Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [HL]
Baroness Janke ExcerptsWednesday 5th February 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt, on the clarity and eloquence of her maiden speech, and I welcome her to the House.
In this debate, I wish to raise the issue of pensions in relation to divorce. There is a significant pensions gender gap. The average pension pot of a woman aged 65 is one-fifth that of a 65 year-old man’s, and over 20 years, women receive £29,000 less in state pension than men. This deficit is set to continue, with all else being equal, closing by only 3% by 2060. Women are often most acutely disadvantaged by divorce. Therefore, I believe that pension-sharing should routinely be considered in divorce cases.
The ABI points out that of 369 court files studied, 80% revealed at least one relevant pension, yet only 14% contained a pension-sharing order. Silver splitters—people divorcing in their 50s—is the largest increasing trend in divorcing couples. Women at this point are at particular risk, as they do not have many working years left to build up an independent savings pot or pension. They are also more likely to live with the children.
I suggest that the following issues need consideration under the Bill. The lack of awareness or understanding of pensions among divorcing couples is consistently an issue; this knowledge gap extends to family lawyers and judges and means that the lack of inclusion of pension assets is not being considered when the judge is granting a settlement. Pension schemes are not obliged to allow an ex-spouse to join in their own right, with their pension share on divorce. Furthermore, for defined benefit transfers, pension trustees are not obliged to obtain consent from the partner to a pension-sharing order before transferring a defined benefit pension. Therefore, wives are at risk if ex-husbands take the money out without informing them.
Costs of an expert valuation can be prohibitive and put people off including pensions in divorce proceedings, leaving ex-spouses exposed to making decisions regarding which route is best for them and what to do with their pension share without advice. There is no standard practice for calculating pension valuations, and historical wide variances between expert pension report valuations, depending on the basis used for the calculations, has led to mistrust in the system and the potential for ex-spouses to miss out.
Timing and delays in obtaining relevant information for the expert reports from trustees and pension providers cause significant issues for solicitors, leading many to abandon considering pensions as part of the settlement. Pensions are a joint asset, so pension sharing is a clean break for all parties, setting out how much the ex-spouses will receive, and giving each spouse their own pension pot to manage as they wish. Future pension payments are not affected by the death or remarriage of either spouse, and the awardee can take a pension from the age of 55, rather than waiting until their ex-spouse retires. Making pension sharing the default option on divorce will provide both parties with retirement savings and help to ease the pensions gender gap.
Consideration of pension rights is consistent with other measures in the Bill, such as the joint approach, the removal of blame and the seeking of fairness. I hope that these issues will be fully considered in the passage of the Bill, including measures to address the injustice of the pension gender gap, which affects such large numbers of women in later life.
Digital Economy Bill
Baroness Janke ExcerptsMonday 6th February 2017
(7 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Digital Economy Act 2017 View all Digital Economy Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 80-IV Fourth marshalled list for Committee (PDF, 161KB) - (6 Feb 2017)
Baroness Janke
“Review of sale on the internet of counterfeit electrical appliances
(1) Within six months of the coming into force of this Act, the Secretary of State must commission a review of the sale on the internet of counterfeit electrical appliances.(2) The review must consider whether operators of trading websites that allow individual sellers to use those websites to sell electrical items should be required to report to the police and trading standards authorities any instances of the selling of counterfeit electrical appliances which are arranged through their website.(3) The Secretary of State must publish the report of the review, and lay a copy of the report before each House of Parliament.”
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, it might perhaps be for the convenience of the Committee if we had a short pause so that those not engaged in the next business may leave the Chamber.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 75 and 76, which deal with the sale of counterfeit electrical goods on the internet. There is growing concern about this practice, which has increased massively over the past 20 years—by 10,000%—and is continuing to increase at around 15% a year. The industry of counterfeit goods is worth something like £1.3 billion, according to the Electrical Safety Council, and 64% of these goods are sold on the internet. People believe that they are buying reputable brands, as they are dealing with an online retailer that is well known and they assume that the goods are genuine.
The fact that there are so many accidents and so many problems with these goods is another reason that we are bringing these amendments today, as we see this Bill as an opportunity to do something about this practice. The goods are often dangerous. The Electrical Safety Council calculates that something like 7,000 domestic fires are caused by faulty goods, and many of these are counterfeit goods. The practice of selling these goods undermines genuine brands and causes great difficulty within the industry. Faulty goods can also cause great harm directly to individual people.
These amendments seek to give some responsibility to online retailers to report to trading standards and the police goods that they know to be counterfeit. The second amendment requires the Government to provide a review and report on the extent of this practice as well as its impact on the economy. I beg to move.
Lord Tope (LD)
My Lords, my name is also to this amendment, so I support my noble friend Lady Janke. I declare that I am a patron of Electrical Safety First.
My noble friend has stated the problem very well. The ask from this amendment is very modest: we are asking the Government to establish a review. It may not be appropriate for that to be in the Bill, but it gives us an opportunity at this stage for the Government to come back and tell us what they are going to do about counterfeit goods, which are clearly a fast-growing problem.
Our particular concern is with electrical goods, although I could probably add gas goods as well. Counterfeiting clearly is a problem, and I do not minimise it, but a counterfeit handbag is unlikely to kill you; counterfeit electrical goods most certainly can, and do, kill people. I happened to spend my Sunday reading the trading standards journal TS Review, as I imagine many of your Lordships would have been doing. I read that,
“More than 99 per cent…fake Apple chargers failed a basic safety test. Twelve were so poorly designed and constructed that they posed a risk of lethal electrocution to the user”.
On the same page, it is reported that the London Fire Brigade has stated that,
“Across London, 2,072 fires involving white goods have been recorded since January 2011, with more than £118m estimated to have been lost from London’s economy as a result”.
This clearly is a problem, not only to those who produce the products legitimately. Indeed, I noticed that eBay, of all places, is setting up an authentication scheme so that the proper producers can have their goods authenticated by experts as being not counterfeit. This indicates a huge problem.
The purpose of these amendments is to seek a commitment from the Government that they will establish reviews into goods sold and, in particular, goods sold on the internet. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us, first, that the Government recognise this increasing problem and, secondly, if they do, what they are going to do about it.
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
My Lords, I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Tope, that we recognise this problem, although I have to admit that I certainly did not spend my Sunday reading the trading standards review.
Amendments 75 and 76 seek to impose a commitment to review and report on the sale and cost of counterfeit electricals being sold online. The sale of counterfeit goods of all kinds, not just electrical goods, has, as noble Lords said, the potential to cause consumer and economic harm by damaging legitimate traders and often supporting organised crime.
This is an issue the Government take extremely seriously, and that is why the Intellectual Property Office is committed to tackling counterfeiting of all kinds. We do this by working through our IP attaché network in manufacturing countries, targeting import routes in conjunction with UK Border Force and targeting UK sellers and distributors along with trading standards and police services across the UK.
We have heard reference to the challenges of the online world and sales via social media. We absolutely recognise that, and that is why we have supported some very successful work through Operation Jasper, working with police and trading standards to tackle the sale of counterfeits through social media sites.
The full range of work undertaken by government in this area is outlined in the IPO’s IP enforcement strategy, which was published last year. This strategy makes a number of commitments that are very relevant to the ideas proposed in these amendments. The strategy commits the Government to further improving the reporting of IP crime as well as to developing a credible methodology to measure the harm caused. Work is also ongoing with academics to build the structures necessary for commercial entities to share information that they hold about levels of infringement in a safe manner. The IPO also hosts the IPO crime intelligence hub, which is able to receive, develop and disseminate intelligence on IP crime, whether online or physical. The hub is in regular contact with the UK’s leading online sales platforms, and they are continually developing better mechanisms for sharing information about sellers and products.
In addition to this, the IPO, on behalf of the IP crime group, which is a collection of government departments, industry bodies and enforcement agencies which work to tackle IP crime, publishes an extensive report each year on a wide range of IP infringement, including counterfeit electrical goods. The IPO is also working with Citizens Advice to see how it can offer better information to consumers so that they in turn can make more informed purchasing choices. Finally, the IPO is working to encourage trade associations voluntarily to share information about sales of counterfeits that raise safety concerns.
In light of all the things that the Government and others are involved in, I hope the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Janke
I thank the Minister for the information she has shared with us. It is very encouraging. However, there is a feeling that this issue has been around for a very long time and that perhaps stronger enforceability is needed to do something about it. I read that eBay is now producing its own mechanism for preventing the sale of counterfeit goods and that other online retailers will be looking at that, but it still seems that the ability to enforce action on this is missing. I hope to look at the work the Government are already doing on this and consider its future contribution and then consider whether to return with this matter at a later stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Janke
My Lords, I, too, wish to speak to this group of amendments, many of which are in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. As the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, we on this Bench support the sharing of information. I have been a local councillor for many years and I certainly see the benefits of being able to share information. It would make people’s lives a great deal easier and enable them to access benefits and exemptions that they have not easily been able to in the past. We feel, however, that far more privacy safeguards are needed in this part of the Bill. The amendments introduce some tightening of the terms of the Bill, but more clarity is needed, with a number of principles involved in this.
Many of the people to whom the information relates are among the most vulnerable: they are people who are unemployed or on benefits, perhaps with children involved, and not necessarily in a position to understand what is happening if there is no transparency and some idea of consent in sharing the information. It is also important that we are assured that data being shared are minimised—that as little as possible is shared. There needs to be a clear justification for sharing data; the purposes must be clear and the definitions governing that must be tight.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, mentioned Concentrix. We know that there have been other issues with the Government’s breaches of information and that government departments are not always as well equipped to deal with sensitive information as they might be. It is therefore all the more important that we have much more tightly defined terms in the Bill. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said about our not having those before us at the moment and about what is needed to reassure us on that if we cannot see them at the moment. The codes of practice are dealt with in the next group of amendments, and we will want to say a few words about them then, but there needs to be much more rigour and clarity, and many more conditions and safeguards to protect vulnerable people of the future, not just from wilful misuse of their personal information but from errors that could pursue them throughout their lives. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure us about this and I look forward to his comments.
Digital Economy Bill
Baroness Janke ExcerptsMonday 6th February 2017
(7 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Digital Economy Act 2017 View all Digital Economy Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 80-IV Fourth marshalled list for Committee (PDF, 161KB) - (6 Feb 2017)
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, I, too, shall speak to this group of amendments, having put my name to some of them. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, has already raised the issue about the permissive approach in the Bill, which we have rather rejected, and the question of inserting “complied with” rather than “had regard to”. Many of the amendments deal with that issue across the various agencies involved. When you consider that this is operated in relation to various criteria to do with improving people’s physical health, their emotional well-being, their contribution to society and their social and emotional well-being, the breadth of those areas is really rather daunting. You could justify almost anything under those four areas, and I do not really believe that the code of practice could be remotely enforceable if those were the criteria that were used.
Worse still, they could be used in a rather punitive way. For example, it could be argued that it is improving people’s well-being by making them work; and if they are disabled, pursuing people who have disabilities or difficulty in getting work could be used to penalise vulnerable groups. It would affect people who are on benefits or are pensioners—all sorts of vulnerable people. There needs to be somewhat more rigour in the Bill than criteria such as those that we see there now.
Moreover, these amendments deal with a minimum consultation period, which we support. Finally, the code of practice should be laid before Parliament, which, again, would be another safeguard. We must have much more transparency and greater rigour of application, enforceability and consistency across all the agencies and with other rules of disclosure. I would like to hear what the Minister has to say about these concerns. We believe that these matters must be answered and wish to understand the Government’s approach in order to decide whether we need to take this forward at a later stage.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I, too, support the various amendments in this group. “Having regard to” a matter always seems to leave some wriggle room. If there should be exceptions to compliance—because I think we are talking about compliance here, not about consistency—then those should be spelled out. I accept that having codes of practice outside primary legislation allows for flexibility, which might be useful, for a response to experience of the operation of the code and, perhaps, for changing circumstances. However, there is so much reliance on codes of practice here that an inclusive process for constructing and finalising them is very important, as well as transparency in operation.
The noble and learned Lord will probably have a better recollection than I have of the discussion during the passage of the Investigatory Powers Bill about providing transparency by way of ensuring that people who were affected by the transmission of information knew about it. This was rejected for security reasons, but that would not be the case here. The overall objective has to be transparency and inclusiveness.
Baroness Janke
My Lords, our amendments in this group add safeguards. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, referred to some of these: that sharing of information be minimal; that the authorised conduct be proportionate to the object of the exercise; that a privacy impact assessment be conducted; and that proposed measures be subject to public consultation.
In addition, we support the amendments advocated by the BMA. Amendment 89 would remove the subsection through which sharers of information are not bound by the principle of confidentiality. Amendment 93 is a further safeguard preventing an authorised sharer of information from disclosing identifiable health information. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Byford (Con)
My Lords, in this group I tabled Amendments 100 and 196. Within this group we are debating data sharing and the putting in place of safeguards that make us confident in the next move to make life better for the majority of people. I have one or two direct questions, particularly on the level of data that will be supplied from one authority to another. For example, does the Bill intend that information be supplied on the number of households in a given postal area where child benefit is being claimed and/or where all adults are unemployed? Would it be up to the users of the data to extract a summary picture from details of, for example, names, addresses, whether benefits are received, whether householders are unemployed or any other data?
At any level of inquiry, I presume data will be transferred such as dates of birth and marital status that, were they to fall into the wrong hands, could be used to perpetrate private fraud. No one today has mentioned private fraud, but it can come about as a result of lack of security and safeguarding. Again, perhaps the Minister will indicate what relevant provisions there are. I am unsure whether I have missed some. At earlier stages of the Bill I mentioned the amount of fraud going on and it is horrifying. If the Bill can in any way tighten up on that, it would be an advantage.
For example, will personal information cover things such as whether an individual has a diagnosis of dementia or whether a family has been a cause of concern to the social work department in their own area? Who makes these judgments? At what stage are these activated? I may not have read the Bill carefully enough to find the missing answers. I pose these fairly simple questions to make sure that our safeguarding of this information is secure.
Amendment 100 is a probing amendment that seeks to complete the explanation of what information HMRC would disclose, providing examples of the circumstances under which it would be disclosed and a complete list of the groups or persons whose information would be handed over. This relates to Clause 30, of which we spoke earlier. Subsections (9) and (10) specify the well-being of persons or households and define well-being in terms of physical or mental health, contributions to society—which we have covered slightly earlier on and which is difficult; I should be glad of clarification on that—and emotional, social and economic well-being. The latter are easier to understand.
Clause 31 refers to people living in fuel poverty. Again, we debated this previously. Fuel poverty has been defined as,
“living on a lower income in a home which cannot be kept warm at a reasonable cost”.
Clause 32 also refers to people living in fuel poverty. I do not understand what is intended, nor what will be involved for those deemed to be affected. Defining well-being in terms of well-being suggests that definitions of those covered by this legislation could depend on the personal and political stance of those making those decisions. What is “lower income”? Within what limits do homes qualify under these clauses and who will rule that they cannot be kept warm at reasonable cost? What will be the limits of powers of such a decision-maker over, for example, someone who prefers to wrap up for three months of the year so they may enjoy their garden for nine; in other words, somebody who is living in a bigger house that costs more to heat? Will an individual be able to opt not to have personal information shared within local authorities and/or with gas and electricity suppliers?
Turning now to my Amendment 196 in this group, I do not pretend to know anything about the structure, organisation or responsibilities of HMRC. Hence, I do not understand whether an “official” is someone equivalent, say, to a board member in a quoted company. I fear, however, that that is unlikely to be the case. In this era of Facebook, Snapchat and the substitution of public opinion for demonstrable fact, I am unhappy—I do not know whether other noble Lords are—that perhaps a more junior member of HMRC could decide that disclosure would be in the public interest. In other words, where does the buck stop?
Disclosure of personal information, even supposedly non-identifying, should be done only on the authority of the head of the organisation. He or she presumably will have the knowledge, experience and breadth of understanding to be sure that it cannot be combined with other data to name individuals. He or she will also, presumably, be less likely to make errors of judgment, and of course a claim of ignorance of any such disclosure would not stand up to scrutiny, as they would obviously be at the most senior level.
Baroness Janke
I am drawn to recall the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, when she spoke on some of these issues. She said that the technology was moving so quickly that we need to be aware that things are changing—and that it would be important for the public to trust these procedures. A review of these processes is a good thing. Equally, government sometimes changes very slowly, so it may be a better opportunity to revisit some of the issues during a review. We would certainly support that. Again, it has been drawn to our attention by a number of data breaches that have not been notified, ever—so we certainly support the processes that have been outlined in the amendments about putting these on record to have the trust and confidence of the public. Our Amendment 111 in this group is to do with individuals being notified that personal data have been disclosed about them. Again, we feel that this is very important to engender public trust in the processes that we are introducing.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I would like to speak to Amendments 213A to 213C, which explore the Government’s commitment to transparency and how people can know about information-sharing agreements that are in place and, looking to the future, how the equivalent of a subject access request could work, explicitly to assist with fraud detection.
I draw the Committee’s attention to the comment from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee at paragraph 52, which noted that, without even allowing for parliamentary scrutiny, the powers in Clause 39 as drafted are as “inappropriately wide” as those in Clause 30, and seem to be deliberately so. Those very wide powers are of great concern. As an increase in digital technology emerges, the public need to be informed to understand how to use the resources available to them—and they need to know how data on them, as citizens, are being used. They must have confidence in the safeguards in place, otherwise we will have a population that increasingly refuses to engage with any kind of data registration.
It is unclear where health issues sit in this Bill. I declare all my interests in relation to health, as in the register. The powers can include, in Clause 30(10)(a), individuals’,
“physical and mental health and emotional well-being”.
That suggests that health data must fall within the remit of this clause, whether held originally by the NHS or whether they are then held by other bodies. It was in an interview that the Government Digital Service director-general gave as an example the large databases between the NHS and the DWP, commenting that these are large databases of citizens’ records and that we really need to be able to match them, which would suggest a read-across between the two. So while there is a prohibition in the Bill on the use of health and social care data for research, the approach may not have a prohibition in relation to data otherwise disclosed. The NHS bodies, for example, hold the data and, although the Secretary of State is not currently listed in the regulations as published, it is difficult to see how the Secretary of State could not be added to regulations at a later point.
Scotland’s Fiscal Framework
Baroness Janke Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Dunlop
I think I have covered the rules of Report in an earlier answer. As I say, with the funding arrangements we have sought to strike a balance that enables these powers to be transferred to the Scottish Parliament while respecting the “taxpayer fairness” principle that applies across the rest of the UK.
Baroness Janke (LD)
My Lords, in the light of what others have said, along with the fact that the Barnett formula is seen to be extremely unjust and unfair to other parts of the UK, will an analysis be produced of the impact of the new fiscal arrangements in Scotland on the other parts of the UK? Many local authorities are now suffering such dire cuts that public services are in severe danger of being lost in many parts of England, to my knowledge. With this announcement, there ought be a proper analysis of what impact it will have on local services in England and the rest of the UK.
Lord Dunlop
The review will look at how the funding arrangement is operating against the Smith agreement. I remind the House, because this is often forgotten, that the Smith agreement says that it should,
“aim to bring about a durable but responsive democratic constitutional settlement, which maintains Scotland’s place in the UK and enhances mutual cooperation and partnership working”,
and should,
“not cause detriment to the UK as a whole nor to any of its constituent parts”.
That is something that the review in five years’ time is going to have to take into account.