Digital Economy Bill (Second sitting)

Matt Hancock Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Nigel Huddleston]

Q In terms of skills and resources, are you confident you will be able to get the right people in to do the job properly? I am sure that it is quite a disturbing job in some cases.

David Austin: Yes. We already have people who have been viewing pornographic content for a number of years. We may well need to recruit one or two extra people, but we certainly have the expertise and we are pretty confident that we already have the resources. We have time between now and the measures in the Bill coming into force to ensure that we have a fully effective system up and running.

[The Minister for Digital and Culture (Matt Hancock)]

Q I just want to put on the record that we are delighted that the BBFC has signed the heads of agreement to regulate this area. I cannot think of a better organisation with the expertise and the experience to make it work. What proportion of viewed material do you think will be readily covered by the proposed mechanism in the Bill that you will be regulating the decision over but not the enforcement of?

David Austin: I am not sure that I understand the question.

[Matt Hancock]

Q I am thinking about the scale of the problem—the number of views by under-18s of material that you deem to be pornographic. What proportion of the problem do you think the Bill, with your work, will fix?

David Austin: So we are talking about the amount of pornography that is online?

[Matt Hancock]

Q And what is accessed.

David Austin: Okay. As you all know, there is masses of pornography online. There are 1.5 million new pornographic URLs coming on stream every year. However, the way in which people access pornography in this country is quite limited. Some 70% of users go to the 50 most popular websites. With children, that percentage is even greater; the data evidence suggests that they focus on a relatively small number of sites.

We would devise a proportionality test and work out what the targets are in order to achieve the greatest possible level of child protection. We would focus on the most popular websites and apps accessed by children—those data do exist. We would have the greatest possible impact by going after those big ones to start with and then moving down the list.

[Matt Hancock]

Q So you would be confident of being able to deal with the vast majority of the problem.

David Austin: Yes. We would be confident in dealing with the sites and apps that most people access. Have I answered the question?

[Matt Hancock]

Q Yes. Given that there is a big problem that is hard to tackle and complicated, I was just trying to get a feel for how much of the problem you think, with your expertise and the Bill, we can fix.

David Austin: We can fix a great deal of the problem. We cannot fix everything. The Bill is not a panacea but it can achieve a great deal, and we believe we can achieve a great deal working as the regulator for stages 1 to 3.

[Louise Haigh]

Q My question follows on neatly from that. While I am sure that the regulation will tackle those top 50 sites, it obviously comes nowhere near tackling the problems that Mr Wardle outlined, and the crimes, such as grooming, that can flow from those problems. There was a lot of discussion on Second Reading about peer-to-peer and social media sites that you have called “ancillary”. No regulation in the world is going to stop that. Surely, the most important way to tackle that is compulsory sex education at school.

Alan Wardle: Yes. In terms of online safety, a whole range of things are needed and a whole lot of players. This will help the problem. We would agree and want to work with BBFC about a proportionality test and identifying where the biggest risks are to children, and for that to be developing. That is not the only solution.

Yes, we believe that statutory personal, social and health education and sexual relationships education is an important part of that. Giving parents the skills and understanding of how to keep their children safe is also really important. But there is a role for industry. Any time I have a conversation with an MP or parliamentarian about this and they have a child in their lives—whether their own, or nieces or nephews—we quickly come to the point that it is a bit of a nightmare. They say, “We try our best to keep our children safe but there is so much, we don’t know who they are speaking to” and all the rest of it.

How do we ensure that when children are online they are as safe as they are when offline? Of course, things happen in the real world as well and no solution is going to be perfect. Just as, in terms of content, we would not let a seven-year-old walk into the multiplex and say, “Here is ‘Finding Nemo’ over here and here is hard core porn—off you go.”

We need to build those protections in online so we know what children are seeing and to whom they speaking and also skilling up children themselves through school and helping parents. But we believe the industry has an important part to play in Government, in terms of regulating and ensuring that spaces where children are online are as safe as they can be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Calum Kerr]

Q So that is a, “Yes, if possible, please.” It is okay; do not answer that. You have already answered. My final quick question is this. Although this is not retrospective, is there any case for excluding existing sites, if this is really about building out more network, in terms of the valuation element, given that a lot of those sites are actually on publicly owned land?

Scott Coates: There is certainly a difference in the substance of a transaction when you are approaching a farmer, a sports club, a university or whatever and asking for access to build a new piece of infrastructure where there is new coverage, and you are having that negotiation in the context of a new communications code that has tighter reference points on pricing. You will have more leverage for that conversation. You will still end up, I believe, paying them a rate way in excess of what zero value would be because that is just how you have those conversations, but it will be less than what is paid today, that is for sure, because you have got this new reference point. The substance of that is very different from the substance of a voluntary agreement you entered into with a firm six or seven years ago and that comes up for renewal in two to three years and the infrastructure is already there.

I think it is important that we have a robust set of tools as an industry but, as I mentioned earlier, it is equally if not more important that the industry acts responsibly and avoids behaviour such as forcing situations where they need a new compulsory purchase tool, even though they have already got access today. There is definitely a way of engaging on existing sites that should be a bit different from new sites, as part of a package of trying to maintain the voluntary support of the land and property sector for our industry.

[Matt Hancock]

Q Could you set out in more detail—you have already gone into this a bit—about what you mean when you say that the code should include land owned by the infrastructure providers but not the apparatus, and the distinction there in the written evidence?

Scott Coates: It comes back to this. Under UK property law, anything that affixes to land could be considered land. At the moment, the code effectively is to regulate land coming into the telecom sector, not to regulate the relationships between telecoms companies. It carves out from land the apparatus.

I am advised that there is a risk of ambiguity. That is probably the best way I could describe it. It may be challenged down the line. This is an evolving and dynamic industry where we don’t exactly know the physical things we are going to be deploying in future. There is a risk that some of the things we do might receive a challenge that it is land not apparatus. I do not know.

Is a new runway at Heathrow infrastructure or land because it sits on top of land? Is the national grid transmission network an infrastructure asset or land because it sits on land? It is a fairly technical point. Like all these things, once the lawyers are running around looking at them, they will find concerns.

All we are saying is that we invest over 20 to 30-year horizons. The more clarity that can be provided is helpful. We acknowledge and clearly appreciate the intent behind Government policy to protect investment and passive infrastructure but more clarity around that will only help the investability of what we do.

[Matt Hancock]

Q Thanks. I am also grateful for what you said about the team at DCMS, who will have picked up on your kind words I am sure. I wanted to follow up on 5G. You talked earlier about the 5G roll-out. This is a bigger-picture question. What do think the Government need to be doing now to ensure that we are in the lead when it comes to the roll-out of 5G?

Scott Coates: People must be exhausted with hearing about the challenges with Openreach and what can be done there. The key thing is to help facilitate our competitive market for infrastructure. So 5G has the ability to be driven by the mobile operators, by the fibre players, by independent infrastructure companies. If you look at the US, half the small cells that power 4G and 5G are actually going in by independent infrastructure players; mobile operators as well as fibre players are in there, too.

It comes down to helping to facilitate as competitive a market as possible. We have started deploying infrastructure in at least one city in the UK: 4G initially, but it will lead to 5G. We would love to be able to get a competitive basis of access, or any access, to BT ducts. We cannot do that, despite the fact that they can access every single piece of our infrastructure.

That is one thing. The other thing is around the planning permissions for affixing equipment to lampposts. We are working in Aberdeen and I have to say that we have had a fantastically positive experience with the local council, which has been amazing and very supportive in everything we have been trying to do there. That experience is not shared across other councils in the UK.

[Matt Hancock]

Q Thanks very much. Dr Whitely, would you say that, done right and should the codes come out right, the clauses in the Bill have the potential to improve public services through better use of data?

Dr Whitley: Absolutely. You could have a side question about whether, for example, focusing on subsidies from energy providers is the best way to deal with fuel poverty, but in terms of that specific focus—if it is done right—then, absolutely. Our concern is that we just do not have the detail as to whether or not it is going to be done right. That has been the frustration over the last three years.

[Drew Hendry]

Q I want to talk about the spectrum licensing issue. We spent a lot of time in earlier sessions talking about the minimum average speed, particularly for SMEs, as being 10 megabits per second and whether or not that was ambitious for the future.

You talked about the outside-in licensing regime that could be possible—and is possible in other countries since it is being deployed, particularly for new tech and for the 700Mhz and the 5G licensing that will come. If that approach is adopted by the UK Government in terms of licensing, is it your belief that it would make that inequality almost go away and that it would deliver much greater equality across the pace of speeds for people to access business and other methods that they need?

Scott Coates: If a policy objective is to ensure that rural areas get a high quality mobile signal, then forcing the industry to invest in rural areas—and effectively funding that by allowing them to pay less money for the licences that they acquire—is the most efficient way to deliver that. It would have positive outcomes, for sure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Huddleston]

Q I am not sure whether we got a clear answer there. The Commons Library published a briefing, which includes statistics from an Ipsos MORI survey that you have probably seen before. The things that get public support are things such as:

“Creating a DNA database of cancer patients…Using data from electronic travel cards…to improve the scheduling of buses or trains…Using police and crime data to predict and plan for crimes that might take place in future”.

There is a clear public upside for some of the most vulnerable and hurt people in society; are we ever going to reach a point where you are satisfied with the use of data?

Renate Samson: You took evidence this morning from two witnesses whom you asked a very similar question, and I support the answers that they gave. People are happy to share data if they understand why and are asked. I believe that the answer you were given earlier referred to the individual. If you ask me whether I am happy to share my data to cure cancer, I go away and I make the decision about whether or not I am happy to do that. As you have pointed out, the majority of people are probably going to say, “Yes, of course.” Big Brother Watch has no desire to restrict that. We are asking for information that we feel is lacking from part 5 of the Bill. We are asking for information for the individual so that they can give their consent based on proper guidance. That is going to be a key part of data protection law going forward.

This is about the way the questions are being asked. Similar questions have been asked throughout the day. We are not trying to say no. We have never said no. We are just trying to say, “Please present us with as much information as possible, so that we can see how.”

Jim Killock: It is really in the interests of Government to get this right, because in the long term it is a matter of trust. We know that accidents happen. If at least the safeguards are in place and as many accidents are avoided as possible, and if people are not left embarrassed at either data leaks or programmes that turn out to be intrusive or prejudicial against people, then you have won. That really was the purpose of the open policy process: to ensure that the risks were understood so that the Government could legislate on the basis of dealing with the complex risks rather than heading straight into a situation where they got a huge backlash and/or stored up problems for the future.

Renate Samson: May I add something quickly? The first line of Big Brother Watch’s submission says that we support data sharing across Government. I want to be very clear on that.

My second point is about individuals doing well out of this. The Bill, well, the factsheets accompanying the Bill, refer to wellbeing. I direct you all to the Supreme Court’s review of the named persons scheme in Scotland, where it was deemed that wellbeing was not a high enough bar—it did not meet the bar of “vital”, which the Data Protection Act requires. We want to do this properly so that people can benefit, but let us ensure that it is proper—that is not perfect, but the best it can possibly be.

[Matt Hancock]

Q A couple of questions. Would you be happy to share your blood type data to help cure cancer?

Renate Samson: I do not even know what my blood type is. To answer your question, I don’t know. I would have to give it serious consideration, just as I would seriously consider whether I would be prepared to donate organs after I die. It is not something to which I can give you a snap answer.

[Matt Hancock]

Q Okay. You referred to the open policy-making process, which was a big process with lots of people involved, and the large majority are content with that process. Have you read all the individual responses to the consultation?

Renate Samson: No, because I do not know where they are published. I looked for them but I could not find them.

[Matt Hancock]

Q They are on the internet, so you are very welcome to have a look at them.

Renate Samson: My understanding is that I would have to go into every single organisation’s website separately to look at them. They are not collated on the consultation’s website itself.

[Matt Hancock]

Q No, they are all published online.

Renate Samson: On the consultation’s website itself?

[Matt Hancock]

Q They are all published online. In an earlier exchange, you talked about the broad purposes of the Bill and the problem with parliamentary scrutiny of those purposes. I would just like to understand a bit more about what you meant.

Renate Samson: Sorry. Could you repeat that?

[Matt Hancock]

Q In an earlier exchange with Louise, you talked about the broad purposes of the Bill and how they are defined. You said that those purposes are very broad, and I think you said something like, “and therefore it can mean whatever the Government wants it to mean”. I do not understand that, because any sharing of data must be for purposes very specifically set out, for instance supporting troubled families and supporting families in fuel poverty. I think it would be very hard to be against those goals.

Renate Samson: Forgive me, I do not recall that being quite as you have said; I know that Dr Whitley said something very similar to what you just said. Our concern is that I cannot give an answer, because I do not feel as though the Bill has defined clearly what data sharing is or what are personal data. I cannot give an answer without being able to understand what the Government intend to do with regards to data sharing. Troubled families and the retuning of televisions are not included in the Bill, they are referred to in the factsheet accompanying the Bill.

[Matt Hancock]

Q They are referred to in secondary legislation, which will be scrutinised by Parliament.

Renate Samson: I feel—I can only say how I and Big Brother Watch feel—that having looked through the Bill in great detail, we have more questions than answers. If the codes of practice had been published, it might not have been necessary for me to be sitting here, because I would probably know exactly what is the intention. However, based on what has been published so far, I do not feel that it is clear.

Jim Killock: Future secondary legislation is quite a weak way of Parliament safeguarding a process like this, because essentially you then need to ensure that civil society, Parliament and everyone make sure that all the relevant safeguards are included in each statutory instrument.

[Matt Hancock]

Q No, the safeguards are in the Bill. It is the purposes that are in the statutory instruments. It is interesting—

Jim Killock: I do not think that the safeguards are in the Bill.

Renate Samson: Could you explain where they are and what they look like? I cannot see them other than the reference to the misuse of data, and we absolutely support the proposal that those guilty of that could be subject to a prison sentence.

[Matt Hancock]

Q Okay. I want to refer to another point that I did not understand. You said that the problem with the Bill was that it referred to RIPA and the Data Protection Act 1998.

Renate Samson: Because that is current legislation.

[Matt Hancock]

Q But what exactly would you propose?

Renate Samson: My concern, and this is not a telling off, is that a large chunk of RIPA will no longer be applicable by the end of year when the Investigatory Powers Bill comes in, and the Data Protection Act is about to be replaced with the general data protection regulations. Of course it cannot say that on the face of the Bill and none of the supporting documentation even refers to those two pieces of legislation.

[Matt Hancock]

Q It just seems a totally odd point, because the Investigatory Powers Bill is not yet law and, as you can see from the screen, it is being debated in the Lords today. GDPR is not in domestic law yet.

Renate Samson: We were trying to be “assistive”—if that is a word—in that there are elements of the Bill about which not just Big Brother Watch but other individuals and organisations are concerned that if it passes, when the general data protection regulations come in, it will not adhere to that law. It was merely a note of what is coming down the line so we have legislation that has longevity.

[Matt Hancock]

Q I do not think it is possible to legislate on the basis of other legislation that has not yet passed.

Jim Killock: GDPR is passed; it is just not implemented.

[The Chair]

Thank you to our two witnesses. Thanks very much indeed for your evidence. We release you.

Examination of Witnesses

Sarah Gold, Chris Taggart and Paul Nowak gave evidence.

[The Chair]

Q We will now hear oral evidence from Projects by IF, OpenCorporates and the TUC. We have three witnesses, so, colleagues, could we have more concise questions and I am sure concise and expert answers? Could the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?

Chris Taggart: My name is Chris Taggart. I am the CEO and co-founder of OpenCorporates, which is the largest open database of companies in the world.

Paul Nowak: My name is Paul Nowak I am the deputy general secretary of the TUC. We represent 52 affiliated unions who in turn represent about 5.7 million workers.

Sarah Gold: I am Sarah Gold, director and founder of Projects by IF: a design studio that helps companies understand privacy and security by making products and services that empower people.

[Matt Hancock]

Thank you very much for coming. I want to put on the record something relating to what happened at the end of the last session. For anyone who is interested and has not yet had the chance to find the responses to the consultation on data sharing, they are available on gov.uk/government/consultations/better-use-of-data-in-government. All the responses to the consultation are there.

[The Chair]

We are better informed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Haigh]

Q As you say, Mr Shah, for Government data sharing to work requires public trust, and digital government and the use of your statistics absolutely requires trust that the Government will handle data with due purpose and cause.

Hetan Shah: Another thing is that the UK Statistics Authority is directly accountable to Parliament, not the Government. That actually makes the statistics and research strand more accountable compared with other parts of the Bill. I remind you of that, which is very important.

[Matt Hancock]

Q I would be interested if you could explain and put on the record some of the consequences you see of having this Bill and the underlying secondary legislation on the statute book. What impact will that have on the areas in which you are experts?

Professor Sir Charles Bean: The key thing is that it greatly improves the gateways that enable the Office for National Statistics to use administrative data—tax data and the like—in the construction of official economic statistics. We are well off the pace compared with many other countries. Scandinavian countries, Canada, the Irish and the Dutch make very heavy reliance on administrative data and only use surveys to fill in the gaps. Here, the Office for National Statistics is essentially an organisation that turns the handle, sending out 1.5 million paper forms a year and processing those. Essentially, you are acquiring the same information again that you have already got in some other part of the public sector, where the information is being collected for other purposes.

The key gains here I see as twofold. First, because you access something close to the universe of the sample population rather than just a subset, which would normally be the case with a survey, you potentially get more accurate information. It is potentially also more timely, which for economic policy purposes is important.

The other side of the coin is that by enabling you to cut back on the number of surveys you do, there is a cost gain, which I should say would probably not mainly be a gain to the ONS, because they have to do the processing of the administrative data, but a gain to the businesses and households who are currently spending time filling in forms that they would not need to do if more use was made of administrative data.

[Matt Hancock]

Q Mr Shah, what do you see as the impact of the data sharing clauses?

Hetan Shah: I completely agree with Charlie Bean that we are really in danger of being left behind compared with where other countries are on this agenda. The European statistics peer review, which happened last year, said that this was the key weakness in our statistical system. If you look at bodies like New Zealand, Finland and Canada, they all have this ability to access, so we have got to have it. We are spending £500 million on the census and you have got a lot of that data that you could be using through administrative data.

Similarly, on inflation, which is a critical economic indicator, at the moment we send out people with clipboards to take price points of 100,000 items in 140 locations around the country every month, but there is scanner data that tells you the price that people paid. This could really revolutionise. It is not statistics for statistics’ sake; it is to answer the questions that parliamentarians and policy makers have on issues about social mobility and productivity. For all these questions you are asking yourselves, we need the data. And if we are criticising the ONS about not being quick enough, we need to give them the powers to be quicker.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chris Skidmore)]

Q In terms of the provisions in the Bill on sharing data for research purposes, could you shed a bit more light on how that will benefit the wider research community? I was also wondering what the immediate priorities will need to be for the UK Statistics Authority as the accrediting body for the infrastructure provided by the research powers in the Bill.

Hetan Shah: The Bill creates a permissive power and it really streamlines what at the moment is quite a complex legal environment for researchers accessing Government data. This makes it much clearer that if a researcher meets a set of conditions—the research is in the public interest, the researcher is accredited and it will use the research in a safe haven, as it were, and so on—they are able to access that Government data.

We gave some case studies in our evidence of research that is obvious, such as what affects winter mortality and understanding the productivity gap. Those are questions that researchers want to investigate, but they cannot get hold of the data from Government Departments. To be fair to the Government, there is concern from their side about handing over data when the legal framework is not clear enough. I think this process will really streamline that.

One caveat is that it is slightly odd that health data are out of scope. Most of the biggest concerns that researchers have are in trying to build the relationship between survey data and, often, the health outcomes in certain areas. I understand the reasoning behind this: because of care.data there were some concerns. Health is very important. Our view is that the Bill should build in the scope for health data and then allow for future legislation to say how that will be dealt with, in particular once Fiona Caldicott, the national data guardian, has consulted on her framework, which is happening right now.

Professor Sir Charles Bean: I would endorse a lot of that. I should say that in Canada, where I spent some time talking to Statistics Canada in the course of doing my review, they have exactly this model. There are clearly defined criteria under which researchers can get access, with a sort of prescribed laboratory where they can use it. I think there is something like 30 requests a year to use information, so it is quite heavily used.

Certainly when I was talking to people here during the statistics review, the issue was raised during the consultation process by people such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who wanted access to the microdata to be able to study the impact of tax structure on decisions and so forth. The difficulty of getting that microdata inhibited good research. I am sure the demand is there.