Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, who did so much during the Online Safety Bill—now Act—to champion the issues that are now before us. She should get full credit for the first steps she made. I think I said it before, and I will say it again in her presence, that we thought we had achieved much of what we are talking about today in the final wind-up of that Bill, but we had to swap it for a slightly bigger prize and it fell down slightly on the list, so I feel very guilty about this and want to help to redress somehow the balance of the deficit that was created.

I do not want to get, in this House, any reputation for being a person who asks geeky questions about Third Reading issues, but the Minister will know that getting access to debates at Third Reading is tricky. It often requires the graven head of the clerk to nod very slowly at an appropriate moment, and I wonder if we could just rehearse that slightly so that we are quite clear exactly what the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, was saying.

Am I right in saying that the intention—and good intentions are great—is that there will be a government amendment at Third Reading? Since it is being produced by the Government, there is not an issue for the clerk to nod at, because that is allowed. If there is a government amendment dealing with all the issues we raised today, then we are all in a good place. It is right that this House, which has done so much to come together to create it, gets the credit for this Bill going down to the Commons. That is appropriate and something that we should get right.

In the absence of the Bill—and I recognise that there are difficulties about drafting, and it may well be that we have a very short time between Report and Third Reading—would it not be appropriate for the Minister to say to the clerk that it is his intention that, if necessary, the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, may bring forward an amendment on these issues so that at least we get, if not all of the package, the parts that are relevant and most important to it in the Bill as it leaves this House? That would be helpful all round, and it would be in accordance with the sentiment of the House.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, I share in the congratulations of my noble friend Lady Owen. It has taken me about 10 years to begin to understand how this House works and it has taken her about 10 minutes.

I want to pursue something which bewilders me about this set of amendments, which is the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Gohir. I do not understand why we are talking about a different Bill in relation to audio fakes. Audio has been with us for many years, yet video deepfakes are relatively new. Why are we talking about a different Bill in relation to audio deepfakes?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, the opening amendment in this group is a government amendment that we are withdrawing, so we are setting up the debate. There could be a similar mechanism at Third Reading. I do not know how it will actually be worked out, but there is an undertaking on behalf of the Government to say how far we have got on the solicitation issue, with a view to moving amendments in the other place.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

Before the Minister sits down, that was exactly the point I was trying to make, and I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for raising it again. It does need the Minister to say to the clerk that it is possible for the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, to bring an amendment, if necessary, at Third Reading. If the Minister could repeat that at the Dispatch Box, I think we would both be happy.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

Yes. If the noble Baroness wants to bring back a similar amendment on this issue, that indeed can be debated at Third Reading.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tarassenko (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on Amendment 58, to which I have also put my name. Given the time, I will speak only about NHS datasets.

There have been three important developments since the Committee stage of this Bill in mid-December: the 43rd annual J P Morgan healthcare conference in San Francisco in mid-January, the launch of the AI Opportunities Action Plan by the Prime Minister on Monday 13 January and the announcement of the Stargate project in the White House the day after President Trump’s inauguration.

Taking these in reverse chronological order, it is not clear exactly how the Stargate project will be funded, but several US big tech companies and SoftBank has pledged tens of billions of dollars. At least $100 billion will be available to build the infrastructure for next-generation AI, and it may even rise to $500 billion in the next four years.

The UK cannot match these sums. The AI Opportunities Action Plan instead lays out how the UK can compete by using its own advantages: a long track record of world-leading AI research in our universities and some unique, hugely valuable datasets.

At the JP Morgan conference in San Francisco, senior NHS management had more than 40 meetings with AI companies. These companies all wanted to know one thing: how and when they could access NHS datasets.

It is not surprising, therefore, that it was reported in November that the national federated data platform would soon be used to train different types of AI models. The two models mentioned were Open AI’s proprietary ChatGPT and Google’s medical AI, Med-Gemini, based on Google’s proprietary large language model, Gemini. Presumably, these models will be fine-tuned using the data stored in the federated data platform.

Amendment 58 is not about restricting access to UK datasets by Open AI, Google or any other US big tech company. Instead, it seeks to maximise their long- term value, driven by strategic goals rather than short-term, opportunistic gains. By classifying valuable public sector datasets as sovereign data assets, we can ensure that the data is made available under controlled conditions, not only to public sector employees and researchers but to industry, including US big tech companies.

We should expect a financial return when industry is given access to a sovereign dataset. A first condition is a business model such that income is generated for the relevant public body, in this case the NHS, from the access fees paid by the companies that will be the authorised licence holders.

A second condition is signposted in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, whose recommendations have all been accepted by the Government. In the third section of the action plan, “Secure our future with homegrown AI”, Matt Clifford, the author of the plan, writes that

“we must be an AI maker, not just an AI taker: we need companies … that will be our UK national champions … Generating national champions will require a more activist approach”.

Part of this activist approach should be to give companies and organisations headquartered in the UK preferential terms of access to our sovereign data assets.

These datasets already exist in the NHS as minimum viable products, so we cannot afford to delay. AI companies are keen to access data in the federated data platform, which is NHS England’s responsibility, or in the secure data environments set up by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, NIHR.

I urge the Government to accept the principles of this amendment as they will provide the framework needed now to support NHS England and NIHR in their negotiations with AI companies.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

I have signed Amendment 58. I also support the other amendment spoken to by the noble Baroness, although I did not get around to signing it. They both speak to the same questions, some of which have been touched on by both previous speakers.

My route into this was perhaps a little less analytic. I used to worry about the comment lots of people used to make, wittily, that data was the new oil, without really thinking about what that meant or what it could mean. It began to settle in my mind that, if indeed data is an asset, why is it not carried on people’s balance sheets? Why does data held by companies or even the Government not feature in some sort of valuation? Just like oil held in a company or privately, it will eventually be used in some way. That releases revenue that would otherwise have to be accounted for and there will be an accounting treatment. But as an accountant I have never seen any company’s assets that ever put a value on data. That is where I came from.

A sovereign data approach, which labels assets of value to the economy held by the country rather than a company, seems to be a way of trying to get into language what is more of an accounting approach than perhaps we need to spend time on in this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has gone through the amendment in a way that explains the process, the protection and the idea that it should be valued regularly and able to account for any returns it makes. We have also heard about the way it features in other publications.

I want to take a slightly different part of the AI Opportunities Action Plan, which talks about data and states:

“We should seek to responsibly unlock both public and private data sets to enable innovation by UK startups and researchers and to attract international talent and capital. As part of this, government needs to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the value of the data it holds, how this value can be responsibly realised, and how to ensure the preservation of public trust across all its work to unlock its data assets”.


These are very wise words.

I end by saying that I was very struck by the figures released recently about the number of people who opted out of the NHS’s data collection. I think there are Members present who may well be guilty of such a process. I of course am happy to have my data used in a way that will provide benefit, but I do recognise the risks if it is not properly documented and if people are not aware of what they are giving up or offering in return for the value that will be extracted from it.

I am sure we all want more research and better research. We want research that will yield results. We also want value and to be sure that the data we have given up, which is held on our behalf by various agencies, is properly managed. These amendments seem to provide a way forward and I recommend them.

[Lord Freyberg (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 58 and 71, which address what I consider to be a fundamental oversight in our nation’s stewardship of public data assets.

While these amendments embrace intentionally broad definitions of sovereign data assets and a national data library, their purpose is precise: to recognise, protect and optimise the public value of these critical national resources for generations to come. The amendments’ dual emphasis on robust consent mechanisms and a transparent licensing framework—one that provides preferential access to UK entities—strikes a careful balance between fostering public trust and safeguarding our national interests.

Central to these amendments is the requirement for the Secretary of State to provide comprehensive reporting on both the current value and projected returns from these assets. This addresses a striking accountability gap in our governance framework. While the National Audit Office maintains rigorous oversight of our physical infrastructure, previous Administrations have failed to adequately account for the taxpayers’ substantial investment in public data infrastructure and intangible or knowledge assets.

Consider this striking disparity: Ernst & Young’s 2019 analysis projected that a curated NHS dataset could generate £5 billion annually for the UK, while delivering £4.6 billion in patient benefits through enhanced infrastructure. Yet we lack robust mechanisms to track whether these substantial benefits materialise or are captured and flow back into our healthcare system. This speaks directly to the Tony Blair Institute’s prescient call last year, endorsed by none other than the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, for the establishment of an NHS data trust or comparable stewardship vehicle.

As we navigate an AI revolution, we must shift our focus from simply managing risks to proactively harnessing opportunities for social impact and economic growth. This raises two fundamental questions. How can we leverage this technological transformation to maximise public benefit, and how will Parliament effectively scrutinise future trade agreements, particularly with nations like the United States, without established evaluation methodologies or transparent licencing systems of our valuable data assets?

The British public, already bearing a significant tax burden to fund public services, deserves assurance that our valuable digital assets will not be transferred today, only to be transformed into expensive treatments tomorrow, benefiting companies that pay tax overseas. Amendments 58 and 71 provide essential safeguards against the inadvertent undervaluation or transfer of these critical national assets. They ensure proper stewardship of our digital resources for the public good, and I therefore support the intentions behind these amendments.