Protection of Freedoms Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve
My Lords, I want to speak to Amendments 147A, 147B, 148A, 148C and 148D. I will also comment, but much more briefly, on the more comprehensive Amendment 151, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Warwick and Lady Benjamin, which I support, and I will comment very briefly on one of the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Before doing so, I would like very much to thank the Minister and the Bill team for their exemplary courtesy and helpfulness in explicating their thinking on Clause 100—not, I think, the simplest clause of the Bill. If we have not reached agreement, it is not for lack of effort on their part.
Secondly, I would like to make it entirely clear that I am in favour of making scientific data more open. Science needs openness for its own purposes; it needs to have open data so that it is possible for others to check and challenge, and openness allows data to be put to unanticipated uses. Therefore, I am in much sympathy with the overall purpose of this part of the Bill. Of course, it used to be feasible—and it was standard practice—to publish data within articles in scientific journals. That is no longer feasible because of the size and complexity of many scientific data sets, so openness now has to be sought in other ways.
However, I believe that the Bill is based on too confident a view of the effectiveness and adequacy of the system of exemptions established in the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and of their capacity to avoid undesirable and unintended effects—particularly in this area, which is essentially that of scientific databases. Clause 100 proposes a seemingly minor, but in fact very substantial, change in the application of the freedom of information requirements to the release of data sets by public authorities. I will not at this stage say anything further about the use of the term “public authority”, as I think that we all understand that this means a publicly funded authority, which may, however, be a research institution or university that also has charitable status.
On the surface, Clause 100 simply requires the release of data sets in reusable electronic form, but I believe that in practice its demands will create a number of risks and problems. Let me therefore begin with Amendment 147A. The present drafting of the clause is, I believe, ambiguous, in that it requires data to be released upon request if the data are, or form part of, a data set held by a public authority. Amendment 147A seeks to restrict that requirement to “completed” parts of a data set held by a public authority. While it is reasonable to require that completed parts of still incomplete data sets be disclosed if requested—for example, the data pertaining to a past year in a continuously updated series—there is no benefit to anybody in disclosing an incomplete part of a data set. Indeed, requiring disclosure of incomplete parts of data sets could be misleading as well as damaging to research projects and to those provided with the incomplete, and perhaps misleading, data.
The clause would currently require disclosure of data sets while data were still being entered and had not yet been checked. At that stage, the incomplete part of the data set might be misleading. To take the example of a multi-centre clinical trial, requests for disclosure of incomplete parts of the data set could lead to the release of data that related only to a distinctive subset of patients whose data happened to become available at an earlier stage than those of other subsets of patients whose results might differ—that is, after all, the reason why the structure of clinical trials is quite elaborate. Such misleading releases might, I fear, falsely raise or dash the hopes of patients suffering from a serious condition, who would read the incomplete data set released as indicating that they had grounds for hope or despair.
I think that this issue arises because the drafting actually conflates two very different types of incompleteness in data sets. A data set may be incomplete because it relates to an ongoing project. In this case, completed parts of that data set relating, for example, to completed periods or phases in the project may indeed be available and could be released upon request.
In the second case, a data set or parts of a data set may be incomplete because the data are not yet fully available for entry, have not yet been entered or have not yet been checked. It could be highly misleading to require disclosure in the second case. Amendment 147A seeks to limit such requirements to disclose to the completed parts of data sets, where the danger of misleading is less.
Secondly, Amendment 147B requires that access is provided on request to data sets in reusable electronic form. Again, I stress that this is in principle an admirable thought. Where a data set is, for example, a relatively simple spreadsheet, this requirement would create no more difficulty for research databases than it does for government data sets. However, some scientific data sets are of orders of magnitude larger and do not use standard software; even if it is feasible, it may be extremely costly to render them usable by others or, indeed, reusable even by others with technical skills. We have to remember that those of whom data are requested will not know the skills of those who request them. In such cases it may be necessary to provide metadata or to process data further in order to make access to them more feasible even for competent others. It is more usual to make research data available by archiving data sets or by setting out a publication or so called data sharing scheme that will provide access for others and also secure the crucial benefits of professional data curation and data security.
Amendment 148B will permit holders of research data to undertake to provide those data using these normal and reliable routes. At present, the Freedom of Information Act grants an exemption once data sets have already been placed in the public domain in this way, such as in a data archive or through a data sharing scheme. This amendment seeks to postpone access where such archiving is not merely foreseen but is something that data holders have undertaken to provide. In effect, it would create a temporary exemption for the data concerned. The Minister might see this as an opening for procrastination. However, if he is sympathetic to the realities of the problem, he might perhaps wish to consider at least a version of the amendment that offers a limited time for this exemption—for example, six months after the completion of the relevant research project or phase of the research project. It is a question of trading off quality for instant gratification, I suppose.
Amendment 148A concerns the charging of fees. It seeks to address the real financial implications of seeking to make large and complex data sets available for reuse. The Bill provides for the charging of fees but does not allow public authorities to take account of the real costs of making data available to others. These costs may include not only additional checking and making metadata available but above all—and this is the main concern in the scientific community—the diversion of highly skilled and specialised time from research projects to the satisfaction of freedom of information requests. I have drafted the amendment to make it clear that it is the real costs of disclosure that matter. As noble Lords will have noted from the very helpful briefing provided for this section of the Bill by Universities UK, these costs can be very significant. It would not be reasonable, in my view, to require research projects or universities to bear these costs, which they cannot in principle have known about when seeking and obtaining the funding to do the research.
The last two amendments to which I shall speak very briefly are Amendments 148C and 148E, which are relatively uncontroversial. At present, the Bill restricts the operations that may be performed on data sets prior to required disclosure to calculation. That is just unrealistic. Those who compile data sets also need to check the data, which will be done using a variety of methods, and take steps to ensure data integrity and security, particularly at the point at which data are to be disclosed on request. Amendment 148C provides for this; Amendment 148E is consequential on Amendment 148C.
On Amendment 148, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, from what I have already said and what the UUK briefing—now supported by the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Wellcome Trust and other scientific and medical bodies—has documented, the complexity of scientific databases rules out a solution along these lines. It would be very nice if it were feasible, but I believe that it is not feasible.
Amendment 151, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Benjamin and Lady Warwick, is a substantial amendment. It takes the more radical step of seeking to define an additional exemption to freedom of information requirements and in the process achieves a number of the specific objectives that I have tried to achieve by more economical means in the amendments that I have tabled. However, their approach has one great advantage, which I believe—although I have racked my brains on this one—cannot be achieved by the more modest approach that I have taken. It recognises the risks to UK science and business and to the personal safety of researchers in certain fields—for example, involving work with animals—and to research subjects that will be created by Clause 100 if it is not amended. We are simply being naive if we imagine that we can rely on all those who request data respecting the intellectual property of those whose efforts produce data sets. We no longer live in a world where that is true, and we can all imagine many scenarios in which data disclosure is sought on behalf of others who work in jurisdictions where intellectual property is widely disrespected, with the aim of getting a free ride on the basis of work done by others without the payment of any fees. In those jurisdictions, legal remedies are not effective. I look forward to hearing a great deal more about Amendment 151. I beg to move.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I have a clutch of amendments in this group. I will not at this moment comment on those proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, although I am looking forward to listening to others’ contributions on that subject. But it is very important that when a group of scientists ask us as a Government or community to take action based on results that they have published, the data underlying those results must be open to scrutiny. I understand that that has a difficult interaction with the questions raised by the noble Baroness, but I look forward to others’ contribution on how to solve that.
The first amendment that I have in the group is Amendment 148. I should declare that I am an extensive user of freedom of information legislation, particularly as regards universities, which I have found unutterably tiresome and difficult to deal with. One of their more tiresome habits is to refuse to provide information in anything other than PDF format. They get it in Excel, or whatever form, and translate it into PDF to provide it to me, merely to cause me extra work. I have to buy a program to suck it out of the PDF again. PDF is not a transmissible format, as it were, and they are merely trying to make life difficult by putting it in that format. So I would like to be sure that when data are provided they are provided in a properly reusable format. I have never come across a data set that cannot be reduced to tabbed, delimited text. Maybe that happens in a collection of tables, but data are essentially a simple thing. Although the data may be held in an immensely complex form in the program that the scientists are using, in any program that I have come across it should be easy—if only for the purposes of sharing with other people—to drop out at least the base data into relatively simple form.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very grateful for my noble friend’s replies to my amendments. If I might take up his offer of a meeting I think that would sensibly shorten the proceedings of this Committee. Would that be all? In that case I shall sit down.
Lord Lucas
“Means by which communication to be made
In section 11 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (means by which communication to be made), after subsection (1)(c) insert—“(d) the provision to the applicant of a copy of an existing record containing the information,”.”
Lord Lucas
This amendment would give people seeking information the right to see that information in its original context. I beg to move.
Lord Henley
I thank my noble friend for speaking to his amendment with such brevity that he caught me unaware. He has set out how he seeks to introduce a provision into the Freedom of Information Act to the effect that, so far as is practical, and where they request it, applicants must be supplied with a copy of the original record containing the information in which they are interested.
I accept that disclosing copies of documents is often the easiest way of responding to freedom of information requests and that that practice is widely followed. In some instances, it may be reasonably practical in terms of cost to supply copies of the existing record, but there may be legitimate reasons why it is not proportionate to do so when the benefit to be gained is balanced by the burdens imposed. For example, the most reasonable interpretation of the amendment would mean that the additional information need not be released if it has not been requested, but if it is, the public authority would be obliged to provide pages of blacked-out text in order to provide the full existing record. I do not think that that would be the most appropriate way forward. Leaving the position that public authorities can provide copies of the original where necessary but they are not obliged to do so is possibly the more appropriate way to deal with this matter, and I hope my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas
I am grateful for that reply. I shall think carefully about what the Minister said, and if I need to ask further questions I shall do so when I meet his officials. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Protection of Freedoms Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
“(2) A parent shall be given the option of not having the child’s biometric information processed and consent is deemed to be granted if a parent does not request the relevant authority not to process the child’s biometric information.”
Lord Lucas
My Lords, if I may start off with a general remark, let me say that I suspect that I will end up preferring the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, to mine. My purpose in tabling these amendments is to give us a good chance to discuss this part of the Bill, which I think has gone too far in trying to apply to schools special arrangements for dealing with biometric data that are neither required nor sensible.
In the wider world, letting one’s biometric data go is perhaps frightening. What Facebook is up to at the moment—for example, allowing people to tag photographs, such that I can be identified from photographs on other people’s websites because they are tagged with my name and details and the way in which that allows information about me to spread around the world—is worrying enough in our society but would be extremely worrying in, say, Syria. One should be aware of the dangers posed by the widespread ability to identify people remotely. If it became possible at a distance to pick up people’s identity as they passed shop-fronts and gazed into window displays and to have information on fingerprints widely available so that, for example, as soon as I touched a door-handle the store would know who I was, that would, to my mind, be a fairly nightmarish world to be part of. I am very grateful that our Government show no inclination to go down that road and, indeed, at an early stage abandoned identity cards, which would have been a step in that direction.
However, to my mind, in a closed community like a school, those worries do not apply. The school is supposed to know where each kid is all the time. I remember getting terribly upset when a friend of mine had their child knock on the door, having walked a mile home from school without the school having known that the child was absent. You expect a school to know where the children are, you expect it to know what they are doing and you expect it to be in control of them. Within a closed arrangement like a school, having one’s biometric information available is not such a big thing. Within this community of the House of Lords, the place is full of people—thank goodness—who know who we are. That is a biometric recognition system. One of the reasons why this place is secure is that it is full of doorkeepers who would recognise someone who did not belong. Within a school, an automatic system does no more than that, and it is fundamentally no more frightening than that.
A school has a lot of information on the pupils under its charge. A lot of that information is much more sensitive than a hash of some fingerprint—something that would take a great deal of ingenuity to make any real use of if it escaped. A school has information on what children have done in terms of their academic endeavours, what special needs they have, what mischiefs they have committed and people’s opinions of them, which could be extremely sensitive if they appeared in later life. Schools are used to guarding a lot of data about their charges. Whether they do that as perfectly as possible, I do not know, but one very rarely comes across occasions when this information has escaped to people’s embarrassment—when it does, it has usually been released by their mothers who are so proud of the reports that their children have received at school.
This is the context within which we must think about the sort of information which will be available as a result of a biometric recognition system. All that it is doing is scanning the proportions of a face or taking a few data points from the ridges of a fingerprint—but not as many as you would take if you were doing a proper security scan because you want something that works fast rather than completely accurately. There is no common storage format or easy way of that data being made use of by outside people even if they did discover it.
In these circumstances, as I say, you are supposed to know everything that is going on—knowing whether a child is in a classroom is something that a school is supposed to know. By and large, it is quite rare that these systems are used even to that extent. Mostly, they are used just for tagging library books to see who takes them out and to see who is entitled to free school lunches in order to avoid the use of cash and people being labelled as free school-meal kids. There is no identification—they are in a way disguising someone’s identity and protecting their information when used as meal systems. Fundamentally, though, biometric systems are used because they enable a school to do what it should be doing more efficiently and more cheaply than it could without them.
I agree that there is some basis for asking for parental consent. I probably do not naturally start out from that position, but I am convinced of it by what the Government have said, and by things that have been said to me in a long e-mail correspondence with some of the people promoting this side of the Bill. There are a lot of things that parents are asked to consent to, and it is quite reasonable that a school should explain why it wishes to use these systems and get general parental consent for it. If a parent wishes to say no, the school should make arrangements for that particular child to be excepted. I go along with that.
However, I really want the systems and rules that we put in place for schools to fit in with all the other rules that are there for asking parental consent for this, that and the other—whether it be religious observance, sex education or whatever else. These are taken seriously by schools and there are ordinary systems for them, the basis for which is single-parent consent. If two parents are involved and one objects, that nullifies the consent, but if you are seeking consent all you need is the consent of one parent. With a lot of schools, for parental arrangements it is really hard enough to get that; to go beyond that, in what seems to be an entirely ordinary matter for schools, does not seem sensible.
The other aspect that I want to look at is where facial recognition systems in particular, and other forms of ID, are going to be built into the systems that kids are using. If they are accessing Facebook from school—as many will be, because it is a common way of finding out information and communicating with other children who are collaborating on a project—there will be biometric information systems built into that software that will not be within the school’s power to disable. That will be within the individual child’s power to deal with, and the school will not have responsibility for it. If the school is using Windows 8—not yet out, but in beta form—there will be facial recognition systems built into that, so that when you sit down, your computer knows that it is you; if someone else sits down at your computer, it does not turn on. That, again, is a personally activated system. A school can disable that on school computers, but if the school is allowing children to access laptops and to take them home, as many secondary schools now do, then you would expect the child to be in control of the system and it would not be reasonable to require the school to impose or be responsible for the way in which biometric recognition systems are used without the school’s own systems. Some of the wording that we have at the moment crosses those boundaries.
On my individual amendments, Amendment 85 is completely garbled and I have no idea what it means. It may be that my noble friend’s officials have been able to decipher it, but I think it must have been my handwriting and I cannot now work out what the amendment means. I apologise to him and to the Committee for that.
Amendment 87 is a version of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. It is really saying that you must have single-parent consent and that an objection by the other parent nullifies that, but otherwise you only need one parent’s consent. Amendment 88 is another way of saying that, while the second part of Amendment 87 deals with the point that I made about some bits of biometric recognition being outwith the school’s control. Amendment 90 covers that same point, as does Amendment 92.
Amendment 94 is a worry about the wording in that part of the Bill. There are a lot of schools with these systems in place—several thousand of them, probably including the large majority of secondary schools and quite a lot of primaries. The wording of that part of the Bill might be used to allow a school not to go for retrospective parental consent. My view is that, if we are to have parental consent, all those schools that have the system should write to parents asking for their consent, rather than that consent being assumed or being taken to be too difficult—an exception being claimed under this subsection.
Amendment 97 reduces the age limit to 16, which I think is the common age within schools at which pupils should be allowed to take responsibility, while Amendment 98 questions the width of “equipment”, which in common parlance has animate as well as inanimate means. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel)
I have to tell your Lordships that, if Amendment 85 is agreed, I cannot call Amendments 86 to 88 because of pre-emption.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I have Amendment 91 in this group, which is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has obviously not been subject to Black Rod’s little talk about security in this place, which urges us all to wear our passes at all times—which I acknowledge I am not at this moment—rather than rely on people knowing who we are.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I know that we are all supposed to do that, but I am sure that the noble Baroness has seen, as I have, groups of guests wandering around with unidentifiable passes and noble Lords with their passes on back to front so that you cannot see even whether they are a Lord let alone who they are. Eyeball recognition by the doorkeepers is much more reliable and efficient, and is probably cheaper at the end of the day.
Baroness Hamwee
Perhaps I had better not continue down this route—I could, but it would take more time than the Committee might like to devote to it.
Another point on which I am perhaps not with the noble Lord is that every school knows what every child is up to all the time—I wish that were so. I am sure that we are going to hear from the Minister about the balance between privacy rights and sensible use of technology—I hope that we are not going to hear about feed-in tariffs, which seemed to stretch the analogy a bit far.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, did not know, on reflection, what his Amendment 85 was about. I have been in that situation as well, but that is not so on this amendment, against which I wrote “silence equals assent”—I think that it is the difference between opt-in and opt-out.
Before I come to the detail of my amendment, I wish to pick up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, about the technology being used in schools not being as sophisticated, if I can use that term, as technology used in other contexts. Can the Minister say how reliable the equipment is? That was the immediate question I had in response to the noble Lord’s comment.
My amendment does not contradict any of the other amendments that have been spoken to and is not inconsistent with the Bill. It provides that the relevant authorities, schools, academies and FE colleges should tell parents and children of their rights to refuse consent at least once in every academic year—in other words, it is about informed consent. The suggestion comes from the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, which supports the provisions in the Bill for ensuring that the institutions cannot process biometric data if consent is refused. I know that my noble friend will say a word about the convention rights.
I have been told by the Children’s Rights Alliance about research which shows that most children using these systems have not considered how long their fingerprints would be held for and they generally were not concerned. My response to that is that of course they would not—they are children and they do not necessarily think through all the implications of what they are being asked to agree to. Therefore explaining exactly what the subject matter is, both to them and their parents, is important. Other research—again, I am not surprised about this—shows that when schools have introduced a biometric system they have emphasised the benefits and not talked about the problems. All of this is natural human reaction.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, referred to the report of the Information Commissioner in 2008. The Information Commissioner made it clear that schools which collect data must be aware that children are data subjects and that they,
“should in the first instance be informed and consulted about the use of their personal data”.
This being the first principle of the Data Protection Act, he went on to say that,
“Fairness requires that schools ensure that pupils are informed about and understand the purpose for which their personal data is being processed”.
Our amendment would require that they are in a position to give consent—or, indeed, withhold it—but on an informed basis.
Lord Henley
Parents and children, to the extent appropriate for the child’s age, must be informed in the appropriate manner, and we want to get that right. We just do not think it needs to happen every year. If, as my noble friend Lady Walmsley said, there were substantive changes to what was being proposed, then further consent would be required, but we do not have to do that each and every year. Once should be enough for the duration of that child’s journey through that school.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very sad indeed to learn that my noble friend’s equipment is entirely inanimate, but if for the purpose of legislation that is the meaning of the word, I am sure that having it in Hansard will suffice.
I am not at all sure that I understood the scope of “reasonable” as he expressed it. He said that the biometric system had to be run by or for the school, if I remember his wording exactly. I do not see where the boundaries of that are. If a bit of software provided by the school is being used on the school’s computers, why should that fall outside the prohibitions in this Bill just because it is a built-in component of a commonly available system? I would be very grateful if I could sit down with officials between now and Report to go through that.
I would also like to explore the scope of electronic means where we are looking at this consent. What forms of registering consent will be acceptable? This occurs as a general question. How is a school to know that a parent has given consent? How is it to know that it is the parent who has given consent? Schools do not have a stock of signatures to compare signatures against. If it is hard enough with something in conventional writing, how they are going to do it in electronic form I am not at all sure.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, I have listened carefully to this debate. My experience is that electronic means are needed to be used by parents because an awful lot of messages from school end up in the washing machine.
Lord Lucas
Yes, my Lords, and in the ordinary way where something is not, as it were, being mandated by law in the way that is occurring in the Bill, that would seem sufficient. I would like to be sure that that ordinary common-or-garden communication that the noble Baroness describes will be acceptable under the Bill. Clearly, there is the matter of a verifiable electronic signature. When we came to introduce electronic means into the definition of writing it was with the concept of an electronic signature that was verifiable so that you could complete documents by electronic means, but that is not what is being talked about here. What we are talking about is getting an email that says, “Yes, I’m happy and so is Fred”. Is that consent by both parents, or is there some greater degree of identification required for electronic communications to be acceptable under this thing? Or is it just the reasonable best efforts of the school? I am not asking the noble Lord to respond now if he has prepared—
Lord Henley
If I may, I will just briefly respond to the noble Lord. Obviously, on the question of what is reasonable, great tomes have been written about reasonability in legal terms for years and years, and it is something that we want to discuss. In regards to, as he said, what forms of consent will be required I think he was quite right to take the intervention from the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, who as a mother and a grandmother speaks with great experience as to what happens to these messages and where they end up. However, if my noble friend would like to discuss this with myself and officials, that would probably be very useful, just to make sure that we can get it right between now and Report. I will certainly be more than happy to offer a meeting.
Lord Henley
If it was a matter of getting in and out of the school, there would have to be some other provision—as with school meals and libraries and so on—by which they could get in and out. It would not just be by biometric data; it might be by a PIN or a smart card or whatever. But I will certainly look at the point made by the noble Baroness, who speaks, as I said, with such great experience in these matters.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for offering a meeting. There are clearly also other subjects to discuss: what form of records schools commonly have about parenting and guardianship arrangements; whether those are sufficient to deal with the requirements of the Bill; whether the Bill allows sufficient flexibility to deal with occasions when parents should not be communicated with; and how commencement is proposed. The Bill will introduce a considerable process of adjustment even if it is taken carefully. As the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, said, it threatens effectively to make these systems inoperable and therefore to require schools at considerable expense and in a great hurry to put other systems in place and make alternative arrangements. The way in which this section of the Bill is to be commenced is quite important.
I would be delighted to have a meeting; I would be delighted if the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, wanted to join me, because it is clear that we have common concerns about how this will work in practice and a common suspicion that what the Government are about is trying to ban these systems all together. However, for now and particularly with regard to Amendment 85, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Lucas
Lord Lucas
My Lords, the amendments in this group are intended to ask a short trio of questions about how line 36, which is about the admissibility of evidence, will work. First, I want to be sure that it covers civil as well as criminal proceedings because an awful lot of surveillance camera evidence is used in, for instance, parking ticket or traffic enforcement, which are civil proceedings. It is important that if there are rules and regulations being passed about how these cameras should be used, they and the guidance should be equally effective in dealing with traffic enforcement as in dealing with a mugging.
Secondly, if one goes by not general, but certainly frequent, local authority practice, local authorities will rely in civil cases on the fact that most people do not appeal, so the case never comes to court. People pay their fines. Knowing that whenever a particular breach of the code comes to the tribunal the local authorities lose their case, they will none the less continue enforcing because they are losing only 1 or 2 per cent of revenue and the rest of the people are paying up as usual. What the guidance in the code is supposed to do is nullified by the fact that there is no mechanism for spreading the opinion of the tribunal more widely than the individual cases which reach it.
Amendment 104 is intended to propose such a mechanism so that a tribunal can say, “No, you have to stop this. We have seen this five times already and each time we have found for the appellant. You must cease enforcing until you have put this right. We will not allow you to issue any more tickets on the basis of something which we consider to be an unreasonable breach of the code”. The other end of it is that where a tribunal has found a local authority to be in frequent breach of the code and has on each occasion found for the appellant, none the less the local authority will have extracted a very large amount of money out of other people who have not appealed because there is a very substantial disincentive to appeal. If you lose an appeal, you double your fine. There is also a large amount of time taken up in the process of appeal.
I would like to see some mechanism where a tribunal can say to a local authority, in particular, or to other people who are seeking to use camera evidence as the basis of fines, that they must repay not only the appellant but all the other people on whom penalties have been imposed on the basis of the practice that the tribunal disapproves of. I beg to move.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for explaining and introducing his amendments. I recognise that he is focusing on the specific use of surveillance camera technology, particularly in its use for enforcement of parking and traffic regulations. It is probably worth me pointing out for the benefit of the Committee that the surveillance camera code of practice is not intended to include any speed camera technology. I know that my noble friend—
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I was just about to say to my noble friend that I know that he was not talking about speed camera technology at all. It was just for the benefit of the rest of the Committee. I thought it was an appropriate point for me to make that clear, in case anybody else might not be as clear as my noble friend is on this matter.
I refer first to my noble friend’s Amendment 103, which, as he has explained, seeks to clarify the drafting of Clause 33(3). I believe that the meaning of that subsection is already clear, as “such proceedings” unambiguously refers back to “criminal or civil proceedings” in subsection (2); we simply do not need to repeat those words in subsection (3).
My noble friend’s Amendment 104 suggests that this Bill takes away the right to seek redress where a court has ruled that the code of practice has been breached. We believe this would have significant implications for litigants. In the context of civil proceedings—just to be clear, for example, we might be talking here of someone seeking to enforce the payment of parking charges—a claimant should be able to present all relevant evidence in support of his or her case. Given that the surveillance code of practice will set out guidance rather than rigid requirements for the operation of surveillance camera systems, it would in our view be disproportionate to prevent, as a matter of course, CCTV evidence being presented where a court or tribunal has ruled that there has been a breach of the code.
Clause 33(4) makes it clear that the court should have discretion in taking into account a failure by a relevant authority to have regard to the surveillance camera code in determining a question in any such proceedings. In the context of criminal proceedings, the ramifications of the amendment in terms of the overall fairness of the process are potentially more significant. The effect of the amendment might be to exclude key prosecution evidence or evidence that might exonerate the accused. Our general approach, as I have already explained, should be to leave decisions about the admissibility of CCTV evidence to the court or tribunal in question.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for that answer, particularly the sudden inspiration which struck her at the end and which gave me great comfort so far as Amendments 104 and 105 are concerned, which I agree were pushing it a bit. However, I still have concerns on Amendment 103.
I agree that Clause 33(3) refers back to Clause 33(2), but the latter refers to the acts of people who are running surveillance cameras, not to the acts of people who are caught on surveillance cameras. It is not clear to me that the inference that she suggested should be imported into Clause 33(3)—that the civil and criminal proceedings in Clause 33(2) apply—is justifiable, given that they refer to completely different sets of court cases. One is cases taken against people who are using cameras and the other is cases against people who are caught on camera. I should be very grateful if the Minister could write to me to answer that point in detail if she does not have an answer in front of her now.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I would be very happy to take away the points that my noble friend has raised and will, of course, write to him in due course.
Digital Technology
Lord Lucas Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
My Lords, I find myself on the optimistic side of this debate. Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, reminded me of reading Socrates’s strictures on writing and the dangers of the spread of that new technology. Much of the activities that the noble Lord attributed to modern terrorists must have been in Socrates’s mind as he was thinking of what they could do now that they had this additional skill.
When I was young, the scare was television. It probably has not done us much good one way or the other: we are probably less healthy than we were; we are probably less good at concentrating and socialising. In that context, the internet, social networks and games are a great advance. To the extent that it has been demonstrated that they do good, they increase people’s performance in short-term memory. It has been shown that in some contexts, heavy users of Facebook are actually better at off-line relationships than people who use it less. There are also research papers that tend in the other direction. The overall picture, however, is one of a revolution which is, though frightening and fast, on average benign. I side with my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood in saying that we are much better now at writing than we were 20 years ago. The world was full of reluctant letter writers when I was 30, and now it is full of keen e-mailers and bloggers. We do much more of it and we read much more of it. The effect on music—the appreciation and spread of music—seems to me to have been strongly positive.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, referred to the plasticity of our brains. That is indeed one of our great characteristics. We must therefore be conscious that any great change, such as what we are experiencing, may have effects of which we ought to be careful. As she said, we ought to be doing research into this, particularly meta-studies to give us a clear picture, because individual studies will always have a scatter of results. We ought to be doing proper meta-studies to really look at the questions raised by the noble Baroness. I hope she will be sufficiently piqued by Ben Goldacre to contribute to that process herself.
Protection of Freedoms Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
My Lords, I like this Bill. There is a lot of it that I shall take a deep interest in as it goes through. I am sure my noble friend is well aware of my interest in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, freedom of information and vehicles left on land but all those have been very well covered by others. I should make a quick declaration: a proportion of my DNA is on the national database—probably enough to identify me—and there is a clause in the freedom of information sections which will resolve various disputes I have with various universities in my favour. So I shall be careful when we come to that.
I want to concentrate on the section on biometrics in schools. This section is a daffy overreaction. Biometric systems are very widely used in schools. They have great benefits and I am not aware of any instance of serious problems with them. They improve safety. They mean that you know where the kids are, and in some schools that is very important. They improve privacy, because you can no longer tell who is claiming free school meals, and that generally results in a large uptake of free school meals. They greatly improve efficiency, because you no longer have to divert teachers to supervisory jobs which are done quickly and efficiently. Kids are used to it, because a lot of the systems that they are familiar with incorporate biometric systems.
The Explanatory Memorandum talks about risks as if they have been established, but I have not seen anybody create a scenario where there is a believable, practical risk to the kids in any way at all. We are dealing here not with something that is available nationally but with a closed system, a community that is using this data within itself—which we do here. All of us are subject to a highly sophisticated biometric scanning device every day: they are called doorkeepers. They do not scare us, and they are not a danger to us. The fact that they recognise us without difficulty is not something that gives rise to problems.
Within a closed community, the fears that people have on the wider scale do not apply. It is as if we put exclusion zones around hospitals that were using nuclear medicine, in case something exploded. It is just not real. It is an association of words which has been got up by the Daily Mail, of course—that lover of freedom, that respecter of privacy, that hater of intrusion—because it made a good story and it scared people. I am very sorry that both our beloved parties took it seriously and have stuck something in the coalition agreement which I suspect to some extent means that we have to keep it in the Bill. But I very much hope that we will be able to get some amendments through which will avoid or at least reduce the waste of resources which will result from the Bill as it is at the moment, and the increase in the incidents of bullying which will result if we cannot use this system consistently, particularly where free school meals are concerned. It gives me some pleasure that the Daily Mail, that scourge of government waste, is setting out to increase it, but I hope to save them from their own excesses.
Education Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
“Disclaimer of eligibility for student support
(1) Any student over the age of 18 (or if under that age, with the consent of the student’s parents or guardian) may disclaim the right to such financial support or arrangements as may from time to time be offered by or on behalf of the Secretary of State to such students.
(2) Such a student may then apply to be admitted to a university as if he or she were a candidate from outside the European Union, and shall for all purposes be considered to be such a candidate.
(3) A student who has made such a disclaimer may withdraw it at any time, but not in respect of any course to which he or she has been admitted as if he or she were from outside the European Union.”
Lord Lucas
I beg to move Amendment 146 and speak to Amendment 147A. My objective is to nudge the Government gently in the direction of common sense and fairness in these two amendments. One of the effects of the Government’s policies over the last year or two, particularly with regard to the Office for Fair Access, which looks set to reduce the number of students going from high-performing English schools to Oxford and Cambridge by about 500 a year, and as an effect of the fees increase, has seen a very considerable rise in interest in the prospect of going to university overseas.
At the cheaper level, it costs about a couple of thousand pounds plus living expenses to get a very decent university education in the Netherlands. That is becoming an increasingly popular destination, notably for the leafier end of the state school system. I thoroughly recommend Maastricht as a university, begging the pardon of my more sensitive colleagues on these Benches. It is actually a very fine and innovative university, and for those parents who would intend anyway to repay their children’s debt, and not leave them with that hanging over them, it represents a very considerable saving.
To have our children going abroad anyway is probably quite a good thing for this country, and over the long term it should increase our understanding of the world outside our shores, and bring us added understanding, if not prosperity. At the higher end, principally affected by the changes being made in OFFA, we are seeing very substantial increases in numbers of students interested in going to the United States. The rate of application is up by about 30 per cent this year. Fees in the US are extremely substantial. There are some good scholarships available. Some of the brighter state comprehensives have been picking up one or two of them, and long may that continue. However, a lot of this outflow will be children who have gone to independent schools, whose parents see that they have the qualifications that would formerly have taken them to top universities, but who have now been squeezed out—so they are off to America, Canada, Australia or, indeed, China. You can get to some very high-ranking universities in Hong Kong for not much more than the cost of a British degree. Indeed, one of them is a subsidiary of Nottingham University. So you can pay to go to a British university overseas. It seems a bit daft to me that our own universities, which are strapped for cash enough as it is, should see this flow of students going out to pay high fees overseas and not be able to bring them back and have those fees for themselves. Why should we deny our universities that benefit? Why should our students find that the only universities in the world that they cannot pay a fee for are our own universities and why should our universities find that a natural flow of students is denied to them? So I hope, while not expecting any immediate comfort today, that the Government will think along those lines.
I would like to see some progress today on Amendment 147A. It has long been the practice of universities, when students were largely funded by the Government, to rob Peter to pay Paul—to take money that was notionally allocated to students studying humanities degrees and use it to fund courses being pursued by those studying science degrees, in particular. That is all very well when it is just reallocating government money, but when you are taking money that a student has invested themselves and transferring it away from that student to some other student’s course, I think that that becomes morally indefensible. I would very much like to see any such activity done openly and with a proper disclosure of what a student is receiving in return for their fees and where the money is being spent by the university. Then a student who is looking to go on what has been traditionally a rather underprovided course with few contact hours can see whether or not they are being offered a reasonable bargain in return for their £9,000 a year. I beg to move.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My name is also on Amendment 146 and I very much support what my noble friend has said. I shall add one or two other arguments to the powerful arguments that he has already made.
My noble friend said that losing some of our good students to go abroad for their studies might be a good thing. Yes, it would be good for a few. International education, whether at undergraduate or graduate level, is a well established tradition among the brighter and best students, and that is a good thing. But it is a very foolish country that stands aside and watches a very large number of its brightest and best students being lost, particularly since those who go to the United States tend to stay. There are good statistics showing this. We lose some of our best talent if we allow them to go and finish their undergraduate and postgraduate study there and then be snapped up by American companies.
The other argument that has always seemed to me quite powerful is that we have and recognise in this country, without much debate, that we have private schools as well as state schools. We know perfectly well the way in which private school fees have been accelerating in recent years. Many parents are now paying £12,000 or £13,000 per year for day schools, if they are lucky—some more than that—and, for boarding schools, at least double that. It has always seemed very strange that those same parents whose children go on to higher education are suddenly released from what many of us see as the burden of school fees to a very much reduced sum of money. I have many times dwelt with friends on one anecdote from my time as head of a Cambridge college. One of my fresher students came bouncing up to me in the first week of term and said, “Oh, come and look at what my daddy has given me as a present for coming up to university”. It was a brand new BMW 7 Series, which would have accounted for at least three years of fees at £9,000 a year plus, or her maintenance. I thought, yes, Daddy is celebrating because he does not have to pay your very high school fees any longer. I am sure that my college and university could have done with that money and made good use of it.
It seems quite extraordinary that we do not allow parents—who could very well afford to continue to pay the fees—simply to opt their children out of the entire loans company system and, therefore, to have their children treated like overseas students, where the university can set their fees and they are outwith the quota for those eligible for loans. Putting these very bright students off-quota and giving them the encouragement and opportunity to go to our best universities would be to their benefit and hugely to the benefit of the country. Therefore, I wholly hope that the Government will seriously consider this possibility of having private students who would be off-quota but who of course would have exactly the same entry requirements as those who are eligible for loans. As my noble friend says, we do not expect an answer today. This is not a backdoor route for people to buy their way into higher education. Their access arrangements and entry requirements would have to be exactly the same. But it would enable us to keep some of those very bright young people here in British universities.
Baroness Verma
I think the bottom line is, of course, that it is all down to affordability. We need to be clear on that. Universities have a finite budget too.
I will not fall into the eloquent spider’s web of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. I shall just say to him that Scotland has a devolved Administration and therefore sets its own agenda. Steering neatly away from that, I take this opportunity to thank all noble Lords for their contributions on this Bill today, given that this was my first outing in higher education. It has been quite a baptism, but I am hoping that when I come in on higher education matters in the future, I will be there from the beginning and will understand a little more clearly the temperaments of noble Lords.
This is the final group of amendments, but I understand very clearly that there will still be questions that remain outstanding. Therefore I am happy to meet noble Lords, be it after this meeting in Room 16 on the Principal Floor, or in future. I have very much an open-door approach to the way I do my business in the House.
I give this opportunity to all noble Lords to come and speak to us. We want to make sure that the legislation, when it goes from this House, is in its best form, and noble Lords are there to ensure that with me. The Welfare Reform Bill is about to commence, so on that note I will sit down and allow the noble Lord to withdraw.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that answer. To be disappointed by my noble friend, and encouraged by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is indeed unusual. I hope that we will have at least the second part of that again. I shall now take an interest in the Scotland Bill.
I am grateful for what my noble friend said on Amendment 147A. I will read it carefully and come back to her on that. Because there is so much past practice in this area, this is something we need to take carefully.
As for Amendment 146, I find this an odd position for us to be taking. There are an awful lot of people in this country who pay for education from the ages of five to 18, and indeed before that. To suddenly cut that off at 18, as if it was in some way dirty, seems to me to be odd. If we are conducting things so that we are not displacing poorer children from the education they might otherwise receive, but are increasing the amount of money which is available to the institutions which are educating those poorer children, then that seems to me to be a sensible and constructive way to go.
I do not know how my right honourable friend the Prime Minister’s dictum should be applied to his alma mater, but perhaps one day I will be able to listen to him on that. For the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(14 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Tonge
I am not going to give way again. I must finish. We must contrast this action with what has happened in the past couple of weeks where Raed Salah, a Palestinian—
Controlling Migration
Lord Lucas Excerpts(15 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Jones
I am grateful for the noble Lord’s welcome of the general proposition that we have laid out.
On the noble Lord’s first point about the monitoring of educational establishments, including those that are in the category of highly trusted sponsor, there will indeed be monitoring. I think that monitoring is already in place for many schools that have had to register in order to be providers of English language teaching. The monitoring of attendance, of the qualifications awarded and of the compliance of the institution in meeting its obligations under its sponsorship arrangements will indeed be carried out and spot checks may occur. I think that all institutions will be on notice that their obligations need to be taken seriously. Of course, if institutions do not take those seriously, they will lose their sponsorship status.
On the noble Lord’s second point, we entirely accept that those who want to bring people into this country, whether for study or for employment, need to know where they stand. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has made it clear that she wants to get through the next stage—clearly, a big block of migrant movement is by students, who are, at something like 51 per cent, by far the biggest category of migrants—as soon as possible. Progress must, if I may say so, be consistent with having a proper consultation on how to do that, but the object will be to conclude that consultation so that we can put in place a system—and a level—that is reasonable and that serves the interests of this country.
Earl Attlee
There is plenty of time. Let us have a Conservative and then a Liberal Democrat.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am grateful. I am delighted that there is to be a consultation on students and I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to include me in that consultation as editor of the Good Schools Guide and let me know who else is being consulted. I very much hope that it will include all further education institutions, private and public. I regret the derogatory tone taken about that sector in the Statement; many good-quality institutions provide excellent courses below degree level, which are in great demand throughout the world. We should export a strong and large export industry employing many people in this country. I agree that it should have quality controls and that the previous Government were remiss in completely failing to install the sort of system that has just been talked about, but we should be positive about the sector and support it as there is a great deal of good there and a great deal of employment.
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I think that that sentiment would be widely shared in the House. It is certainly shared in the Government. If the consultation that has just been conducted on the employment sector is anything to go by, the House can be confident that this consultation will also be wide-ranging and thorough. In this particular consultation with business, we talked to something like 30,000 individuals and had something like 3,000 responses, which I understand was a record for this kind of consultation, speaking to upwards of 1,000 employers. I lay that on the line because it indicates that we have been a listening Government and far from a confused one. We will do the same in other sectors.
Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules (Cm 7944)
Lord Lucas Excerpts(15 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Hylton
My Lords, successive Governments have declared that they favour families and family life, and I personally have always defended the principle of family reunion for people accepted into this country on a long-term basis. Now we find that this Government are meanly changing the rules to discriminate against accepted refugees and to take away rights that they have enjoyed for many years to bring in their immediate families. The Government should bear in mind that genuine refugees have almost always suffered persecution and may well have suffered additionally through harm in the process of escaping or reaching this country. There is a strong argument for allowing refugees to bring in their next of kin when it is possible. Quite often it may not be possible for a whole variety of reasons.
I support what the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said about language tests and what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said about process and lack of consultation, especially on refugees. I urge the Government to pay attention to your Lordships’ recent debate on immigration but, above all, I ask them to have second thoughts on family reunion for refugees.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I share the worries expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in this area and his concern about where we are heading on this policy. It is not that I share his fundamental opposition to it as a policy, but we seem to be implementing it in a very dogmatic way rather than taking account of the needs of the economy and putting the primacy of economic growth and recovery first. That concerns me very much.
I am also concerned by the particular subject of the noble Lord’s Motion—that we should not have the cap in legislation. As he says, interim solutions can last a long time. We are an interim solution approaching its hundredth year. I find myself in many ways in sympathy with him and will therefore listen to my noble friend on the Front Bench with great interest when she comes to reply.
My particular concern is with the implementation of tier 4. The last figure that I had was that more than 60 pupils at top-ranked independent schools were still stuck abroad at half term because their process is not being completed. It is a common experience for schools of endless difficult bureaucracy and of parents and pupils in tears. There are real problems in recruiting students—and for what known problem created by the independent schools sector or students in it? What is all this expense for at the UK Border Agency and the Home Office? Why are we wasting money on controlling things that do not need to be controlled? In doing so, we are damaging an industry in which we have a great reputation and which, in the wider sense, particularly for further education, brings in several billion pounds a year of earnings to this country.
Why are we beset with extraordinarily idiotic rules, such as the one whereby a qualification has to be approved by Ofqual if we allow someone to come into this country for more than six months to study? That means that we cannot bring people in to study our renowned courses in air traffic control or the safety of oil wells, but we can bring them in to study cake decorating. That is just daft. There are other little things. If someone comes here on a six-month tourist visa and in the middle of it decides that they would like to learn English, they have to go back home to apply to be allowed to return here to do a short course in English. Why? They are here on a tourist visa; they already have a higher status than a student is required to have. Why not make it easy for them? And if they have to prove their ability to speak English, the UK Border Agency does not accept GCSE English as proof of an ability to handle English. There may be good reasons for that—I sometimes have sympathy with that attitude myself—but it seems an extraordinary thing for the Government to do.
I urge my noble friend on the Front Bench to put the economy first. I entirely agree with where we are headed and I am comfortable with that, but I am extremely uncomfortable with the way in which it is being implemented.
Lord Judd
My Lords, I am always impressed by the matter of fact approach demonstrated towards these matters by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and I think it is significant that, when the Government are repeatedly telling us that our future depends on the private sector, we are hearing significant voices within the private sector questioning the whole basis of the cap in immigration policy. Either we want to be able to let things grow, or we do not. Some of the people on whom this is dependent are saying, “Be very careful with what you’re doing in immigration policy”.
My noble friend Lord Hunt referred to the very interesting debate that we had last week, and it would be wrong to repeat it all, but one thing that came out of that debate was the realisation that the pressures of migration are not going to reduce. We must be very careful that we do not slip into a kind of “finger in the dyke” syndrome while the dyke is crumbling. In a world in which we emphasise the importance of market, free movement of capital and goods and having international economic policies that facilitate that and strengthen those processes, there is a gigantic flaw in the market if there is not free movement of people. That will, of course, lead particularly to illegal migration—or so-called illegal migration. We have to be very careful about double standards in that regard. I apologise for referring to a point that I made last week, but we regard someone as a social hero in this country who goes off to find a job elsewhere if his community is faced with economic depression, but when in the international market someone does that, they are regarded as somehow a threat. We use disparaging language about them and call them “economic migrants”. It has become almost a term of disparagement. In fact, they may be heroes, if the international market was looked at in a different way.
That is not all. Climate change may make these pressures that we are looking at seem insignificant by comparison in not very many years’ time, because people will be forced to move in very large numbers. Are we preparing for that? Something that we should all take very seriously is that we cannot solve the issues of migration in the context of national policy alone. It is one area in which effective international policies are absolutely crucial. That starts with the European Union, but extends beyond it into the UN system and the wider international community.
I have one other thing to say about context—and I am glad that my noble friend Lord Hunt referred to it. We must realise that so often the most immediate pressures of migration fall on the communities least prepared for it, which are already struggling in terms of jobs, health and education provision, housing and the rest. If we want success in migration policy, we must look to that social and economic investment where the front line of the issue is really to be found.
I am afraid that there is a certain confusion coming from the Government and from different people within the Government. On the one hand, we are hearing that this will all add up to a way of controlling immigration numbers and, on the other hand, we are hearing that it is all about positive integration and making a success of integration. These two arguments are clearly not synonymous and it would be helpful if the Minister could give an authoritative view on how she sees it and what she believes it is all about in that context.
Like other noble Lords, I am sure, I have received very interesting briefing. Some of it comes from an illuminating document from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association. In many ways, the people working in the heat of the situation should have their views reflected in Hansard as they themselves have put them. I shall pick a couple of points from that brief because the people doing this work deserve honest and straightforward answers in the context of the kind of immigration debate that we are having today. The briefing points out that Adrian Blackledge, professor of bilingualism at Birmingham, has noted that,
“there is little evidence that testing English language learners is in itself an effective way to develop linguistic skills. The National Association for Teaching English and other Community Languages to Adults … argue that the UK is the best place for people to learn the English language”.