Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Viscount Camrose Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, let me start by repeating the thanks others have offered to the Minister for her ongoing engagement and openness, and to the Bill team for their—I hope ongoing—helpfulness.

Accessing and using data safely is a deeply technical legislative subject. It is, perhaps mysteriously, of interest to few but important to more or less everyone. Before I get started, I will review some of the themes we have been hearing about. Given the hour, I will not go into great detail about most of them, but I think it is worth playing some of them back.

The first thing that grabbed me, which a number of noble Lords brought up, was the concept of data as an asset. I believe the Minister used the phrase “data as DNA”, and that is exactly the right metaphor. Whether data is a sovereign asset or on the balance sheet of a private organisation, that is an incredibly important and helpful way to see it. A number of noble Lords brought this up, including the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara.

I was pleased that my noble friend Lord Lucas brought up the use of AI in hiring, if only because I have a particular bee in my bonnet about this. I have taken to writing far too many grumpy letters to the Financial Times about it. I look forward to engaging with him and others on that.

I was pleased to hear a number of noble Lords raise the issue of the burdens on small business and making sure that those burdens, in support of the crucial goal of protecting privacy, do not become disproportionate relative to the ability of small businesses to execute against them. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Bassam, and my noble friend Lord Markham brought that up very powerfully.

I have cheated by making an enormous group of themes, including ADM, AI and text and data mining—and then I have added Horizon on at the end. It is thematically perhaps a little ambitious, but we are getting into incredibly important areas for the well-being and prosperity of so many people. A great many noble Lords got into this very persuasively and compellingly, and I look forward to a great deal of discussion of those items as we go into Committee.

Needless to say, the importance of adequacy came up, particularly from the noble Lords, Lord Vaux and Lord Bassam, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. There is a key question here: have we reduced the risk of loss of adequacy to as close to zero as we can reasonably get, while recognising that it is a decision that is essentially out of our sovereign hands?

A number of noble Lords brought up the very tricky matter of the definition of scientific research—among them the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, my noble friend Lord Bethell and the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Brixton and Lord Freyberg. This is a significant challenge to the effectiveness of the legislation. We all know what we are trying to achieve, but the skill and the art of writing it down is a considerable challenge.

My final theme, just because I so enjoyed the way in which it was expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is the rediscovery of the joys of a White Paper. That is such an important point—to have the sense of an overall strategy around data and technology as well as around the various Bills that came through in the previous Parliament and will, of course, continue to come now, as these technologies develop so rapidly.

My noble friend Lord Markham started by saying that we on these Benches absolutely welcome the Government’s choice to move forward with so many of the provisions originally set out in the previous Government’s DPDI Bill. That Bill was built around substantial consultation and approved by a range of stakeholders. We are particularly pleased to see the following provisions carried forward. One is the introduction of a national underground asset register. As many others have said, it will not only make construction and repairs more efficient but make them safer for construction workers. Another is giving Ofcom the ability, when notified by the coroner, to demand that online service providers retain data in the event of any child death. I notice the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, nodding at that—and I am delighted that it remains.

On reforming and modernising the ICO, I absolutely take the point raised by some that this is an area that will take quite considerable questioning and investigation, but overall the thrust of the purpose of modernising that function is critical to the success of the Bill. We absolutely welcome the introduction of a centralised digital ID verification framework, recognising noble Lords’ concerns about it, of course, and allowing law enforcement bodies to make greater use of biometric data for counterterrorism purposes.

That said, there are provisions that were in the old DPDI Bill whose removal we regret, many of which we felt would have improved data protection and productivity by offering SMEs in particular greater agency to deal with non-high-risk data in less cumbersome ways while still retaining the highest protections for high-risk data. I very much welcome the views so well expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, on this matter. As my noble friend Lord Markham put it, this is about being wisely careful but not necessarily hyper-careful in every case. That is at least a way of expressing the necessary balance.

I regret, for example—the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, possibly regrets this less than I do—that the Government have chosen to drop the “vexatious and excessive” standard for subject access requests to refer to “manifestly unfounded or excessive”. The term “vexatious” emerged from extensive consultation and would, among other things, have prevented the use of SARs to circumvent courts’ discovery processes. I am concerned that, by dropping this definition, the Government have missed an opportunity to prevent misuse of the deeply important subject access rights. I hope very much to hear from the Minister how the Government propose to address such practices.

In principle, we do not approve of the Government giving themselves the power to gain greater knowledge of citizens’ activities. Indeed, the Constitution Committee has made it clear that any legislation dealing with data protection must carefully balance the use of personal data by the state for the provision of services and for national security purposes against the right to a private life and freedom of expression. We on these Benches feel that, on the whole, the DPDI Bill maintained the right balance between those two opposing legislative forces. However, we worry that the DUA Bill, if used in conjunction with other powers that have been promised in the fraud, error and debt Bill, would tip too far in favour of government overreach.

Part 1 of the Bill, on customer and business data, contains many regulation-making powers. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, my noble friend Lord Holmes and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, spoke powerfully about this, and I would like to express three concerns. First, the actual regulations affecting vast quantities of business and personal data are not specified in the Bill; they will be implemented through secondary legislation. Will the Minister give us some more information, when she stands up, about what these regulations may contain? This concern also extends to Part 2, on digital verification services, where in Clause 28,

“The Secretary of State must prepare and publish … rules concerning the provision of digital verification services”.


The Select Committee on the Constitution has suggested that this power should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. I must say that I am minded to agree.

Secondly, throughout Part 1, regulation-making powers are delegated to both the Secretary of State and the Treasury. This raises several questions. Can the Secretary of State and the Treasury make regulations independently of one another? In the event of a disagreement between these government departments, who has the final say, and what are the mechanisms should they disagree? We would welcome some commentary and explanation from the Minister.

Thirdly, as the Select Committee on the Constitution has rightly pointed out, Clause 133 contains a Henry VIII power. It allows the Secretary of State, by regulations, to make consequential amendments to the provisions made by this Bill. This allows amendments to any

“enactment passed or made before the end of the Session in which this Act is passed”.

Why is this necessary?

The Bill introduces some exciting new terminology, namely “data holder” and data “trader”. Will the Minister tell the House what these terms mean and why they need to coexist alongside the existing terminology of “data processor” and “data controller”? I certainly feel that data legislation is quite complex enough without adding overlapping new terminology if we do not really need it.

I stress once again the concerns rightly raised by my noble friend Lord Markham about NUAR security. Are the Government satisfied that the operational protection of NUAR is sufficient to protect this valuable information from terrorist and criminal threats? More generally, additional cybersecurity measures must be implemented to protect personal data during this mass digitisation push. Will the Minister tell the House how these necessary security measures will be brought forward?

Finally, as I am sure all noble Lords will recall, the previous Government published a White Paper that set out five principles for AI. As a reminder, those were: safety, security and robustness; appropriate transparency and explainability; fairness; accountability and governance; and contestability and redress. I am minded to table an amendment to Clause 80, requiring those using AI in their automated decision-making process to have due regard for these five principles. I noted with interest that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, proposed something very similar but using the Bletchley principles. I am very keen to explore that further, on the grounds that it might be an interesting way of having principles-driven AI inserted into this critical Bill.

In conclusion, we on these Benches are broadly supportive of the Bill. We do, as I have set out, have a few concerns, which I hope the Minister will be willing to listen to.