Digital Economy Bill (Third sitting)

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 13th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Skidmore]

Q That leads nicely on to my second question, which is about the debt-collection power and sharing data. You stated in evidence that it

“will create improved opportunities for better treatment of people in vulnerable situations”.

Can we get some examples of how you think that will work?

Peter Tutton: Alistair said that CAB clients tend to have five debts if they come in for debt advice, and it is about the same for us. Certainly, we see people with multiple contacts and creditors. I was looking today at a client who said they get 25 calls a day about debt collection. That is an extreme case, but that sense of constant demands that you do not know what do with is common. The importance of that is that it builds stress.

About half the people we see say they have been treated by a GP or a hospital for debt-related health problems. If we can reduce that stress and simplify the approach so people get less contact from creditors, that will help. It is helpful for us as advisers if, rather than having to deal with different bits of Government, we can deal with one. It saves us money, and we can recycle that money to help more people.

Again, it all depends. If it is one big collection stick, rather than three little collection sticks, it is not going to make things better. If you make it one contact, that contact must be based on some good principles and practices. That is what will make the difference.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Q I want to move us on to talk about nuisance calls and the direct marketing code in clause 77. First, do you think the proposals go far enough? Do you think that the nuisance calls section should be strengthened? Is there a justification for having an aggravated offence for targeting elderly and/or vulnerable people? Any thoughts on any of those from any of the three of you?

Peter Tutton: That is an interesting point about targeting people who are vulnerable; it is something to explore. We are quite keen on more action on nuisance calls. We would like to see a kind of code of practice; it would be a start. At the moment, the Information Commissioner’s Office guidance is not followed. When people give their details to a trader on the internet, and they say you want a loan or they are interested in a loan, that goes out into the ether and it is traded like currency. A third of our clients tell us that they are receiving an average of 10 nuisance calls for credit and other services a week—they are bombarded all the time. These are financially vulnerable people and they are being targeted, as you say.

As for the aggravating offence, this could be strengthened; the code of practice needs to address how that happens. There are a bunch of things you could do on nuisance calls. Some of the worst things are financial services—high-cost credit and things like that—where the Financial Conduct Authority could do something. It could just ban what it calls unsolicited real-time financial promotions.

So, yes, we think anything to look at that and strengthen that up is good. Make sure that if you put your details in as a consumer, you should know where they are going, so you cannot be contacted by anyone; there should be some boundaries to that. And there is the idea of some stronger controls on how and when direct marketing can be used. Currently, you sort of have to opt into not being called; maybe it should be an opt-out. There are some things we could do to strengthen the regime up.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Dr Fishenden, have you got anything to add to that?

Dr Fishenden: I guess on the specific point it would be my concern that, without understanding what all the data sharing is—we have just heard that people get their data farmed and used, and then abused, and they get lots of spam calls; if we do not really understand how the data will be secured, and the public sector starts sharing it more widely, that very same information about a vulnerable household or a household in fuel poverty is gold dust to the payday loan companies and others, which would be very keen to access that same data.

My concern is the lack of the detail that would enable us to understand how we get the upside of enabling people in fuel poverty or whatever to get the help they can from the energy companies, without that same data —depending on what “data sharing” means—potentially fuelling all these other parties that are highly undesirable to intrude into those same people’s lives.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Thank you. Anything else from Mr Chisholm?

Alistair Chisholm: I think I may have to ask some colleagues to help me with the aggravated offence question; I cannot answer that, because I do not know. One thing that I would say is that increasingly we have been working with the commercial sector around scams awareness. We run a scams awareness week with trading standards and lots of firms every week, and it would be great to have public sector debt collectors getting involved in that work, educating people. Also, that helps the people on the frontline, who are collecting those debts for Government, to understand the kind of problems that people are facing. There are kind of soft initiatives and it would be nice to see the Government participating more in that area.

[The Chair]

Thank you. We have got seven minutes and three colleagues to go. Claire Perry.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

Q On nuisance calls, which is an issue that has been running for a long, long time, over many years there have been increases in fines and various other measures. How much of a real difference do you think the Bill will make? Could it go further in trying to tackle the issue?

Lindsey Fussell: As you say, that is an incredibly difficult issue and one that is evolving over time. In contrast to five years ago, we notice now that the complaints about nuisance calls—as you may know, Ofcom deals particularly with silent and abandoned calls—are increasingly less about large firms and more about much smaller companies. We frequently see numbers that are spoofed or unreliable. It is a different kind of problem that we are now tackling.

The powers in the Bill relate specifically to direct marketing calls, which are within the remit of the Information Commissioner’s Office. We very much welcome the measure to put its guidance on to a statutory footing and to make it easier to enforce against companies that do not comply.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Q I want to turn to the BBC. How do you think we can ensure that the BBC’s distinctiveness and public service commitments are upheld in this new role?

Tony Close: That is a great question, and a tough one to start with. The first thing to make clear is that it is very much for the BBC and its new unitary board to set out its strategy in the first instance and explain to all of us how it is going to ensure that the BBC’s output is distinctive, creative and engaging. Ofcom clearly has a role holding the BBC to account. What we are not going to do is try to micromanage the BBC. We do not want to be making decisions about individual programmes, such as whether “Eastenders” is or is not distinctive, but of course we have a role looking at the output of the BBC as a whole to make sure it is fulfilling all its public service duties. I am not going to pretend that we have the answer right now. We are doing an enormous amount of preparatory work to be ready for 3 April in order to ensure that we will be able to hold the BBC to account for the distinctiveness of its output as a whole.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Q Could you say a bit more about what safeguards are in place for that public service duty and role?

Tony Close: Currently the BBC is still regulated by the BBC Trust. There is a job for us to ensure that there is a framework in place by 3 April or shortly after, to ensure that the BBC is held properly to account. That has many component parts. I suspect that it has a set of metrics. There is an element where you would be looking for consumer feedback on how the BBC is delivering to consumers in their view—whether it is genuinely distinctive or considered to be distinctive by members of the public and whether the audience themselves believe that the BBC is delivering on its obligations and its public purposes.

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

Q We have had some debate, which you may or may not have followed, on the electronic communication code, and about whether the changes in the Bill, which are designed to reduce the cost of rolling out mobile infrastructure, should go further and mirror the rules around the water industry. I would be interested in your reflections on what the consequences would be, should we make that change.

Lindsey Fussell: Ofcom very much supports the Bill’s provisions on the electronic communications code, because we believe that they will assist with the faster roll-out of mobile infrastructure and its maintenance. We do not have particular expertise to offer on the precise provisions in the Bill, particularly on land valuation. What we are doing is working collaboratively with a very broad range of stakeholders to draw up a code of practice on the way that negotiations should work going forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rishi Sunak]

Q We hear a lot about how technology can benefit people and that the Government need to harness technology to do just that. Indeed, some data sharing is already going on in the delivery of Government services. Can you describe how the measures in the Bill will provide greater legal certainty and clarity in that area because we want to make sure we are doing things in the right way? Your thoughts in that regard would be helpful.

Elizabeth Denham: This Bill is an enabler. It facilitates data sharing for the improvement of Government services. I think the public welcome that and they expect seamless Government services in some cases. The idea that all data must stay in ivory towers or silos does not make sense when building digital delivery services. That said, we all know that trust and transparency are critical to maintaining the public’s trust in data sharing.

The transparency that needs to be clear in the Bill is on two levels. First, at the point of data collection and in ways that are easy for citizens to access, they should understand the purpose of and how their data will be shared, and they should have the ability to challenge that.

Secondly, there needs to be another layer of safeguards and transparency scattered throughout some of the draft codes of practice, but not in the Bill. That is the transparency that comes from privacy impact assessments, from reviews by our office, and from Parliament looking at revised codes of practice. It is really important that we pay attention to both those levels. Civil society is going to pay attention to published privacy impact assessments; but right now there is no consistency across all the codes of practice for those kinds of safeguards. I believe that some improvements are needed to the Bill.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Q I wanted to just go back to age verification, if you do not mind, Mr Wood. You made a good deal in your evidence and in your response to my colleague’s earlier question about the concerns that you have—and I get those. Can you push this a bit further and say what you would think was an adequate system of evidence providing for age verification? What would work?

Steve Wood: I will qualify the answer by saying we come at it from a data protection perspective, so our interest is making sure that the personal data of those individuals who would be going through that process is protected, rather than the wider policy issues relating to verification of access to that content; our the key concern is to make sure that the verification system does not lead to disclosure of information if it is not necessary. As tools like federated identity management have developed, it is often possible to use another service—another third party service—to verify the identity of the individual, which could be done using a variety of third party services that are out there. That means that the site owner that provides that pornography service would not need to collect and see all the details about the individual’s age and so on, but that that is provided by a secure, accredited third party service.

The Government’s Verify service has taken some good steps in looking at these different solutions about how identity management can now be developed using these third party services; so it is that sort of approach that we are looking to, rather than a very open-ended approach, as I said earlier, allowing a wide range of information. As to the level and standard of identity, I think that is a different question, but we are really focused on making sure the personal data collected is the bare minimum to make that requirement work.