Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve and Lord Puttnam

Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and identify myself totally with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. I am trying to be practical, and I am possibly even pushing at an open door here. I have a facsimile of the 1931 Highway Code. The introduction by the then Minister says:

“By Section 45 of the Road Traffic Act, 1930, the Minister of Transport is directed to prepare a code of directions for the guidance of road users … During the passage of the Act through Parliament, the opinion was expressed almost universally … that much more could be done to ensure safety by the instruction and education of all road users as to their duties and obligations to one another and to the community as a whole”.


Those last few words are very important. This must be, in a sense, a citizens’ charter for users—a constantly updated notion—of the digital environment to be sure of their rights and of their rights of appeal against misuse. This is exactly where the Government have a duty of care to protect people from things they do not know about as we move into a very difficult, almost unknown digital environment. That was the thinking behind the 1931 Highway Code, and we could do a lot worse than do something similar. That is probably enough for now, but I will undoubtedly return to this on Report.

[Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, I support the spirit of this amendment. I think it is the right thing and that we ultimately might aspire to a code. In the meantime, I suspect that there is a lot of work to be done because the field is changing extremely fast. The stewardship body which the noble Lord referred to, a deliberative body, may be the right prelude to identifying the shape that a code should now take, so perhaps this has to be taken in a number of steps and not in one bound.