Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords]

Tonia Antoniazzi Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 12th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I am grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate, which I have really enjoyed listening to. I particularly enjoyed the contribution of the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume), who talked about writers and stories. Her discussion reminded me of the book I am reading with my son, Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton’s “The 39-Storey Treehouse”, where they have just built a book making machine and have gone off to enjoy themselves while the book is written. I do not quite know how the story will end yet. That reminds us of the balance between the benefits that innovations such as AI can bring and the challenge, as the hon. Member said, of ensuring that people are fairly remunerated for their efforts, whether they be on building the machines or writing the stories.

I will direct my remarks to two particular areas of the Bill. First, clause 141 deals with what it refers to as “purported intimate” images, otherwise referred to as deepfake pornography images. There are images of all hon. Members and a majority of our constituents online, fully clothed—at least, I hope so—but individuals can take those innocent images of us or our constituents and use computer software to insert them into another image, generating images that appear to show an individual in an intimate state, undressed or engaging in sexual activity. Why do they do that? For their own sexual gratification, to share with others—perhaps for money—or to humiliate, threaten or control the individual in the image or their loved ones. That has a devastating effect on people’s lives. No hon. Members will be surprised to hear that 99% of victims of that evil crime are women.

It is important to recognise the work of Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge. She introduced a private Member’s Bill in this area last December. It was unfortunate that the Government chose not to support her legislation at that time, but I am grateful that they have drafted this clause of the Bill, which has the same effect. It was Baroness Owen’s tenacity and explanations that persuaded the Government to ensure that the threshold is consent, rather than the victim needing to prove intent, in the use of images. She persuaded them to increase the penalty to include imprisonment, reflecting the severity of the crime. She also persuaded them of the need to amend the Sentencing Act 2020 to end the somewhat farcical situation in which an individual will be prosecuted for creating an image and, at the end of the court case, have that same image handed back to them as part of their property.

The Government gave the Baroness one further undertaking. Sometimes, images are not discovered immediately after they are taken; or, if a group of images is found on someone’s computer, it may take a while to identify the victim. In such cases, a six-month timeout loophole can cause individuals to get away with these hideous crimes. The Government undertook to amend section 127 of the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980, which limits jurisdiction to within six months of a crime, to ensure that people caught for a crime after six months has elapsed or whose prosecution takes place after six months have elapsed can still be held to justice and account. I ask the Minister to explain why I cannot find that in the Bill—it may be there and I just cannot find it. If he could clarify that point, I would be grateful.

The other point I want to raise is accuracy. We have talked a lot about data, but data is useful only if it is accurate. We will all have heard the story of baby Lilah, a beautiful baby girl born in Sutton-in-Ashfield who was registered as male by accident. It is not very easy to have side notes in digital data. How do we ensure that data is accurate? Three clauses in the Bill may help us with that. Clause 45(6) says that information must be accurate, clause 28(3) and (4) suggest that the Secretary of State must check listed organisations for data reliability, and clause 140 requires the Secretary of State to produce a data dictionary to ensure that we know the definitions of all the data points.

The Secretary State spoke about the huge opportunity that data offers the NHS. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am a consultant paediatrician. Others have talked about the huge opportunities that AI and data use and research can present to the NHS, but there is also a risk. How does the Minister intend to define sex? The Labour Cabinet and the Prime Minister have repeatedly struggled to define what is a woman. Leaving that to secondary legislation, considered in a small Committee, is not sufficient scrutiny for such an important matter.

Earlier in the debate, the Secretary of State referred to the powers that the Bill gives the Secretary of State under secondary legislation and why things are not included in the Bill itself. This issue should be given more scrutiny than that of an SI Committee. It is important to protect women: women’s sport, women’s privacy and women’s single-sex spaces. It is important for intimate care. Many people want to receive intimate care, particularly domiciliary care, by somebody of the same sex. How will they know if the data is not available?

Data is also important to protect those with a trans identity. Many blood reference ranges are different for males and females. Haemoglobin varies from laboratory to laboratory, but is roughly 13 to 18 in males and 11.5 to 16.5 in females. If data is not complete or accurate, some individuals may receive unnecessary investigation. Data for screening and other health messages is important. We do not want male people called for cervical screening or men not to receive prostate information.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making some excellent points on sex and gender and the collection of data—she knows that I share her views on that. It is incumbent on the Minister and the Secretary of State to ensure that data is collected according to sex. However, does she agree that the previous Government put us in the situation that we are in?

[Dr Johnson]

It is certainly true that across the western world at the moment, there seems to be some confusion on some of the basics of biology and humanity.

Data is important for protecting children, too. One data provider listed in clause 28 is the Disclosure and Barring Service. GB News reported that there were 12,000 prosecutions between January 2019 and June 2022 of people on the sex offenders register who did not inform police of data changes. It is crucial that data is accurate and up to date, so will the Secretary of State commit to the integrity of biological sex data in the Bill and in the Government’s datasets?

Last September, the UK Health Security Agency released data on sexually transmitted infections by sex and sexual orientation, which is important because of the different epidemiological nature of infections in the different populations. However, the footnotes said that men were defined in the data as cisgender and transgender men, and women as cisgender and transgender women. That somewhat undermines the data integrity and the purpose of splitting the data in the first place. Data that is wrong, unhelpful, misleading or misused by malicious actors can be dangerous. Many are concerned. How does the Minister plan to define sex, and what are his plans for incongruous data?

In the debate in the upper House, it was reported that 3,000 people have changed their sex data in their passport, and 15,000 have changed it with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency on their driving licence. It was said in the House of Lords debate that up to 100,000 people may have incongruous official datasets between items such as passports and driving licences. How does the Minister intend to resolve that if we are to have one large dataset for each person?

Finally, clause 45(8) sets out that a person may need to pay fees in respect of disclosure. Will we expect people to pay for their own data, and, if so, how much? I know Labour is very keen on increasing taxes, but can the Minister guarantee that the cost will never outweigh the admin cost of producing the data?

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[Chris Bryant]

Hurrah. Incidentally, the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) referred to John Edwards, who, in my experience, is a very capable leader of the team there. I am sure my hon. Friend and her Select Committee will have him in for evidence soon.

A couple of Members referred to data adequacy, including the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins). That is obviously important to us. As the right hon. Member for Maldon said, the Secretary of State has been working keenly with the European Commission. Unfortunately, the previous Government ended up with a data adequacy agreement with the EU that expires later on this year. That means that our time is tight to make sure we maintain that. That is absolutely vital to our economic success as a country and, for that matter, for the rest of the EU. I know that everybody wants to get there. It is not for us to tell the EU what processes it should go through, but we have had very constructive conversations so far. They will not want to comment on a Bill that is still in flight, so the sooner we can get it on to the statute books the better.

My hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Anneliese Midgley) referred to music remuneration. For me, the issue of remuneration of musicians is not just about the AI copyright debate; there are many other issues. I do not think we have finished with the issue of streaming, incidentally. I had a successful meeting with the record labels, lots of musicians and the Musicians’ Union on Monday afternoon. I have given them a clear timetable for coming back with a better offer to make sure that musicians are properly remunerated.

A quite famous tenor, who I will not name, texted me yesterday to say:

“Musicians all feel that they have been sooooooo ripped off by streaming.”

That is “so” with seven o’s—I do not know what Hansard will do with that.

“I used to get two or three concert fees as advance royalty for a CD. Now, it is effectively zero. It is theft, really.”

Those remarks have been repeated in a different context today. We are working on that, and I am determined that we will have a proper look at how we properly remunerate our musicians in this country, even if it is only to make sure that the shadow Minister, who declares that live music is one of the most important things in his life, has people to go and listen to.

The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), who has just come back into the Chamber, made a very good speech about digital government. All the points that he made are ones that we are determined to take up. Several Members referred to Estonia—Tallinn, incidentally, is one of the best cities in Europe to visit—but we also need to make sure that there is a digital inclusion element to that. If 19% of poorer homes in the UK have no access to the internet, they will not have any access to Government digital services either. We need to transform all that, and the Secretary of State and I will probably have something to say about that in the near future.

The right hon. Member for Maldon noted one other Labour change, on subject access requests. We would argue that one of the problems with the previous Bill was that it would have made it more difficult for people to get subject access request information. That is why we have a system where we think we have strengthened those rights, and that we think is better for the average person in the street.

The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) referred to Baroness Owen’s amendments. We are not quite sure that these are right. We want to ensure that we have a workable solution that everybody agrees with by the time we finish in Committee. I am not sure whether he will be serving on the Committee, but perhaps that is a debate we will have—I look forward to that. We are very open to seeing how we can make sure that all the i’s are in the right place and all the t’s are correctly crossed—not dotted.

The hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) made some important points, although I have to say that I disagree with her—she may not be entirely surprised by that. In relation to the amendments brought forward by Lord Lucas, public authorities must assess what information is required for a particular purpose. This governs whether and how sex or gender data is processed in a given situation or a given case. They are bound by data protection legislation to ensure that the personal data is accurate for this purpose. Where sex at birth is not an essential part of an identity check— for instance, when renting a property—organisations are not lawfully able to request this information. I think that is absolutely right for protecting people’s privacy.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

My hon. Friend will know that I was one of the first Labour MPs to raise in the Chamber the issue of sex-aggregated data. Can he assure me that the Government will ensure that data on sex is accurate and reliable where necessary and will he expedite the publication of the Sullivan review?

[Chris Bryant]

We have to make sure it is accurate to the precise process for which it is being used, just as a passport has to be accurate for the precise purpose for which it is being used. I am not sure whether my hon. Friend is intending to be on the Committee as well—

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[Tonia Antoniazzi]

indicated assent.

[Chris Bryant]

Oh dear, she is. I am not sure about having world-class rugby players on the Committee, but it is one of the issues I am very happy to debate with my hon. Friend. We want to make sure we have got it right and that we manage to embrace everybody as much as we can.