcement directive,

“over which our Information Commissioner’s Office and UK civil servants have had considerable influence”.—[Official Report, Commons, Sixteenth Delegated Legislation Committee, 14/2/19; col. 1.]

That we, once among the architects of how we handle our data as a continent, should now be in the position we are in is a great sadness. I would say the same thing for the European Court of Justice, which we had a formative contribution in shaping. That we are arguing these points in this way is a dreadful place to be.

I echo what has been said to my left and to my right about reciprocity, adequacy and all that. At the moment of leaving, we will, I suppose, accept the remaining members of the European Union as having passed the adequacy test. Indeed, through the Privacy Shield scheme in the United States, we will offer that sense of adequacy even beyond Europe. But, as has been said, the negotiations to have some reciprocity and adequacy expressed for our own case will take an indeterminate time—two years has been mentioned, and the Minister will respond to that in due course. It seems such a strangely asymmetrical presentation of these important facts. I want to ask, as others have done: is it true that the assessment of adequacy for the United Kingdom might take as long as that?

In his opening remarks, the Minister mentioned that, at such-and-such an item in the political agreement, there is reference to the urgency with which certain of these things must happen. Perhaps he will excuse my ignorance on this point, but, if there is no deal, is there no deal in respect of the deal and of the political agreement? If so, the item he referred to falls, as indeed does the deal.

The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, made a speech last week on what happens once you have reached a fixed point, which has again been hinted at in this debate. At the moment, all we are talking about is something that will come to pass on a particular date, just five weeks away, at which point things should square up with each other. But what happens in the two years it will take for adequacy for us to be granted by the negotiating process that will then begin? What happens if decisions about how to act in the area of the management of data begin to diverge? It is not a fixed position. What mechanisms do we have to handle a shifting scene?

My noble friend Lord Adonis mentioned Japan. It did not come into the picture because, at the time this statutory instrument was written, something was happening that had not yet been brought to a conclusion. But we now know what the conclusion is, and we see that Japan will be a much more difficult case to crack than we had thought. Once again, we are in a bad place.

Without a deal—or even, it seems, with one—the ICO will no longer sit on the European Data Protection Board. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, referred to the loneliness of the Norwegian, and it is worth emphasising that all over again. It will be a dreadful thing for us to send our top person to such discussions and have her sit out and have no real practical influence—this is the United Kingdom we are talking about—nor will she be able to participate in the GDPR’s one-stop shop mechanism. This is another terrible place to put her. How should we feel about this? I think it is important.

Incidentally, I see why there is no impact assessment or public consultation: all the people who might have been available to harness such an impact assessment or consultation have been disentangling laws and working as drones to put this SI together. I cannot feel that we are doing anything that any of us would be other than ashamed about with the passage of time.

On the age at which consent is deemed to have been given, are the Government, in opting for 13—there was a spread of ages between 13 and 16 when we considered the Data Protection Bill last year—achieving by secondary legislation what we were reluctant to do just a year ago with the primary legislation? What is our duty of care in such circumstances?

Data Protection (Charges and Information) (Amendment) Regulations 2019

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 18th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

My Lords, these amendments represent a little island of calm in a turbulent ocean. For once, I am referring not to Brexit or the backstop but, rather, to the fact that we are in the middle of some very turbulent changes in our regimes for the protection of data and privacy and many other aspects of communication. This morning, we saw the publication of the report of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the other place on disinformation and “fake news”. In so far as I have got into the report—which is not very far—it is very welcome in that it represents a much broader view of the threats to democracy from the present regime for controlling the use of data. There is much more to be said, and I hope that the Minister will be able to say something about the ways in which the broader picture will be taken into account. These amendments do not need changing because of the broader picture, but it is curious to fiddle with the small stuff when such major and serious issues are happening in this domain.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this seems a sensible measure and the issues have been well rehearsed. There was one area where there was some confusion in my mind, and I hope that noble Lords will not mind my bringing it to their attention now. I, too, am looking forward to not having to pay £40—that is good news, but in exempting Members from both Houses, candidates and so on from the need to pay that charge, we recognise that many of us have other duties and obligations not related to our being Members of this House. We are in employment, we run things and so on, and we handle people’s data other than in the sense that has been described. I guess they will have to pay their £40 or whatever it is, but my confusion lies in the hinterland between those two modes of operation: information gained in respect of activities of one kind can without too much imagination become useful in respect of those of another kind. I wonder whether some thought has been given to handling that kind of confusion and, if so, how. It would be helpful if the Minister could say something about that; otherwise, this seems like common sense and we would have no hesitation in wanting it to go forward.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have responded. This statutory instrument is unique among those I have dealt with recently in having gained a speedy and generally favourable response; I am grateful for that.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for his welcome. He spoke about financing political parties and the need to give advice—as indeed did the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. I can say that the House authorities will take that on board and provide some clear advice, taking into account the new requirements if this statutory instrument is passed; I am very pleased about that.

I acknowledge—the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, was right about this—that the approach to funding the ICO was originally set by the Digital Economy Act, which was superseded by the Data Protection Act. The method of funding the ICO, and the question of whether it is adequate, have been occupying us for several years. I am pleased that we have finally resolved it. The noble Baroness is right that we decided to do it this way and not as part of the GDPR. Supervisory authorities can be funded in a number of ways. The reason for doing it this way was that it did not involve much practical change from the ICO funding arrangements under the Data Protection Act 1998 and a register is not necessary.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, talked about an ocean of calm within a broader picture that is possibly not so calming. I agree with her that it is a small but important issue. It is right to deal with an issue that promotes—or at least does not prevent—demographic engagement; and a commitment was made when the regulations were debated last year that we would look at this and take it forward. It is important to carry forward what we said; I take on board her points about the issues alluded to in the DCMS Committee’s report, as outlined this morning. Generally speaking, we have not yet had time to analyse it in great detail but, together with the Cabinet Office, we will be taking forward a lot of these issues around disinformation and its effect on elections, particularly through the online harms White Paper, which will be coming out soon.

The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, mentioned that Peers have other duties; he asked about the way this exemption would apply in relation to their duties in the House of Lords and elsewhere. He is quite right that, if they are a data controller and have other duties that are not subject to an exemption, they would be required to pay the charge. I will mention this to the House authorities when they issue their advice and hopefully they can be clear. Ultimately, the Data Protection Act says that you must have lawful authority to handle personal data and it is up to you to make sure that is the case; if you handle personal data—other than data that has some limited exemptions provided in the Act—then you will have to pay the charge.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

I wonder if I could ask for a little more resolution on the matter. My mind is filled with pictures of activities that I myself have engaged in where, by doing work for which I am remunerated, I gain some kind of control of people’s data or the use of it, and at the same time I can be involved in an area where I am exempt from all that. Because of the homogeneity of the activities, one paid and one not, it is not difficult to see that the dividing line between what qualifies and what does not might be difficult to establish, even with the good will of the authorities of the House who write the best guidance that has ever been written.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

If the guidance does not produce clarity in the noble Lord’s mind, then I think the answer is to avail himself of the ICO’s telephone hotline, which is there specifically to answer questions such as the ones that he has asked. He will be able to give them the specific examples of where he is unable to be clear. That applies generally to people in public office such as him but also, importantly, to other small businesses; there is a specific small-business hotline that is there exactly to answer questions like his. I hope that has covered most of the issues.

Electronic Communications and Wireless Telegraphy (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath]

I absolutely accept that; my point is that we need to look at the attitude of the Government towards their relationship with bodies such as BEREC. If, even without a no-deal situation—that is, even within the withdrawal agreement, where it is hoped there will be a deal—the Government are supporting a mechanism that they have written themselves, which makes it difficult for Ofcom to be involved in BEREC, then we should have some real concern.

I have drawn attention—I will not repeat the detail in your Lordships’ House now—to how Article 128 makes it difficult for Ofcom to be involved in BEREC. During the debate on the Trade Bill, the Minister concerned gave a very different interpretation of that situation. He made it clear that he thinks it will be perfectly possible for Ofcom to be involved. I challenged that Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, on whether he agreed with my interpretation or with that of his noble friend. I was somewhat surprised by the answer he gave. He said:

“The noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, made an interesting point about the reputation of Ofcom, which of course we all recognise as a world-leading authority. He then offered me a pretty difficult choice of choosing between his persuasive speech and the words uttered in Committee by my colleague in government, my noble friend Lord Ashton of Hyde. Given that I speak from the Government Benches, I am afraid that I must side with my noble friend Lord Ashton in this regard”.—[Official Report, 30/1/19; col. 1156.]


So two Ministers now have disagreed with my interpretation of whether we will be able to participate closely with BEREC. I end with a simple question for the Minister today: will he give a clear assurance that, in the event of no deal, it will be the Government’s intention to take all necessary steps to ensure the maximum co-operation between Ofcom and BEREC?

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to wish the Minister well. We had a good debate in Grand Committee. We shared very frankly a number of views. There were questions relating to what kind of consultation had taken place; others were raised persistently and clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, and he has continued to pose them this morning. I was reassured by the letter that we received, which took up and dealt with a number of the questions that we had been struggling with.

Once again, as I said from the Dispatch Box yesterday, I am trying to make a clear distinction between what needs to happen to the statutory instrument laid before us—I am sure the matters arising from it have now been adequately aired—and the questions that will go on worrying us after this instrument has been passed; as we move into the next phase, we will be debating substantive issues that certainly have not been answered in a debate of this kind. For the purpose of dealing with the piece of business directly before us, I am happy to give our accord from these Benches, but not if that should be supposed to cancel, diminish or sideline the issues that have been raised from the other Benches.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Unfortunately we do not have a satisfactory or agreed Brexit deal and we need a no-deal SI here and indeed in a number of other areas, so I support the Government on that. However, I would like to pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, on roaming, which I understand is broader than this SI. If this is to be a commercial decision in future for the mobile operators in the event of no deal, as we heard earlier, can the Government seek voluntary assurances from them that they will continue to incorporate overseas calls and internet access into their contracts? I have that facility from Three and it includes the EU and indeed the US, and I do not think the company is planning to change that. However, in addition to the consumer triggers that are being introduced and the very good provision on inadvertent Republic of Ireland roaming, I think Ofcom could require the operators to make a clear statement of their intentions in this area on such calls in the EU, and I think it should look at the ability of consumers to switch from deals that turn out to be bad as a result of the change.

Broadcasting (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an interesting debate and many points that we will be wrestling with well beyond 29 March have been raised in the course of it. I want to begin my remarks, as I will every time I stand on such an occasion, by bemoaning the fact that so many man and woman hours, by able civil servants, have been necessary to plough their way through successive Acts of Parliament to disentangle and extricate details that can be strung together in order to release them from a perceived enslavement to European legislation—a freeing of them, a “Fidelio” moment, that brings them into the light of day—so that they can then stand on their own feet as part of a self-defined and perfectly functioning legal system in this country. It is very regrettable that all this has had to happen. I used to do textual analysis as a favourite aspect of my studies. I promise that this would defy any of even the most complicated pieces and puzzles that I have wrestled with in the past. We are where we are, but I feel the need to say that. Again and again, hundreds of times, we are going to have to express regrets that all this energy, vitality and brilliance of mind has been tied up into producing what are effectively a strung together set of proposals that get us over the line at the end of March in the event of there being no deal.

Having said that, the second rather general thing that I want to say, which echoes things that have been said by others, relates to consultation. Again and again, that is where my eye goes first when I get these Explanatory Memoranda. Once again, I wonder that only Ofcom has been consulted, when many other bodies have been mentioned in the course of this debate as being stakeholders in all that is about to happen. Surely there might have been consultation in those cases. We are working under pressure, and impact assessments and consultations are both reduced almost to nothing, and we can only regret that. In a previous debate which I was sitting in your Lordships’ House for, I overheard the discussion between my noble friend Lord Adonis and the noble Lord, Lord Warner, who is not now in his place, about what we might have expected in such pieces of secondary legislation, according to the rule book, as it were—12 weeks of consultation, a published account of the results of that, and all part of the debate going forward. Even though I stand here wanting to narrow the considerations that I address to the particular point of keeping something legitimate on the law book to allow us to take that step, I feel it necessary to express regret about the levels of consultation and openness. I do not know what my noble friend Lord Adonis thinks about those who are trustees and on the inside circle who were consulted, but I know there are people in the industry, as far as this one is concerned, who have things to say and whose voices would have been very legitimate in bringing us to this point.

When the matter was debated in the other place, there was a lot of reference to the fact that meaningful presences were beginning to appear in countries on the other side of the Channel. The Minister was asked if she could put a figure on them. She could not and did not. At the same time, we have heard that Sony has already done this, and others look as if they are going to. It is a legitimate thing to ask, regarding the impact of this proposal, to what extent we feel this is going to continue and to be a worrisome factor.

This is a way of coping. The memorandum is my main interpretive document, because while I can read complicated things, these wretched SIs are beyond complicated. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, takes them in his stride, with his paracetamol in the morning or something. I thought it was an honest attempt, at the level of getting us from here to there, to look at all the angles that need to be looked at—in a perfunctory manner, yes. I am not an expert in picking up the details of difference between the AVMSD and the ECTT, for example, but it seems to me that the countries that are not in the ECTT, in so far as they are given six months to look at how they are going to harmonise themselves with the proposals being made, have been offered something, anyway, and Ireland seems to have been treated very properly indeed, with the reference to the Good Friday agreement thrown in.

I did not find, granted the narrow concern in front of us here, that there was much I wanted to quarrel with, but in terms of the issues we are bound to go on wrestling with when this particular dust has died down, we can only note what the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and others have said and recognise that this will not be the last word.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a very short question for the Minister. What would his advice be to UK broadcasters when it comes to working with those countries that are not party to the ECTT? I know that many broadcasters are concerned that these new regulations will not cover the areas that at the moment they just take for granted as far as European-wide broadcasting is concerned. What about those countries, other than Ireland, that are not party to the ECTT?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

We are not—as noble Lords might have realised—reading about this only in the papers, although we do read them. We have had extensive consultation—not perhaps the public consultation where all pros and cons are publicised, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, would prefer. But noble Lords should be under no illusions: we have had extensive consultation on this situation and this specific SI, not only with Ofcom, which has been instrumental in drafting the SI to address the problems of regulation of television services—how they should be construed and defined—but with the sector. We have organised round tables at ministerial and official level. We have included AETN, AMC Networks, BBC Studios, Channel 4, Discovery Channel, Disney, ITV, NBCUniversal, Nordic Entertainment Group, Sky, Sony, WarnerMedia, Viacom and Viasat. We have met these and further broadcasters on a bilateral basis, because a lot of these discussions are commercially sensitive, depending on what they are going to do with their establishments to meet the problems of Brexit. I reiterate that this is an issue about Brexit, not about this SI, which is about the regulation—making sure that a regulatory system exists if we have no deal.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

I say simply that to have mentioned in the memorandum that this impressive list of people had been consulted in various ways might have allowed us to finish in record time, as the hope for that had been expressed.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I take that point, although I would not bet on it myself. On that point, I emphasise that the ministerial round tables took place not just once but regularly between August 2016 and March 2017, led by the Secretary of State, and in March and July in 2018, led by the Minister. But I take the point about explaining that. The difference between this and the SI we talked about the other day is the commercial sensitivity of the decisions that have to be made in moving head offices, the effect on the workforce, and so on.

I will address the general issue of whether we are being complacent about relying on the ECTT. We acknowledge that it might be possible that some services will require two licences—one for the purposes of the AVMSD, and one for Ofcom—because this is the case for services which are available in both ECTT and non-ECTT countries. In the way that these services are received—by satellite—it is difficult to exclude some countries from the distribution. There are about 500 Europe-facing services out of the 1,200 that Ofcom currently licenses. To date, we are aware of about 130 licences moving. It is fair to say that broadcasters are concerned about the risk of dual regulation, and are reluctant to rely on the ECTT—it is considered an untested convention, as EU law has been in place for so long. Nevertheless, I am sure noble Lords would agree that we should not ignore conventions and international agreements that we have signed up to, nor should the other countries which have signed them.

Broadcasting: Public Sector Content

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I agree that PSB content is important—in fact, 83% of people think that children’s provision by public service broadcasters is important. Ofcom’s consultation on the rules for prominence and proposed changes to the linear EPG includes a proposal for prominence for children’s PSB channels. Ofcom already has the powers to review and revise the code, so any final decision on changes to the linear prominence regime is a matter for it.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, it is unusual for both of my questions, carefully prepared, to have been answered before I put them, but that will not stop me asking the Minister to repeat the assurance he gave that, if the Ofcom report suggests that legislation is necessary, the Government will do it.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I can do better than that. I will repeat what the Secretary of State said to the DCMS shadow Secretary of State:

“The Government has made clear that if the Ofcom report concludes that there is a problem with the current prominence regime that needs fixing with the legislation, then we will look to bring that forward”.

Florence Nightingale: Bicentenary

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, as the DCMS Minister, I am aware of course that it is Data Privacy Day. Council of Europe Convention 108 is the only binding international instrument which is signed by 54 states, including Russia. Data Privacy Day celebrates the anniversary of its signing in 1981 and I agree with my noble friend that it is an important day. She is right that Florence Nightingale was an important statistician, and she was the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society in 1858. The national data guardian legislation that my noble friend took through the House as a Private Member’s Bill is excellent because it promotes trust in health data so that we can gain the maximum benefit from it.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Bishop of London]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness rightly said, Florence Nightingale not only cared for the sick and wounded but was a statistician, thus providing the foundation of our infection control today. Does the Minister agree that the best tribute to Florence Nightingale is to ensure that nurses today have enough time and resources to continue their own professional development, which contributes not just to the National Health Service but to the health and economic status of this country?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I completely agree with the right reverend Prelate: we want more nurses and we want to encourage nurses to join the profession and, importantly, to stay in it. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has recently launched his long-term plan, which addresses in part the problem of the lack of nurses.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, I would not have wanted to give way to any Bishop other than the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who has extensive experience of her own in this very field. We have noted the body of people who will be organising the celebration—quite properly—and we look forward to those celebrations, but they have insisted that if we are to honour nursing properly, we should be looking forward rather than back. Some 40,000 health service nursing vacancies need to be filled. Might something as simple as reinstating bursaries for nurses become government policy? Others have thought about it; I am sure that the Minister will want to say something positive about it, too.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

Of course, that is not directly relevant to the DCMS, but I am aware that it is an issue. That is why the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who was previously Secretary of State at the DCMS, established a DHSC-led nurse supply board to drive progress with health bodies on a range of measures, including a national recruitment campaign, action to encourage nurses who have left the NHS to return to practice, and a programme to encourage nurse retention and to look at situations where suitable nurses might be turned away by disproportionate language controls. We are addressing the issue. The one thing on which I think we all agree is the tremendous benefit that the nursing profession brings to us and countries abroad.

Electronic Communications and Wireless Telegraphy (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Adonis]

I fully accept what the Minister said. He has been very forthcoming in making further information available to noble Lords. It would be very useful to us to have that further information before these regulations go to the House. We need that further information so that we can form a judgment on whether the Government’s decision as to how they will frame the regulatory regime after 29 March, if we crash out of the EU, is correct or whether it would have been appropriate to have in domestic arrangements some function equivalent to that performed by the European Commission; for example, by requiring the CMA to approve certain of Ofcom’s proposed regulatory measures. I hope that the Minister will be able to make that information available to the House so that we can form a judgment when this regulation comes to the House.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I suspect that all present will be delighted to hear that I do not intend to detain your Lordships for very long. This has been a clash of the Titans, and a lot of material has come out from the noble Lords, Lord Foster and Lord Adonis, and the Minister’s responses. Having read diligently the papers that I had and highlighted the questions which concerned me, I find, alarmingly, that they have all been dealt with. For that reason, and hearing the question about repetition, I shall not go over the ground again.

However, I would make one or two observations, perhaps from a different angle. For example, I note at the beginning of the Explanatory Memorandum the number of Acts of Parliament and other measures that have had to be gone through with a tooth comb to produce 10 pages of minutiae—which in their totality are more than minutiae—affecting legislation in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, says. I would like to know as a point of information how many hours have been spent on teasing out these details in order to produce this one statutory instrument. On page 2, it deals with minor affairs and states that it must not be confused with other statutory instruments which will soon come through. It beggars belief that all this lies ahead. I read The Pilgrim’s Progress when I was a young man. The slough of despond and the swamp of despair are lurking and waiting for us before we will get to the celestial city.

[Lord Adonis]

Dante is more appropriate because he talks about the circles of hell.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

We will have to have a consultation about that in order to find out who forms which view about Dante’s Inferno.

There are two focal points to my remarks. I wanted to ask about the data adequacy agreement but the Minister has answered that. I also wanted to ask: who regulates the regulator? I was very interested indeed to read about Ofcom. While I in no way have the level of expertise of other noble Lords who have spoken, just reading the text—I know how to do that—what hit me between the eyes begged questions: is this regulation or supervision? Are we talking about harmonisation? I have sat in on several debates to try to gauge what is happening in consideration of these statutory instruments and I am beginning to form the view that between where we are now and where we expect to be if all goes according to plan, in several instances there will be a lessening of the oversight and direction that we have currently through our membership of the European Union.

For example, I listened to the debate on nuclear safeguarding yesterday. I was not convinced by either the debate or the material I read that the concerns being expressed would be adequately met. It was a similar case as regards non-native invasive species. Again, I was left with questions which may be answerable: I am not an expert in these fields. However, simply because we are under pressure to agree to these statutory instruments, we must not go on driving them through in such a way that in the end the accumulation of feeling about what we are achieving is that we are making too much haste and should have a bit less speed. I know that there are just 70-something days and the pressures that we are under, but in the end we will have to live with what we decide now.

All of those Acts of Parliament were carefully gone through. I have just one brief observation to make about Ofcom because the others have been made. Most of my consideration was on paragraph 10, but I will not cover that at all. However, in paragraph 7, I find that again and again what Ofcom is required to do while we are a member of the European Union “may” turn into something later. The indicative mood turns into—what? Is it the optative or is it the subjunctive? The word “may” allows itself to be interpreted either way. The optative reflects the mood of wishful thinking while the subjunctive reflects the mood of doubtful assertion. I am truly interested in knowing whether Ofcom’s different field of endeavour and focal points amount to it having the same quality and weight of oversight that it currently enjoys and whether the subjective element which is being introduced by the verbs I have described allow for a different way for it to operate or a different mood to be generated. I do not know, because the words do not allow me to make a deduction and I have certainly not heard this mentioned or dealt with in our discussion thus far.

I said that I would not detain noble Lords for long and I shall not. I am normally an optimistic person and I end my short interventions by saying that I look forward to the next one. However, I sit down on this occasion in a more desultory manner, not sure that I do.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am sorry that the noble Lord is not looking forward to my reply—he would not be the only one. Let me answer some of his points.

He asked how many hours have been put into the production of the SI. I cannot tell him exactly, but we have been working on it for about 18 months to allow for the engagement of stakeholders and other government departments and the appropriate legal checks. The consultation might not be to everyone’s liking in the sense that it was not formal, but it was real and I shall share some more information with the Committee about who turned up. It was real and, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, gave, we may be vindicated in our decision not to include another regulator on top of Ofcom. I think I have covered that.

When the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, talks about whether it is regulation or supervision and a lessening in oversight, the point to bear in mind is that telecoms have always been regulated by national regulators. The EU Commission has a very particular role in this connected with EU matters—namely, the single market. It is obvious that if we are no longer in the EU and the single market, not only will that supervisory function not be performed by the EU because we will not be in it but there will not be a harmonisation problem.

Children and Young People: Digital Technology

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an extraordinary debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and I met on the internet, or at least in a debate on the internet. I had responsibilities thrust upon me that I was quite unprepared for when the Data Protection Bill came to this House. There were three female Members of the House, the noble Baronesses, Lady Harding, Lady Kidron and Lady Lane-Fox. The three graces were truly extraordinary in providing the educational material that I took away, most of which I had been ignorant of before. It is so nice to see sitting beside the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, who once upon a time I interviewed when she arrived in startling fashion on a motorbike and in leather gear. It is good to see her in her place. She has extraordinary expertise and I do not know what kind of neuroscience it takes to produce the results that she has clearly mastered.

Last week, we had a debate about the influence of sport and the arts on the well-being of children, so this issue is clearly in the air. We do ourselves no favours if we simply forget the fragility of the young. I have always felt that poetry can tell us about how children have within them the capacity to flourish but also the readiness to live and die. Dylan Thomas wrote a famous short story about a visit to Swansea beach and he said it all:

“But over all the beautiful beach I remember most the children playing, boys and girls tumbling, moving jewels, who might never be happy again. And ‘happy as a sandboy’ is true as the heat of the sun”.


We must hold on to a picture of the child who is ready to become an adult and inhabit a world that the rest of us would want to warn them about. We must treasure the moment of a child being not quite there yet. I love the spring. I love flowers in bud. I love everything that has potential rather than the actual. It is that potential which I hope we can keep in mind as we talk about these things here today.

Since that meeting on the internet, I have made it my business to become more educated about something I was so ignorant of. My latest incursion into that field is to read this extraordinary book, Democracy Hacked: Political Turmoil and Information Warfare in the Digital Age by Martin Moore. It truly is an eye-opener about not just the potential but the real danger that faces us. Now I am retired, I never buy a book other than on the basis of two good reviews, one of which said:

“The digital age was supposed to be democratic, but under Google, Facebook and Twitter it has become a quest for profit at any cost”.


Let me read just one paragraph from the bit of the book that looks at young people and education:

“Tech CEOs know nothing in particular about education, for another thing”—


he had been talking about the health service—

“but are canny enough to see that it is a huge potential revenue centre, if only they could persuade schools to use their software and computers. Actually, Google is already doing a very good job of that. By mid-2017, the majority of schoolchildren in America were using Google’s education apps, which of course track the activity of every child, creating a store of data that—who knows?—might come in useful when those children grow up to be attractive targets for advertising”.

These are the algorithms to which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, referred.

We have aired well enough the dangers and our fears for the uncritical use of these various modes of imparting information. Various learned bodies have given it their attention too. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, about the report from the Royal College of Paediatrics. It talks about the impact of children who lose parental control, are compulsive in their use of media, indulge in self-harm and suicide, et cetera—a whole list of stuff—but prefaces that list of potential difficulties by admitting that research into and training on the concept of addiction and gaming is needed. We can pick up the remarks about gambling by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and others. I have made the point in previous debates that the research deficit is worrying. We need to have empirical research and to dedicate real resource to accumulating it in a managed way so that we can all use and learn from it.

I must not go on, because we have run on longer than we should have, and I will try to be responsible. I read in the Library briefing that:

“Children see as many as nine junk food adverts during one 30-minute episode of their favourite TV shows, so it’s not surprising this leads them to pester for, buy and eat more unhealthy foods”.


It seems the world of advertising is geared towards getting profit from whatever strata of society it can, including children and young people, and at the expense of their well-being.

I will respond to hints and body language from across the Floor. We attended a meeting earlier this week where the Secretary of State promised a significant piece of legislation that will be all-encompassing, the first in the world and the greatest ever made. We will, of course, measure success as it unfolds. That meeting has put me in a position to be able to inform the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, of the real meaning of “shortly”. But I believe that is a responsibility for the Minister, and I leave that to him now.

Gambling: Children

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I certainly will look at that. We are looking at treatment for all problem gamblers and for children in particular. That is why I am pleased that the NHS long-term plan is committed to expanding dedicated support for those experiencing problems with gambling. As the noble Lord says, GambleAware is setting up a new clinic in Leeds. We will see how that goes, and we are working with the NHS to see if more treatment centres are needed.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a number of questions relating to gambling in recent times. Indeed, there is another Question tomorrow relating to advertising, which is why I would like to ask a question elsewhere in the arena, as it were. I have seen the figure of 450,000 mentioned—it comes in the Gambling Commission report—but a different interpretation is put on it according to where people come from. I have a briefing paper here from Sky Betting & Gaming that puts an entirely different interpretation on the figure and even questions the way in which it is being used by those in favour of clamping down. So my question is—and this has come up in debates again and again—is it not time, in all these consultations and studies that are being done, that we had a serious, focused look at compiling evidence upon which comments can be made? At the moment, there is far too much of a fissiparous nature that allows people to draw whatever conclusions they like. I just wanted to use that word; I am sorry, it just came to me. I wanted to put the Minister on the back foot. Secondly—

[Noble Lords]

Too long!

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

Have I finished?

[Noble Lords]

Yes.