Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Pannick Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Wednesday 4th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, said from the Government Benches that his Government have handled this issue badly. I think he used the word “appallingly”. That is indisputable. The question I have is, why? I suggest that the answer may have been stated by my noble friend Lord Russell of Liverpool. He put his finger on the point, referring to the concern of the United States Administration to protect the interests of AI companies. Noble Lords may know that the head of the United States Copyright Office was sacked last month, the day after she published a report identifying the importance of AI companies respecting copyright rights.

I have a question for the Minister, which I hope she will answer frankly. She said in her opening remarks that she recognised the importance of transparency. Will she tell the House, in the interests of transparency, what weight the Government have given to the concerns of the United States Government in resisting the repeated amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, over the last few weeks?

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, on Monday I asked almost precisely the same question of the Government and asked for a guarantee that no side deals or side understandings, or anything like that, had been done regarding the trade agreement we have with the United States. No answer has yet been forthcoming; I wish the noble Lord well in his adventure.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I am delighted to be associated with the noble Lord on this, as on many other topics.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt these exchanges, which are of great interest. I have not been able to participate in ping-pong for some time, but the House will be aware that I am very keen on the issues being discussed and have been involved in a number of Bills on which issues of a similar nature have arisen. I have been working with a group, keeping in touch on WhatsApp—the fashionable thing to do these days—and we had a broad approach to this, which I am afraid is now fragmenting. My noble friend Lord Knight has traitorously said that he is going to come back into the fold, and I wish him well with that.

The very fine speeches made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, have been misinterpreted by this House, and I regret that. She is absolutely right in asking us to look again at this. If she is successful with her Motion, it is right and appropriate that at last, the Commons has a chance to put forward a proposal which would be in everybody’s interest as a compromise based very closely on—but, ironically, not the same as—the amendment she has been forced, by the system of ping- pong, to put down today.

The right amendment was suggested some time ago—I was involved in discussions around that, but it received short shrift. It would allow the Government to have the power to bring forward by regulation measures required to deal with the ongoing and accelerating crisis, which is increasingly difficult to understand, concerning the way in which creative rights are being stolen and theft exercised on a grand scale. The amendment does not have a timescale or a period over which it can be looked at maturely; it does not rely on consultation; it is a judgment. It is that trust in the decision I want to be taken by my Government that is important to stress, not some of the other issues raised today. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, was right to reflect on the fact, picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, that although this is not the first time the House has been faced with a difficult issue, it is the first time it has been frustrated by inappropriate processes and procedures. Let us have a debate on what we can do to get ourselves to a better place. The issues have been well explained.

I reflect on the work we did on the Online Safety Bill, when I said from the Opposition Benches—unscripted, and with slight trepidation that I would be shot down—that I did not want to work in opposition to the Government on a Bill for which there was no political disadvantage on either side, and that we wanted to use the talents, skills and expertise so often found in this House to get the best Bill possible. I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, nodding, because we worked well together. It was really difficult to do, because the system is set up to provide opposition to anything that challenges the supremacy of the Bill as introduced. Even the noble Lord had long and difficult times persuading his own side that there was a case to make on moving forward.

This is exactly the same issue. There is not a huge difference in where we want to get to. The Government have moved, but they lack the flexibility that we think will be necessary in the next few months—or even years—to bring forward at the appropriate time the transparency that everybody knows has to be there.

There are other things that need to be looked at, such as copyright, but they can be dealt with in time. However, transparency is at the root of this. I urge the Government to work with the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others—I offer to participate in any necessary discussions—to get to a point where everyone can relax, knowing that the main issue is dealt with and we have a clearly articulated programme that will take us forward at the appropriate time, in the Government’s judgment. That is what we need.

Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

Lord Pannick Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her helpful suggestion. Hopefully, she has fed that into the consultation. I am sure it will be considered as one of the many proposals to resolve this issue.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, have His Majesty’s Government received representations, formal or informal, on this subject from the Government of the United States and, if so, will they publish the substance of those representations?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

To my knowledge, we have not received any representations from the US Government. I am sure any such discussions that take place will become public very quickly.

Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025

Lord Pannick Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2025 Lords Chamber

Finally, many of us are bewildered by the change of tune from those who while in opposition were clear that technology should be accountable and respect the needs of those with whom it engaged and the markets it operated in. Indeed, Labour ran on these very promises during the election. I ask the Minister to voice her support for a committee of both Houses on digital regulation. Our regulators are failing, and we now have no one to advocate for UK citizens, including children and vulnerable users, or even the Act itself.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, this is a regret amendment, and the conduct of Ofcom and the Government on this matter is surely deeply regrettable, for all the reasons that have been given by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan and Lady Kidron. The treatment of small but high-risk services in these regulations simply frustrates the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, to Schedule 11, which was approved by this House and accepted by the Government in the Commons. It contradicts what the Minister, Mr Scully, said in the Commons when he accepted the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, approved by this House, and it fails to address the mischief in this context, which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and others have clearly identified. I, too, would like to see or even to understand what possible legal advice has led to this lamentable position. The impact of the service does not—it cannot—depend only on the number of users. That was the whole point of the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan.

The Minister suggested two arguments, as I understood her, but it is not good enough for her to say—if I may respectfully say so—that small services are still unable to act in an illegal manner. The Act is, of course, designed to provide further regulation—especially so because the criminal law is, regrettably, a blunt and slow instrument. Nor am I persuaded by the Minister’s suggestion that it is simply too difficult to draft regulations to address small but high-risk services. I simply do not accept that the expertise of the department and parliamentary counsel cannot come up with an appropriate regulation to address this mischief.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, in relation to Wikipedia in particular. Noble Lords who took part in Committee on the Bill will recall that on several occasions I asked the Minister at the time—now my noble friend sitting on the opposition Front Bench—whether Wikipedia would be in scope of the regulation and, if so, whether it would have consequences which would make it impossible for Wikipedia, a charity, to continue with its existing model. My noble friend was unable at the time to say that; he said it would be a matter for the regulations and, indeed, for the regulator. Now here we are, nearly two years later, and we have some regulations, and I have the same question to put to the Minister on the Front Bench today. It appears to me—I must say that I have no interest to declare other than that I am an inveterate user of Wikipedia—and as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, that we are still left in a state of confusion about this. Regulation 3 says that for large sites—those with more than 34 million users—two criteria have to be met. One is that it has that number of users or more, and the other is that it

“uses a content recommender system”.

In paragraph (2), a content recommender system is broadly defined; for example, it says that it is not simply algorithms by means of machine learning but algorithms by machine learning or “other techniques”. The verb is not simply “determines” but

“determines, or otherwise affects, the way in which regulated user-generated content of a user, whether alone or with other content, may be encountered by other users of the service”.

Wikipedia indeed uses techniques for sending people articles and information that relate to what they have shown an interest in in the past. Would it be caught or not? What are the consequences of Wikipedia being caught? There are many, but I would like to test one out on noble Lords. I do not claim that this is definitive law, because, I suspect, much of the Act will need to be determined in the courts before we know what the definitive interpretation is.

Let us take as an example the case of some loathsome foreign dictator or other such character whose article on Wikipedia is less flattering than he might wish it to appear and he has a complaint about this. Wikipedia will consider it and then probably throw it in the waste-paper basket. If he seeks by some means to change the content of the article, of course, the editors of Wikipedia, who are a distributed network largely of volunteers, will intervene to change it back and try to ensure that it still reflects what is known to be reality. But under Section 64 of the Online Safety Act, one may apply to become a verified user. Obviously, I do not expect the loathsome person himself to apply to become a verified user; there will be some stooge, some student, some trainee or some character somewhere willing to register on their behalf who could then change the article, but because they are a verified user, under Section 15(10)(a) of the Act, they would acquire immunity to peer review. What they wrote on Wikipedia could not then be changed by the editors, because they were a verified user and had that protection.

I offer that as a genuine possibility. Noble Lords know that I am not a lawyer. This could be tested in the courts and found otherwise but, on the face of it, it appears that this sort of consequence would accrue. So I come back to the same question that I have been asking to no real effect now for two years. Perhaps when she comes to reply, the Minister can give me a definitive answer. Is Wikipedia in scope of this regulation? Is it covered by Section 3 or not? We would like to know.

Construction Sector: Cash Retentions

Lord Pannick Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, we have been working to resolve the problems associated with cash retentions through the Construction Leadership Council. As the noble Lord said, there are a wide range of views across the sector about the use and problems associated with retentions and how they might be addressed. Many in the industry are in favour of reform and are now calling for a legislative ban, in the way that the noble Lord described, but any policy solution must be sustainable and work for the whole of industry and its clients, addressing both the surety and fair payment issues that are thrown up.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

Does the Minister acknowledge that the vice of late payments is not confined to the building industry? Do the Government have any plans to address this mischief more broadly?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

Yes, my understanding is that the changes that will be introduced are not to affect only the construction industry. Certainly the late payments legislation that we are working on will be across the board and not specific to the construction sector.