Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord McNally Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords—

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, my name is also on this amendment. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, who has championed these issues for 20 years or more. It is worth while having a reality check for ourselves. One of the good things about the House of Lords is a certain continuity. I was in this House for the Data Protection Act 1998, which we are now reviewing, and for the Communications Act to which the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, referred, and I served on his committee. We had no idea what revolution was coming our way. Indeed, in the Communications Committee, we were asked not to look at the internet; it was for the future. If we think about what has happened in those 20 years, what on earth is going to happen in the next 20, when we are reliably told we are on the verge of a fourth industrial revolution driven by data?

We were quietly asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, not to include this amendment in the previous group in case the whole thing became hijacked by a debate about education, and she was shrewd in that, but it was useful that she pointed out—I love this point—that data literacy should be as important as the three Rs as a core competency for the 21st-century child. If we are going to achieve that, we have to get out of the silo mentality: “It’s not our job, it’s the Information Commissioner’s job”; “It’s the Department for Education’s job”; “It’s DCMS’s job”. Somebody has to take responsibility for what we are saying because it is one of the great challenges.

There is a danger, particularly in a House of this age group, that we overestimate the capacity of the young. We all have our anecdotes about our grandchildren or our children being able to work the gadgets that we cannot work, but that does not mean that they have the competence or the maturity to make proper rational, responsible decisions about some of the factors that come within their ambit with this new technology. My noble friend Lord Storey referred earlier to a story in today’s paper about the increase in sexting among young children. We also know the extent of cyberbullying that goes on between children and about the naivety of children in being willing to reveal personal information online. Navigating the digital world is very complex.

The noble Lord, Lord Lexden, is in his place, and I am always worried about quoting history, but when the reform Act was passed in 1867, somebody said, “We now must educate our masters”, and that brought about the Elementary Education Act 1870. Nobody can now be in any doubt about the enormity of the task of preparing the whole population, but especially our children, to handle the new powers that are coming down the track at us. Educating for digital is one of the most important tasks facing us. I enjoyed and appreciated the way the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, delivered her amendments. She made the point that that education is not to make this generation of children able to fit into the needs of Silicon Valley; it is to give them the power to make sure that Silicon Valley responds to their needs as citizens. That is the task that this amendment is trying to promote.