Digital Economy Bill (Second sitting)

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Q 83 For this session we have until 2.45 pm. Will the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?

David Austin: My name is David Austin. I am the chief executive of the British Board of Film Classification.

Alan Wardle: I am Alan Wardle, head of policy and public affairs at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Q David, am I right in interpreting the amendments that the Government tabled last night as meaning that you are intended to be the age verification regulator?

David Austin: That is correct. We reached heads of agreement with the Government last week to take on stages 1 to 3 of the regulation.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Are you sufficiently resourced to take on that role?

David Austin: We will be, yes. We have plenty of time to gear up, and we will have sufficient resource.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Will it involve a levy on the porn industry?

David Austin: It will involve the Government paying us the money to do the job on our usual not-for-profit basis.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What risks do you envisage in people handing over their personal data to the pornographic industry?

David Austin: Privacy is one of the most important things to get right in relation to this regime. As a regulator, we are not interested in identity at all. The only thing that we are interested in is age, and the only thing that a porn website should be interested in is age. The simple question that should be returned to the pornographic website or app is, “Is this person 18 or over?” The answer should be either yes or no. No other personal details are necessary.

We should bear in mind that this is not a new system. Age verification already exists, and we have experience of it in our work with the mobile network operators, where it works quite effectively—you can age verify your mobile phone, for example. It is also worth bearing in mind that an entire industry is developing around improving age verification. Research conducted by a UK adult company in relation to age verification on their online content shows that the public is becoming much more accepting of age verification.

Back in July 2015, for example, this company found that more than 50% of users were deterred when they were asked to age verify. As of September, so just a few weeks ago, that figure had gone down to 2.3%. It is established technology, it is getting better and people are getting used to it, but you are absolutely right that privacy is paramount.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Are you suggesting that it will literally just be a question—“Is the user aged 18?”—and their ticking a box to say yes or no? How else could you disaggregate identity from age verification?

David Austin: There are a number of third-party organisations. I have experience with mobile phones. When you take out a mobile phone contract, the adult filters are automatically turned on and the BBFC’s role is to regulate what content goes in front of or behind the adult filters. If you want to access adult content—and it is not just pornography; it could be depictions of self-harm or the promotion of other things that are inappropriate for children—you can go to your operator, such as EE, O2 or Vodafone, with proof that you are 18 or over. It is then on the record that that phone is age verified. That phone can then be used in other contexts to access content.

[Louise Haigh]

Q But how can that be disaggregated from identity? That person’s personal data is associated with that phone and is still going to be part of the contract.

David Austin: It is known by the mobile network operator, but beyond that it does not need to be known at all.

[Louise Haigh]

Q And is that the only form of age verification that you have so far looked into?

David Austin: The only form of age verification that we, as the BBFC, have experience of is age verification on mobile phones, but there are other methods and there are new methods coming on line. The Digital Policy Alliance, which I believe had a meeting here yesterday to demonstrate new types of age verification, is working on a number of initiatives.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Q May I say what great comfort it is to know that the BBFC will be involved in the regulatory role? It suggests that this will move in the right direction. We all feel very strongly that the Bill is a brilliant step in the right direction: things that were considered inconceivable four or five years ago can now be debated and legislated for.

The fundamental question for me comes down to enforcement. We know that it is difficult to enforce anything against offshore content providers; that is why in the original campaign we went for internet service providers that were British companies, for whom enforcement could work. What reassurance can you give us that enforcement, if you have the role of enforcement, could be carried out against foreign entities? Would it not be more appropriate to have a mandatory take-down regime if we found that a company was breaking British law by not asking for age verification, as defined in the Bill?

David Austin: The BBFC heads of agreement with the Government does not cover enforcement. We made clear that we would not be prepared to enforce the legislation in clauses 20 and 21 as they currently stand. Our role is focused much more on notification; we think we can use the notification process and get some quite significant results.

We would notify any commercially-operated pornographic website or app if we found them acting in contravention of the law and ask them to comply. We believe that some will and some, probably, will not, so as a second backstop we would then be able to contact and notify payment providers and ancillary service providers and request that they withdraw services from those pornographic websites. So it is a two-tier process.

We have indications from some major players in the adult industry that they want to comply—PornHub, for instance, is on record on the BBC News as having said that it is prepared to comply. But you are quite right that there will still be gaps in the regime, I imagine, after we have been through the notification process, no matter how much we can achieve that way, so the power to fine is essentially the only real power the regulator will have, whoever the regulator is for stage 4.

For UK-based websites and apps, that is fine, but it would be extremely challenging for any UK regulator to pursue foreign-based websites or apps through a foreign jurisdiction to uphold a UK law. So we suggested, in our submission of evidence to the consultation back in the spring, that ISP blocking ought to be part of the regulator’s arsenal. We think that that would be effective.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

Q Yes. Given that there is a big problem that is hard to tackle and complicated, I was just trying to get a feel for how much of the problem you think, with your expertise and the Bill, we can fix.

David Austin: We can fix a great deal of the problem. We cannot fix everything. The Bill is not a panacea but it can achieve a great deal, and we believe we can achieve a great deal working as the regulator for stages 1 to 3.

[Louise Haigh]

Q My question follows on neatly from that. While I am sure that the regulation will tackle those top 50 sites, it obviously comes nowhere near tackling the problems that Mr Wardle outlined, and the crimes, such as grooming, that can flow from those problems. There was a lot of discussion on Second Reading about peer-to-peer and social media sites that you have called “ancillary”. No regulation in the world is going to stop that. Surely, the most important way to tackle that is compulsory sex education at school.

Alan Wardle: Yes. In terms of online safety, a whole range of things are needed and a whole lot of players. This will help the problem. We would agree and want to work with BBFC about a proportionality test and identifying where the biggest risks are to children, and for that to be developing. That is not the only solution.

Yes, we believe that statutory personal, social and health education and sexual relationships education is an important part of that. Giving parents the skills and understanding of how to keep their children safe is also really important. But there is a role for industry. Any time I have a conversation with an MP or parliamentarian about this and they have a child in their lives—whether their own, or nieces or nephews—we quickly come to the point that it is a bit of a nightmare. They say, “We try our best to keep our children safe but there is so much, we don’t know who they are speaking to” and all the rest of it.

How do we ensure that when children are online they are as safe as they are when offline? Of course, things happen in the real world as well and no solution is going to be perfect. Just as, in terms of content, we would not let a seven-year-old walk into the multiplex and say, “Here is ‘Finding Nemo’ over here and here is hard core porn—off you go.”

We need to build those protections in online so we know what children are seeing and to whom they speaking and also skilling up children themselves through school and helping parents. But we believe the industry has an important part to play in Government, in terms of regulating and ensuring that spaces where children are online are as safe as they can be.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Q To follow on from the Minister’s question, you feel you are able to tackle roughly the top 50 most visited sites. Is there a danger that you then replace those with the next top 50 that are perhaps less regulated and less co-operative? How might we deal with that particular problem, if it exists?

David Austin: When I said “the top 50”, I was talking in terms of the statistics showing that 70% of people go to the top 50. We would start with the top 50 and work our way through those, but we would not stop there. We would look to get new data every quarter, for example. As you say, sites will come in and out of popularity. We will keep up to date and focus on those most popular sites for children.

We would also create something that we have, again, done with the mobile operators. We would create an ability for members of the public—a parent, for example—to contact us about a particular website if that is concerning them. If an organisation such as the NSPCC is getting information about a particular website or app that is causing problems in terms of under-age access, we would take a look at that as well. In creating this proportionality test what we must not do is be as explicit as to say that we will look only at the top 50.

First, that is not what we would do. Secondly, we do not want anyone to think, “Okay, we don’t need to worry about the regulator because we are not on their radar screen.” It is very important to keep up to date with what are the most popular sites and, therefore, the most effective in dealing with under-age regulation, dealing with complaints from members of the public and organisations such as the NSPCC.

Alan Wardle: I think that is why the enforcement part is so important as well, so that people know that if they do not put these mechanisms in place there will be fines and enforcement notices, the flow of money will be stopped and, crucially, there is that backstop power to block if they do not operate as we think they should in this country. The enforcement mechanisms are really important to ensure that the BBFC can do their job properly and people are not just slipping from one place to the next.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Q We have roughly 45 minutes for this group of witnesses, if necessary. Will the witnesses please introduce themselves?

Dr Whitley: My name is Dr Edgar Whitley. I am an academic at the London School of Economics. Of particular importance for this session is the fact that I am the co-chair of the privacy and consumer advisory group of the Government Digital Service.

Scott Coates: Good afternoon. My name is Scott Coates and I am the CEO of the Wireless Infrastructure Group, an independent British wireless infrastructure company that builds and operates communication towers and fibre networks.

[Louise Haigh]

Q In your written evidence, Mr Coates, you talked about the need for greater diversity in the ownership of mobile infrastructure. Does the Bill go far enough on that?

Scott Coates: We welcome the measures in the Bill to improve the speed at which infrastructure can be deployed and to improve the economics of deploying the infrastructure. It is critical to understand that there are different ways of deploying infrastructure. There are different ownership models, for which the Bill could have different impacts. When I say “infrastructure”, I mean the kind of mobile and fixed infrastructure that you see in the field, whether that is cables, ducts, cabinets or communication tower facilities.

There are two different types of owners of those types of infrastructure. First, the vertically integrated players are effectively building and operating that infrastructure for their own networks, primarily, and their business case is based on their economic use of that infrastructure. Secondly, you have a growing pool of independent infrastructure companies, of which we are one. We are very different from the traditional, vertically integrated players in that we are investing in infrastructure not for our own network, but to provide access, on a shared basis, to all other networks.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What are the current proportions for ownership?

Scott Coates: If I talk about mobile infrastructure, around a third of the UK’s communications towers—of which we think there are around 27,000 in the UK—are independently operated. It is really interesting that, globally, there has been a very firm shift over the past decade towards more independent operation of such upstream digital infrastructure.

Currently, more than 60% of all communication towers globally are held in an entity separate from the networks that use them. In countries such as India or the US, that figure is somewhere between 80% and 90%. There are real benefits that flow from the independent ownership of infrastructure. We are trying to do more in the UK, but the UK currently lags behind in the global statistics I mentioned.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Does the Bill do anything to address that?

Scott Coates: One of the things that we acknowledge and welcome in the Bill is that it is very clear about maintaining investment incentives—not just for the vertically integrated players, but for the independent infrastructure players such as ourselves—

[Louise Haigh]

Q It will not do anything to address the proportion, will it? It will only entrench the division already there.

Scott Coates: I do not think that the Bill does anything to encourage more independent infrastructure. The Government’s policy position at the moment is very clear: they want to maintain investment incentives for independent infrastructure. To achieve clarity on this requires that the Bill is worded very carefully.

When we deploy our tariff facilities and infrastructure on or adjacent to land, as things are now one of the definitions of UK land often covers things that sit on that land. One of the potential risks is that if the activities we engage in and the facilities that we deploy are not carefully carved out, they risk being treated as land. Under the new valuations principles in the communications code, that potentially risks giving them no value or low value, which would obviously be devastating to investment appetite. The consequence of that would be further concentration of infrastructure ownership in the hands of the larger, vertically integrated players who have different incentives from us when they approach this.

[Louise Haigh]

Q So there is potential for this to get worse, but what could be done to actually encourage more independently owned infrastructure?

Scott Coates: We would like to see a carve-out that is as clear as possible for the activities that we are engaged in. We would like to see it made absolutely clear that the communications code, which is a compulsory purchase tool to bring land into the telecoms sector, does not drift beyond that focus and risk entering into what is really Ofcom’s territory, which is to govern the relationships between telecoms companies.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Dr Whitley, if I may jump to part 5 of the Bill, we heard earlier that there were concerns that the Government have not taken sufficiently into account safeguards around privacy and personal data. Do you think that this strikes the right balance between open policy-making and privacy?

Dr Whitley: My main concern with part 5 is that the detail is just not there. The codes of practice that one would expect to have there, which would give the details about how privacy might be protected, are not present. We have been involved with the privacy and consumer advisory group. As far as I can tell, we had our first meeting with the team who were developing these proposals back in July 2013. We said from the very beginning that we want detail, because when we have specific details we can give advice and suggestions and review it, but we have never had that level of specific detail.

[Louise Haigh]

Q So the proposals do not reflect at all the three years of consultation that have taken place?

Dr Whitley: Obviously, that is reflected in some parts of the proposals, but we asked for more details specifically on how privacy will be protected regarding the data-sharing proposals, and that is still not there.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Should that detail be in primary legislation?

Dr Whitley: Whether it is in primary legislation or in codes of practice, my personal view is that you need a certain level of detail to be able to make an informed decision. Otherwise there will be some vague position of, “We will share some data with other people within Government. Trust us, because we are going to develop some codes of practice that will be consulted on and will then be put in front of Parliament. There will be protections and it will all be fine”. We are saying that there are lots of different ways of doing that. The earlier you give us at least a first attempt at those details, the better we can improve it.

[Louise Haigh]

Q In that period of consultation, was the detail around transparency never discussed?

Dr Whitley: It depends. There has been talk along the lines of there being codes of practice and liaison with the Information Commissioner’s Office, so at a very high level there has obviously been some discussion. But at the very specific level—for example, the civil registration clauses talk both about allowing a yes/no check around whether there is a birth certificate associated with a family, while on the other hand there will be bulk data sharing within Government so that different Departments can know stuff and possibly make things better for society.

One half of that seems to be quite specific, and you can see how it could well be designed as a simple “Does a birth certificate exist for this person?” and the answer is yes or no. The privacy protections around that are reasonably well known and not very much data is being shared. Then the other illustration just says, “we will share these data with other bits of Government” and there is nothing there about what kind of privacy protections might be put in place. There are many different ways in which that can be done, but until we have some specific details, we cannot give you sensible reviews as to whether that is a good or not so good way of doing it.

[Nigel Huddleston]

Q Mr Coates, what role should wireless technologies play in achieving the universal service obligation?

Scott Coates: There is no doubt that for the last 5%, maybe a greater proportion than that, wireless technologies have a significant role to play. Six of the seven trials run by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport earlier this year were of a wireless-based structure. I think there is a role for it. It is also interesting, as you look beyond 10 megabits to the future when universal service means something far more substantial than that, that a new disruptive technology is coming.

Everyone is talking about 5G; it does not really exist at this stage, but we know it is going to be ultra-high bandwidth, ultra-low latency, with the potential to be a disruptive technology and replace fixed line to the home. Some countries around the world that have not had the wave of fixed line technology roll-out will be moving straight to wireless as their domestic broadband service.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Huddleston]

Q Once we work that out, which I am confident we will, where are the opportunities? Where is the up side? Where is the positive stuff coming out of this? How can Government be better as a result of this? I am always an optimist.

Dr Whitley: Done right, there are fantastic opportunities. Government is digitising. The GDS has got lots of experience about how to manage and handle and do attributes checking, which is what most of this is. There are definitely opportunities and the skills, but somehow something has gone wrong with regard to these proposals.

It is not as if the proposals have been rushed through in the past few minutes. We have been looking at these and asking for more details since July 2013 and we are still here without even a resemblance of a code of practice. Part 5 has six codes of practice that need to be developed and none of them is here. Yes, please, but some detail. I am academic; I want to see the detail.

[Louise Haigh]

Q As you say, it is an enormous shift in terms of data sharing within Government. Clause 29 would allow personal data on citizens to be shared if there is a

“contribution made by them to society”

or wellbeing to be gained. That basically covers anything, doesn’t it? Why have the Government not produced even a draft code of practice at this stage? How can we possibly be expected to vote on this while plainly placing blind faith in the Government?

Dr Whitley: You are basically saying what I was going to say. If you compare the comprehensive replies that Mr Coates has been able to give, talking about very specific details, with the vague “we don’t know anything” comments that I have made, you see that it is a real problem and also an issue for more general scrutiny of technological issues. If you do not have details about the different mobile phone frequencies that you are talking about, you cannot make detailed policy. Yet when it comes to data sharing, there is a sense that it will all work out in the end because we have the right people to do it.

[Louise Haigh]

Q How would you advise the Government to achieve that code of practice?

Dr Whitley: We have consistently said—the Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group particularly, because we have this existing relationship with Government, but civil society and experts more generally—that we are more than happy to engage. We have repeatedly said, “Give us some detail. Don’t just come and talk about high-level stuff. Give us the detail and we will give you detailed comments to improve the process.”

That has worked very well in relation to the Verify scheme; that is privacy friendly and has a lot of support from the kinds of people who are very concerned about privacy. So the expertise is there and the working relationships are there. Give us an opportunity to help; we want to. It is just that we need something to work on.

[Louise Haigh]

I hope the Minister has heard that.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much to Mr Coates and Dr Whitley for some excellent evidence. We are very grateful. We will now move on to our next set of witnesses.

Examination of Witnesses

Jim Killock and Renate Samson gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you. I turn first to Louise Haigh.

[Louise Haigh]

Q I will pick up where we left off, if that is okay. You were both involved in the consultation process for part 5 of the Bill. Did the proposals come as a surprise to you? Do they make sense to you as data experts?

Renate Samson: No, they do not make very much sense, if I am honest. As I said, we were a member of the open policy making process and we also submitted to the consultation. I am genuinely surprised that after a two-year process, all of a sudden it felt very rushed. There were conversations and meetings happening right up to the Queen’s Speech; there was still a general lack of clarity, particularly on safeguards, and many questions were still being asked, such as how, why, when and so on. The next thing we knew, it was in the Queen’s Speech and the Bill was published.

Reading through part 5—and I have read through it a lot and scratched my head a great deal, mainly for the reasons given in evidence earlier today—you see that the codes of practice, which would explain an awful lot of what we imagine is meant or may not be meant, just have not been published. I have repeatedly asked for them and been given various expected dates, and we are sitting here today without them but with the Bill already having been laid before Parliament.

We have also done a lot of work on the Investigatory Powers Bill, for which the codes of practice were there right from the start. There was clarity as to what was intended and what was going to be legislated for, straight up. So, I am profoundly disappointed, because data sharing and digital government are hugely important and we seem to be very far away after a very long process.

Jim Killock: It is worth considering why the open policy making process was put in place. Data sharing is known to be potentially controversial. It was knocked out of at least one previous Bill a few years back when proposed by Labour because of the lack of privacy safeguards. Everyone understood that something more solid was needed. Then the Cabinet Office was very keen to ensure it did not raise hackles, that it got the privacy and the safeguards right, that trust was in place. It was therefore a surprise, after that intense process, to get something back that lacked the safeguards everybody had been saying were needed.

We are particularly concerned not only about the lack of codes of practice, but the fact that a lot of these things should be in the Bill. Codes of practice are going to develop over years. We need to know about things like sunsetting, for instance—that these things are brought to a close, that you do not just have zombie data sharing arrangements in place, where everyone has half-forgotten about them and then suddenly they are revived. You need to have Parliament involved in the specifics.

As we have heard, data sharing has a huge range of possibilities, starting with the benign and the relatively uncontroversial: statistics and understanding what is happening to society and Government policy, where privacy is relatively easy to protect. You use the data once, you do the research and that is it. It ranges from that through to the very intrusive: profiling families for particular policy goals might be legitimate, but it also might be highly discriminatory. Getting to the specifics is important.

You need the safeguards in place to say, “These are the kinds of things we will be bringing back; these are the purposes that we may or may not share data for.” That way, you know there is a process in place. At the moment, it feels like once this has passed, the gate is opened and it is not necessarily for Parliament to scrutinise further.

[Louise Haigh]

Q We talked earlier about the bulk transfer and bulk sharing of data, and an earlier witness talked about providing data access, rather than data sharing. Should the Government not be pursuing trials on that basis, rather than these enormous powers without any kind of assurances to the public or parliamentarians about how they will be using them?

Renate Samson: It was very specific at the end of the open policy making process that, for example—put the bulk to one side for a moment—but regarding the fraud and debt aspect of the Bill, it had been agreed that three-year pilot projects would take place with subsequent review and scrutiny potentially by the OPM or by another group. They are in the Bill as a piece of legislation with the Minister deciding whether or not it is okay and potentially asking other groups, which are not defined. That is half an answer to half your question. Pilots are an excellent idea if they are pilots, not immediate legislation.

With regards to the bulk powers in the Bill, civil registration documents were a late addition. We are still not clear as to their purpose. The purpose given in the consultation to the OPM process, but also in the background documents relating to the Bill, is a whole mix of different reasons, none of which, I would argue, are clear and compelling or, indeed, necessary and proportionate. But again, as you have heard a lot today, without detail, how can we properly answer your question?

Jim Killock: I have a quick observation on this. We currently have a data protection framework. The European Union is revising its data protection laws; they are somewhat tougher, which is quite a good thing, but we do not know what the future of data protection legislation is in the UK. It might be the same or it might be entirely different in a few years’ time.

That is a very good reason for ensuring that privacy safeguards are quite specific and quite high in some of these sensitive areas, because we do not know whether the more general rules can be relied on and whether they are going to be the same. That is not to say that we do not need higher safeguards in any case here, because you are not dealing with a consent regime. People have to use Government and Government have to look at the data, so it is not a mutual agreement between people; you have to have higher safeguards around that.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Q My questions are directed at Mr Killock and relate to paragraphs 37 and 38 of your submission, “Definition of pornographic material”. We heard earlier that both the NSPCC and the British Board of Film Classification support a provision to require ISPs to block websites that are non-compliant. There was also discussion of widening the scope to apply the restrictions to other harmful material that we would not allow children access to in the offline world. Here, you seem to be questioning the value of that:

“This extension of the definition…also raises questions as to why violent—but not sexual—materials rated as 18 should then be accessible online.”

I also question this consistency but the solution, to me, seems to be that we should include other material, such as violent material and pro-anorexic websites, as we talked about earlier. Will you tell us a bit more about what your objection is to creating a framework to keep children as safe online as they are offline?

Jim Killock: We have no objection; it is a laudable aim and something we should all be trying to do. The question is, what is effective and what will work and not impinge on people’s general rights? As soon as you look a little beyond pornography, you are talking about much more clear speech issues.

There will be a need to look at any given website and make a judgment about whether it should or should not be legally accessed by various people. That starts needing things like legal processes to be valid. Some of the things you are talking about are things that might not be viewed by anybody, potentially. The problem with all these systems is that they just do not work like that. They are working on bulk numbers of websites, potentially tens of thousands, all automatically identified, as a general rule, when people are trying to restrict this information. That poses a lot of problems.

I also query what is the measure of success here. Because I feel, I suspect, that the number of teenagers accessing pornography will probably not be greatly affected by these measures. There is more of an argument that small numbers of children who are, perhaps, under 12 may be less likely to stumble on pornographic material, but I doubt that the number of teenage boys, for instance, accessing pornographic material will be materially changed. If that is the case, what is the measure of success here? What harm is really being reduced? I just feel that, probably, these are rather expensive and difficult policies which are likely to have impacts on adults. People are saying it is not likely to affect them, but I rather suspect it might, and for what gain?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We are better informed.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Paul, the Government have delayed by a year outlining their digital strategy. Could you give the Ministers a hand here? What would you like to see in a digital industrial strategy?

Paul Nowak: There are a number of points in the Bill where we think there are positive steps forward: things like the universal service obligation. I am happy to talk about some of those points. The missed opportunity for us is really getting a handle on what the emerging digital economy means for working people. Tomorrow, we will have the outcome of the court decision on Uber. That is just one example of where changing technology potentially affects working people’s lives. We believe there should be a proper framework and employment law should properly reflect the change in the world of work. The point was made by a number of MPs on Second Reading that the Bill missed a trick in terms of that new framework of rights and responsibilities for people who work.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What would that framework look like?

Paul Nowak: It would tackle issues around, for example, employment status. We have this curious interface between the new, emerging digital economy and what I would characterise as some old-fashioned exploitative employment practices. It is great that we can all order new goods and services online via eBay, but often the person who delivers that package will be working so-called to an app and they will be so-called self-employed, driving their own vehicle and with no rights to paid holidays, maternity or paternity leave and so on.

So a framework of laws that is fit for the digital age. It is welcome that the Government have announced that Matthew Taylor will be looking at some of these issues, but I would have thought that for a Digital Economy Bill there is a gap in the Bill itself.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Has the TUC been consulted on that by the Government?

Paul Nowak: We have had no engagement in terms of the process I described with Matthew Taylor and, as far as I am aware, we have had no input in terms of the Bill and the thinking around what a decent framework of employment rights will look like to respond to that emerging digital economy.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What about the digital skills gap—where could the Bill go further there?

Paul Nowak: That is not something that we have looked at particularly, but I think it goes without saying that the need for digital skills will go well beyond those core digital industries. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. We are pleased that the Government are now talking about industrial strategy, and we think that the digital economy should play a key role at the heart of that industrial strategy. It is not just about digital industries themselves; it is about how those digital industries can support jobs in our manufacturing, engineering and creative industries, but you need to make sure that people have the skills—not just at one moment in time, but ongoing skills throughout their working lives—to enable them to adapt to the changing world of work. For example, one of the things that we have pushed heavily through our Unionlearn arm is equipping people with those skills, but making the case that people should have access to careers advice and guidance all the way through their working lives rather than just at the point at which they leave school, college or university.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Sarah and Chris, I do not know whether you were here for the earlier sessions, but we have heard quite a few concerns about the data-sharing proposals in part 5 of the Bill. Do you share the concerns about the lack of privacy safeguards in those proposals?

Sarah Gold: I do. There are quite a few pieces of information missing that I would like to see in the Bill to protect individuals’ privacy. I think I heard Jeni Tennison talk earlier about openness and transparency, and I agree with her that one of the major pieces that is missing from the Bill is transparency about how people’s information will be used.

For me, this is also a missed opportunity to talk about consent, which is increasingly becoming a design issue, not necessarily just one of policy. That means making sure that there are steps in place to ensure that people understand how their data will be used, by whom, for how long and for what purpose. That is really important, because currently, the only models of consent we seem to default to are terms and conditions, and I have to ask the Committee: when was the last time any of you read or understood a set of terms and conditions?

[Louise Haigh]

Q Claire Perry brought up the poor standards in the private sector earlier. Presumably you agree that the Bill misses an opportunity to deal with consent for the private sector’s use of data as well.

Sarah Gold: It does, because I think the Government should set best standards on this. There is a real opportunity to do that, and I cannot see that on the face of the Bill.

Chris Taggart: I broadly agree. There was a comment in one of the submissions that despite this being a Digital Economy Bill, it felt like it was from almost 10 years ago. We have the ability to treat data in a much more granular way—dealing with permissions, rights and so on; having things selectively anonymised; having things almost time-boxed, and so on. It struck me that it felt like the Bill was using the broad brush of how we used to exchange data 10 years ago. That seemed like a missed opportunity, particularly given that what we are talking about here is Government to Government. While it is very difficult for the private sector—or even between the Government and the private sector—to come up with some of those solutions, when you are talking essentially about one organisation, particularly one where there is the ability to legislate that everything should happen in the right way, it seems to be a missed opportunity.

I was asked a couple of years ago to be on the Tax Transparency Sector Board, which talked about opening up some of the tax data. Of course, pretty much no data were actually opened up, but some of the discussions were interesting. For example, the Bill talks a lot about individuals, which is absolutely right—I believe that we have innate human rights—but from a tax point of view, individuals and companies are exactly the same thing. There is no difference. HMRC was saying, “Hey, look, whatever we think and whatever we would like to do, we have no ability to treat individuals and companies as the same.” The idea of allowing companies to tick a box and say, “Yes, we’d like our tax to be reported and to be open about it,” or saying, “These offenders will be treated differently if they are corporate offenders,” for example—many countries do report tax offences by companies—was not even possible because of the underlying legislation. There is a sense that that sort of attitude slightly pervades some of this. Again, I am extremely in favour of the Government being more effective and efficient and using information sharing for that, but I would like the Bill to be as good as it possibly can be.

Finally, there are little things—I used to be a journalist but now I am a full-time geek—such as what is being reported? What things have been shared? How are those organisations being identified? The Government do not even have a coherent way of identifying Government Departments or non-departmental public bodies. Those sorts of things. There is a lot more that could be done to make this a genuinely effective Bill.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

Q Mr Taggart, you mentioned something about its feeling like it is 10 years out of date. I want to bring us bang up to date by chucking in a Brexit question. Is there anything that the three of you could very quickly add to the discussion about what might need to be in the Bill given that we are now in Brexit? Brexit has implications for the digital economy, about which I am sure you know more than me.

Chris Taggart: I will try to be brief. One is to do with policy aspects of what happens. I believe you are hearing from the Information Commissioner later. What happens to data protection in a post-EU UK? From our perspective, the UK has generally taken a slightly different perspective on data protection from the information commissioners in some other countries and is generally taking things like public interest into account and treating paid-for and free information the same, which we welcome. We have some concerns about the general data protection regulations because of that sort of stuff and some of the stuff that is coming from the EU. There are some potential benefits, but there are also some downsides about whether people’s rights will be defended. I think the digital economy becomes much, much more important, and my position here is as an advocate of open data and the potential for open data in driving a thriving digital economy. As a digital entrepreneur, I think we are missing some significant opportunities for that. If you were to sit down today and do a digital economy Bill with the knowledge that in a couple of years we perhaps would not be part of the EU, I think we would be doing something quite different.

Paul Nowak: May I pick up the point about post-Brexit? I think there is growing political consensus that one of the implications of the decision on 23 June is that we need to think seriously about how we invest in our national infrastructure. For the TUC that goes beyond Heathrow, Hinkley, High Speed Rail. It talks to issues around, for example, high-speed broadband. It is about thinking about how this Bill would interface with, for example, announcements that might come in the autumn statement about investment in high-speed broadband. I note that the Chair of the Committee talked about the interface between rail and high-speed broadband, which is something that should be borne in mind. Again, valid points were made on Second Reading about requirements for developers to incorporate high-speed broadband into new housing developments, which is absolutely essential. I reiterate the point I made earlier about seeing this in the context of the wider approach to industrial strategy and how the digital economy can support other parts of the economy that are going to be even more important as we move forward post-Brexit.

Sarah Gold: For me, particularly looking at privacy, security and personal data, it is about the age of some of the language used in the Bill. Even talking about data sharing feels to me like the wrong language. We should be talking about data access. Data sharing suggests duplication of databases, with data being slopped around different Departments, whereas data access suggests accessing minimum data via APIs or by using the canonical Government registers, which is an excellent project that is not mentioned in the Bill but should be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Haigh]

Q Thinking about algorithms beyond the workplace, we know that Uber, for example, will charge more if your battery is low. Having worked for an insurer before I was elected, I know that the amount of data that is available to insurers to set prices would make your hair curl. How much transparency should there be around the algorithms that companies use to set prices, while protecting the intellectual property of those algorithms?

Chris Taggart: That is a fantastic question, and it comes to the heart of our ability to understand our world and influence it. I take quite strong, almost like democratic first principles with this: you need to be able to understand the world and have the ability to understand the world, and then to be able to influence it. That is what democracy is about. If we do not understand the world—if we do not understand that we are being given this particular news story in this particular way; that we are being given this particular price; that we are being influenced to walk down this street rather than that street in order to do this—then we really do not have that possibility. A question that is not asked often enough but that is starting to be asked more in academic circles is: what are the algorithms on which our lives depend? If we do not understand that we are being driven by algorithms, still less what those algorithms are, how do we have agency? How do we have free will, if you like? I think it is a really important question.

I think that increasingly we will see that we need transparency around that, and that with transparency there is always the ability for there to be negative downsides. You could argue that, by having courts open, people can just walk in off the street and see that this person over there is being prosecuted; some neighbour, or whatever. But if we are not starting to ask those sorts of questions and staring to come up with some informed answers, we will be in a world where we have lost the ability to ask those sorts of questions.

Paul Nowak: I am not particularly well versed in this area, but I suppose that it is a little bit like the terms and conditions question. You could provide so much transparency that it would give the illusion of people being informed, and I think what you want to do is to allow people to understand what are the potential implications of those algorithms. So, if you are using Uber you know that if there is a spike in demand or a lack of supply, you are likely to pay more, and what the implications of that might be, and what the parameters of that are. I do not think that means that Uber needs to make all of its software open source—frankly, that would mean nothing to me—but I want to know when I get in what the fair contractual exchange is between me and the company that is providing the service.

Sarah Gold: I am very well versed in this area but I have very little time to talk about it, which is very frustrating. However, I think that looking at how individuals can question algorithms is very important; I agree with both of your comments. Particularly in GDPR, there is a clear piece that is about people being able to question automated decisions that are made about them.

As a design problem, that is really fascinating. For instance, if you think about when you buy flights on browsers, I think that everyone has probably seen that when you go back to book the flight again, your IP address has been tracked, you are a cookie, and so you see the same flight booked for—it costs you more. So you go into kind of incognito mode to check that.

What I am quite interested in at the moment is that sort of incognito testing of algorithms, so that you can see how your inputs might change an output. In the context of Uber and insurance, I am very interested in this emergence of insurance for, say, a single day of driving or for a particular route, and being insured—say, it costs you far more to go down the M1 than just the A1. And you should be able to understand why that decision has been made about you, because it has a significant consequence for your life.

However, that comes down to the quality of the training data, too, and that comes back to some of the terms of the Bill—we should be working towards greater data minimisation, I think, and also the ability for people to be able to audit not only those data, to correct those when they go wrong, but to provide an audit of data access. While it may not mean everything to all of us, because not all of us are developers, I think that for those individuals who are able to scrutinise the code and check for digital rights management or security vulnerabilities, or biases in data sets, that information is really crucial, because it is those individuals who are our greatest defence against data misuse or fraud.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much indeed; that is a high note on which to conclude. I thank our three witnesses for your evidence. We may now release you and we will call our final two witnesses for the afternoon to come forward.

Examination of Witnesses

Professor Sir Charles Bean and Hetan Shah gave evidence.

[The Chair]

Welcome to our two final witnesses today; I am sure you will keep us on our toes in our final session. Could you please introduce yourselves for the record?

Hetan Shah: I am Hetan Shah, Executive Director of the Royal Statistical Society.

Professor Sir Charles Bean: Charlie Bean, London School of Economics and soon to be Office for Budget Responsibility.

[Louise Haigh]

Q We have heard from witnesses today about a lot of the negatives and potential pitfalls of data sharing across Government. I have nothing against the Government’s intentions here, but do you share the concerns of previous witnesses about the lack of safeguards for privacy in part 5 of the Bill?

Professor Sir Charles Bean: You will have to excuse me; since I was not here for your earlier discussions, I am obviously not aware of what earlier witnesses have said and what their reservations are. My interest obviously is in the use of the information for statistical purposes. It is important that there is a clear and well understood framework that governs that, and there clearly need to be limitations around it.

I have to say that I think the current version of the Bill strikes a reasonably sensible balance, but there are bits that will clearly need to be filled in. The Office for National Statistics will need to spell out a set of principles that govern the way it will access administrative data, and so forth.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Do you think there is any framework in part 5 around the sharing of data?

Professor Sir Charles Bean: Sorry—

[Louise Haigh]

You said you are satisfied that it strikes the right balance. Do you believe there is any framework in terms of the principles for data sharing in part 5?

Professor Sir Charles Bean: By “appropriate balance”, I mean in terms of the statistical authority having in-principle access to the administrative data that it needs to do its work, subject to certain limitations.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Do you believe there should be transparency for—

Professor Sir Charles Bean: I certainly believe in transparency. I am a big fan of transparency. Anyone who has worked at the Bank of England would like transparency.

Hetan Shah: May I come in and build on this? Privacy is absolutely critical to maintaining public trust, and in a sense we think the Bill has missed a trick here. On the research side, the framework is embedded on the face of the Bill. In our view, the ONS has a very good track record—it has maintained 200 years of census data, it has the best transparency, it publishes all the usage of the data and it has already criminalised the proceedings of misuse of data—but that has not been put on the face of the Bill. A tremendous amount could be done to reassure by taking what is already good practice and putting it on the face of the Bill, and I think that will answer the issue for the statistics and research purposes.

[Louise Haigh]

Q My full question was not, “Do you believe in transparency?” It was going to be: do you believe in transparency in terms of how citizens’ data will be shared with the Government and between Government agencies? That principle, as you say, is not only not on the face of the Bill but not anywhere in the Bill. We have been asked by the Government to rely on codes of practice that have not even been drafted yet.

Professor Sir Charles Bean: I agree that transparency about the principles that will govern sharing of information makes a lot of sense.

[Louise Haigh]

Q As you say, Mr Shah, for Government data sharing to work requires public trust, and digital government and the use of your statistics absolutely requires trust that the Government will handle data with due purpose and cause.

Hetan Shah: Another thing is that the UK Statistics Authority is directly accountable to Parliament, not the Government. That actually makes the statistics and research strand more accountable compared with other parts of the Bill. I remind you of that, which is very important.

[Matt Hancock]

Q I would be interested if you could explain and put on the record some of the consequences you see of having this Bill and the underlying secondary legislation on the statute book. What impact will that have on the areas in which you are experts?

Professor Sir Charles Bean: The key thing is that it greatly improves the gateways that enable the Office for National Statistics to use administrative data—tax data and the like—in the construction of official economic statistics. We are well off the pace compared with many other countries. Scandinavian countries, Canada, the Irish and the Dutch make very heavy reliance on administrative data and only use surveys to fill in the gaps. Here, the Office for National Statistics is essentially an organisation that turns the handle, sending out 1.5 million paper forms a year and processing those. Essentially, you are acquiring the same information again that you have already got in some other part of the public sector, where the information is being collected for other purposes.

The key gains here I see as twofold. First, because you access something close to the universe of the sample population rather than just a subset, which would normally be the case with a survey, you potentially get more accurate information. It is potentially also more timely, which for economic policy purposes is important.

The other side of the coin is that by enabling you to cut back on the number of surveys you do, there is a cost gain, which I should say would probably not mainly be a gain to the ONS, because they have to do the processing of the administrative data, but a gain to the businesses and households who are currently spending time filling in forms that they would not need to do if more use was made of administrative data.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We have two questioners left: Louise Haigh and then Claire Perry.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Mr Shah, you keep mentioning access to data, but the problem we heard earlier is that the Bill talks not about access to data but about data sharing, which implies duplication. We should really be moving towards data minimisation. Do you think that the language of the Bill should reflect access to data, rather than data sharing?

Hetan Shah: My view is that for the clauses on statistics and research the Bill is pretty clear that it is about data access.

[Louise Haigh]

Q It discusses the transfer of data. It does not talk about your accessing data. It does not mention the technology through which you would do it. There are no codes of practice alongside how it would happen. It is very broad and explicitly talks about data sharing in certain areas.

Hetan Shah: I think I said this earlier, but in case I was not clear I shall repeat it. For statistical and research purposes, statisticians and researchers are interested only in aggregates; they are not interested in us as individuals. It is a key point that the relevant clauses are quite different from some of the other parts of the Bill. Others have indicated in their evidence that this area should be seen as slightly different.

It is also worth noting that there are safeguards that have been tried and tested over many years. There is the security surrounding the data—the ONS will not even let me into the vault where they hold the data. You need to be accredited and to sign something saying that you will not misuse the data. If you do, you will go to jail. The trick that has been missed has been not saying all that, because it is almost assumed that that is how the ONS works. My suggestion is that if you want to strengthen that part of the Bill, you should just lay out the safeguards that are already common practice in the ONS.

[Claire Perry]

Q Thank you both for setting out some very factual and helpful arguments as to why the provisions are a good thing, particularly when it comes to aggregate statistics. I was struck by a quote in your report published in March, Professor Sir Charles. You mentioned the

“cumbersome nature of the present legal framework”,

which the Bill will clearly help to solve, and you also said that there was a

“cultural reluctance on the part of some departments and officials to data sharing”

and, in many ways, to working together, as we know from experience. How do we solve that problem and get Departments to realise how helpful some of these datasets might be?

Professor Sir Charles Bean: A key thing about the Bill is that it shifts the onus of presumption. There is a presumption of access unless there is a good reason not to comply or explain, if you like, as opposed to the current arrangement, which is that the data owner has the data and you say, “Can you please let us have a look at it?” There is civil service caution. I was a civil servant very early on in my career, so I am aware of how civil servants think. Inevitably, you are always worried about something going wrong or being misused or whatever. That plays into this, as well.

In the review I said there are really three elements and I think they are mutually reinforcing. There is the current legal framework, which is not as conducive as it could be; there is this innate caution on the part of some civil service Departments, or even perhaps on the part of their Ministers on occasion; and then the ONS has not been as pushy as it might have been. It is partly that if you know it is very difficult to get in—people are not very co-operative at the other end and the legal frameworks are very cumbersome—you are less inclined to put the effort in, and you think, “Oh, well, let’s just use the surveys, as we’ve always done.” So I think you need to act on the three things together, but they are potentially mutually reinforcing if you get the change right.

Hetan Shah: This is one area where I think the Bill could be strengthened. At the moment, the ONS has the right to request data; similarly, the researchers have the right to request data. The Department can still say, “No”, and in a sense the only comeback is that there is a sort of name-and-shame element of, “Parliament will note this”, as it were. My worry, given the cultural problems that have been seen in the past, is that that may not be enough. So why do we not do what Canada does? It just says, “The ONS requests”, and the Department gives.

Digital Economy Bill (First sitting)

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Q That is now on the record. Does anyone else wish to declare an interest? No. Could the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?

David Dyson: David Dyson. I am the CEO of Three UK.

Baroness Harding: Dido Harding, chief executive of TalkTalk.

Sean Williams: Sean Williams, chief strategy officer at BT Group.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Q Thank you for coming to give evidence today. May I start with you, Sean? First, do you think that 2020 and 10 megabits per second are sufficiently ambitious targets for the universal service obligation?

Sean Williams: Yes, I do. We have made clear our willingness to deliver 10 megabits to every premises in the country by the end of 2020 without any further public funding and without even really progressing the USO regulations. On the way to doing that, we will be building on the fact that by the end of next year we should have fibre broadband coverage to 95% of the country.

As we get towards 2020, we will be building further fibre networks, so we expect to be getting more than 24 megabits to 97% or 98% of the country, and then fixed broadband of 10 megabits to 99%. We think that the last 1% needs to be done by 4G and satellite. Although we think about the issue as getting 10 megabits by 2020, in our view the vast majority will actually be getting a lot more than 10 megabits by then.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Baroness Harding, should the USO not have been an open tender process? If it had been, would it not have been right for it to have gone to more than one contractor, given the differences between the problems in inner city areas and those in rural areas?

Baroness Harding: Yes, maybe. I presume that you refer to the BDUK process that has taken place. I am actually very supportive of a universal service obligation. I do not agree with Sean Williams that 10 megabits will be sufficient as we look forward; it is very dangerous to try to set that number through primary legislation because technology is moving so fast. I fear that the rural communities who are furious that they do not have 10 meg today will be furious that they do not have 1 gigabit in three or four years’ time. I think you should be more ambitious, otherwise the political problem will never go away.

In terms of how then to get value for money for any form of Government subsidy, taxpayers’ money or levy going towards the final few per cent., I agree with the premise of your question. The more competition there is, the better, and it is a huge shame that there was none in the last process. To be fair to the Government of the time, I do not think that was because of how it was designed. The good news is that the market has changed quite a lot since then, and there are now a number of quite small providers building proper fibre-to-the-premises 1 gig services in rural areas, such as Gigaclear. I would be much more hopeful that, looking forward, it will be possible to design a process that is not reliant on one large incumbent.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Q As you know, I represent a very rural constituency. I support what has happened; it is clearly far better than it was five years ago. However, what happens if no USO provider is willing to come forward to deal with the last 500 houses in the Devizes constituency? What should happen then?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Welcome to this session of the Digital Economy Bill Committee. We will now hear oral evidence from Sky, Virgin Media and Vodafone. We will finish this session at 10.30 am. The time is very tight. May I ask the witnesses to identify themselves?

Paul Morris: I am Paul Morris, head of government affairs and sustainability at Vodafone.

Daniel Butler: I am Dan Butler, head of public affairs and policy at Virgin Media.

David Wheeldon: I am David Wheeldon, group director of policy and public affairs at Sky.

[Louise Haigh]

Q I will start with the question that I asked the last panel. Do you think that 10 megabits per second by 2020 is ambitious enough?

David Wheeldon: That is a very hard question to answer. The flexibility within the Bill for the universal service obligation threshold to change makes sense, in order to address the likely customer needs. Our view—we have said it very publicly—is that we have to be much more ambitious in terms of connectivity in this country.

We would like to see ubiquitous fibre to the premise, and we believe ultimately that the economy is going to depend on that. The USO will be a useful interim measure until we can get there, but one might hope that, over time, a USO will not be necessary if we have full connectivity across the country.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Are you saying fibre to 100% of premises?

David Wheeldon: Eventually, that is the ambition we should aim for.

[Louise Haigh]

Q How would that be achievable?

David Wheeldon: We believe there is an opportunity to create the right market structure to bring a lot more investment into the industry. We are being held back at the moment by relying on the copper network. There is an argument we have made, as you know, about Ofcom’s communications review with regard to the structure of Openreach. That is not directly relevant to this Bill, but ultimately, as far as the USO is concerned, it makes a lot of sense to be able to set a threshold that you may want to vary over time.

Daniel Butler: Virgin Media’s starting point is to ask what the purpose of a USO is and what it is designed to achieve. The definition is quite clear: it is to underpin a series of activities that produce some economic and social externalities that are to the broader benefit of society. Ofcom defines those as email, web browsing, maybe a little bit of video streaming and maybe some IP voice. Its use case for a four-person household is that 10 megabits is sufficient to enable all those activities to happen simultaneously.

We view 10 megabits as appropriate for that definition of a universal service obligation. We think that more bandwidth-intensive activities, such as HD streaming and real-time gaming, have a looser connection to the underlying principles of a universal service obligation, because the benefits of those types of activity are primarily to the individual, not to society as a whole, so why should they be subsidised?

I will make one final point, which is that the debate around future-proofing the USO lacks one crucial bit of analysis. Bandwidth requirements might increase over time, but so too does the sophistication of networks in processing higher bandwidth applications. Video streaming is a case in point. When video streaming became ubiquitous, companies started investing in better video compression, and as a result video compression rates have halved every seven years. Networks are getting better at dealing with higher bandwidth applications.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Why should we be limiting ourselves to something that is barely sufficient now? What changes could we see in the Bill that would give us anything like the connectivity that Mr Wheeldon just mentioned?

Paul Morris: You have to make sure that the USO does not get in the way of future ambition. We have to think about how we move from what we have today, which is largely a copper and fibre mix, with the exception of Virgin. We still have telephone lines running broadband, essentially; as David says, we have to move on and be more ambitious. The point is to make sure that the USO does not get in the way of that ambition to do better and to use fibre for homes and businesses. We should make sure that the smaller networks have an option to be involved in the USO, and, if they have the ambition, that they know that a USO provider is not going to over-build them.

There is lots to be done outside the legislation, and clearly we do not need to repeat the mistakes of BDUK. We need to know where the assets are, who can do the work and where the green cabinets are. It needs to make sense and we need to have some kind of register. We need a practical approach and money needs to follow results—not the other way round, which was the other issue with BDUK. We can learn from some issues from the past, and we need to make sure that this USO does not get in the way of what we need to do next, which is to have much more fibre in the ground across the whole country.

[Claire Perry]

Q I represent a fairly rural constituency and I was interested to know what would happen if no USO provider came forward to do the right thing. What should happen in that case? How will the Government be able to mandate that provision?

Daniel Butler: We are not convinced that that situation will arise. What Mr Williams from BT just outlined was that BT was willing to enter into a legal obligation in which it would be the national provider for a universal service obligation. That is how it works today under the fixed telephony USO. Up to a relatively high cost threshold, BT is not allowed to pick and choose which areas and premises it connects and which it does not; it has a legal obligation to fulfil. The model does not need to radically change as we move to a broadband USO.

Paul Morris: Basically, you have to remember that most of these premises will have a telephone line—although not all, I grant you. That is a good start. It is about how we use what is already there well, and how we upgrade it.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We will now hear evidence from Which? and the Countryside Alliance. We have until 11 am for this session. Would the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?

James Legge: I am James Legge, and I am head of political at the Countryside Alliance.

Pete Moorey: I am Pete Moorey, and I am head of campaigns at Which?

[Louise Haigh]

Q Should this Bill not contain a USO for mobile coverage?

James Legge: Yes, we think that it should.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What should that USO be?

James Legge: I think that a minimum at the moment should probably be about 3G but, a little like the USO for broadband, we need to be a bit more ambitious. We also have to realise that there is a big infrastructure problem for about 50% of rural premises. The infrastructure is not there to carry more than 10 megabits per second, and for one in five premises it will not carry more than 5 megabits. So there is not only the level at which the USO is set to begin with, but also the issue of upgrading infrastructure.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Do you think that there is potential for the USO to actually limit the investment for infrastructure in the future?

James Legge: It is important that it is seen in addition to the Government’s ambition to deliver superfast broadband at—at the moment—a speed of 24 megabits to 90% to 95% of premises. In my opinion it should really be seen as a safety net, as opposed to a situation in which we say, “Well, we’ve reached 10 megabits, we can leave it there.” If you take into consideration that universal access in the EU is being set at 30 megabits by 2020, and Sweden is looking at 100 megabits in the same timeframe, where we are is good but we have a way to go yet.

Pete Moorey: There is clearly a big issue in terms of mobile coverage. You may have seen the research we did with OpenSignal last week which pointed to the fact that in many parts of the country you can get access to a 4G signal only 50% of the time, while in London it is 70% of the time. Obviously, that is way behind countries such as the US and Canada where it is 80% of the time, and countries such as South Korea and Japan where it is 90% of the time. We have not specifically taken a position on a USO for mobile, but it is definitely something that needs consideration.

The other issue here is around what mobile operators themselves are doing with customers when they are in the phone shop and choosing a package. This includes the information that operators are providing to customers about the signal that they can expect, and indeed the opportunity that customers have to be able to get out of the contract when they are unable to get a signal.

[Louise Haigh]

Q What could the Bill do to achieve the level of investment in infrastructure that is necessary? Is separation of BT from Openreach absolutely vital for this?

Pete Moorey: We are satisfied with the position that Ofcom is taking on Openreach at this stage. One area where we are more concerned is around the way that Ofcom is seeking to regulate the standards for Openreach. We think there is a danger that actually regulators are not often well placed to do that and, as they set very prescriptive rules that operators have to achieve, operators are driven by those rules rather than good consumer outcomes. We would like to see Ofcom flip the way that they are looking at the new standards for Openreach and ensure that they are much more focused around consumer outcomes. That would drive the business to achieve against those measures rather than a set of prescriptive standards, which Openreach or others can say that they have achieved but actually has not resulted in a better service for customers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Haigh]

Q Mike, to what extent do you think the Government have achieved their stated objective of open policy making by default?

Mike Bracken: I do not have a strong opinion on that. You would have to ask the person responsible overall for policy in Government or the Minister responsible.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Do the proposals on Government data sharing give you assurance that the Government have sufficiently considered safeguards on privacy, personal data and criteria for data sharing and time limitations?

Mike Bracken: In short, no. The sentiment behind many aspects of the Bill is to be applauded. The Co-op is a big supporter of open data and we see it as the catalyst of a digital economy. There are many complicated issues in this space, privacy and security being highest among them. While we applaud the sentiments of the Bill, there is much detail in the operational management of how data can and should be shared around Government Departments.

While we, of course, are looking for our members’ interests in accessing open sets of public data, it is not yet clear that the current sharing agreements of data within Government are appropriate and it would appear that the move away from open registers of data may hamper the appropriate levels of sharing data in Government. It also may be the case that the friction that our members and members of society feel in dealing with duplicate sets of data, inconsistent sets of data and so on, which lead to substantial problems in accessing Government and their services, may not be improved by the current sharing policies as set out.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Do you think it is a backward step in public trust in Government data handling?

Mike Bracken: We think the Bill is a positive forward step in terms of the sentiment behind it—

[Louise Haigh]

Q But in terms of public trust in Government data handling?

Mike Bracken: I could not comment on that. The sentiment of the Bill overall is a positive one, but there is not enough detail on the sharing arrangements within Government and within Government Departments.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Jeni, my first two questions to you, please.

Jeni Tennison: I agree with much of what Mike has said. The important thing for securing public trust in the measures in the Bill is to have them clearly communicated to the public. Currently, the way they are written is quite complicated and it is quite hard to understand what they really mean.

It is also hard to understand the measures in the Bill in the context of the existing data-sharing agreements in the public sector. We would like to see a lot more transparency around what existing measures there are within Government for data sharing and how the Bill fits with those existing measures so that people can really get to grips with the way in which data are flowing through Government.

Mike Bracken: May I add to that? I completely support what Jeni has said. The issue is that, while we agree that making services and data better and easier to access—the current sharing arrangements are opaque at best—we question the sentiment behind widening those sharing arrangements when they are currently not fully understood. It would appear that that sentiment is driven more by the operational structures of Whitehall and Government agencies than by the needs of users accessing that data.

[Rishi Sunak]

Q Jeni, do you mind giving us some specific examples that I can explain to my constituents about where increased use of data sharing can help their lives, and where public services can be improved, especially for those who are more vulnerable and benefit from public services? Where will data sharing help them to get the right policies to them?

Jeni Tennison: I tend to work in the open data area rather than around data sharing so many of the examples I tend to use are around data that are openly available for anyone to access using Share. The example I tend to use, which helps people to get to grips with it, is Citymapper, which makes data available to us to enable us to navigate around cities very easily.

When you look at the public sector and the kind of decisions it needs to make, such as planning decisions about where to place schools or transport links, where to put more infrastructure, such as physical infrastructure like mobile masts, for example, you can see that having better access to data about people’s needs—who they are and what their requirements are—might enable it to make better decisions about where those facilities are needed.

Q Thangam Debbonaire: This is for Jeni Tennison about the evidence in the Open Rights Group’s submission. In points 37 and 38 in your objections to the definition of pornographic material, you objected to the inclusion of all 18 materials.

[Louise Haigh]

That is a different witness. That is the Open Rights Group.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I am sorry. I mixed you up with someone else. I withdraw my question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

Q And in terms of the data measures to tackle fraud?

Jeni Tennison: I have not looked at the detail of the individual measures for those kinds of benefits.

[Louise Haigh]

Q Is the point not that these benefits cannot be achieved unless the risks are tackled head-on, which is exactly what happened with the care.data issue in the last Parliament? That health data could not be shared because the public did not trust the Government or insurers with that risk. I worked in insurance at the time and that came as quite a blow. Is the point not that the Government need to take on the issues around transparency and trust in this Committee? Mike, on your point about data access, do you think Government are currently geared up to allow that, rather than bulk data sharing?

Mike Bracken: “Government” is a very broad organisation. There are promising moves around registers of data and around reinstating an address register. I do not know quite where that is now. There was a promising move but that now seems to be a little on the backburner—I am not sure. The point is that that question needs to be asked to 20-plus Government Departments and more than 300 agencies and non-departmental public bodies, each of which has a different answer. It is hard to summarise where “government” is at any one point without any open standards between those and without any clear framework under which Government data are already being shared.

[The Chair]

Order. That brings us to the end of the time allotted to the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witnesses for their evidence.

UK's Nuclear Deterrent

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to support the motion. The Prime Minister said earlier that the first duty of a Government is to protect their citizens. I would add that the first duty of an Opposition, if they hope to become a Government, is to convince the electorate and the public at large that they will, and above all that they can, do the same. The Opposition cannot be ambiguous on that commitment. I fully understand those in our party who feel that their ethical values and the values of the Labour party are incompatible with that stance, but the public—the electorate—do not feel that our values and ethics are an adequate defence in the face of military aggression from countries that might threaten us.

I am old enough to remember campaigning in the days when Labour’s policy was unilateralism. I remember the cruel caricature of Labour’s defence policy, which was somebody standing with their hands up, labelled “Labour’s defence policy.” Regrettably, it resonated with many of Labour’s traditional voters. The feeling that, above all, people are entitled to security transcends voting behaviour, social class and income. It goes right across the piece, and Labour paid a very high price for failing to recognise that in the 1980s.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) talked about how we succeeded in changing Labour’s former policy. Change it we did, and since then, whatever disagreements the electorate have had with Labour, they have not been about defence. We have won three general elections with a multilateral defence policy. In fact, multilateral defence and an independent nuclear deterrent have been our policy for the last six general elections and were a manifesto commitment in the last general election. That is backed by trade unions, which recognise that any removal of Trident would have a huge impact on levels of employment and skills, which are absolutely essential to people’s welfare.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Bailey]

I am sorry, I will not give way, because too many others want to speak.

Above all, the policy is backed by the public. For that policy to be overturned, four thresholds have to be met. The first is that there must be a huge improvement in international relations. That has quite clearly not happened—things have deteriorated. Russia’s lowering of the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, its activities in Ukraine, the situation in North Korea and the ability of terrorists to take over a country and possibly acquire nuclear technology mean that the world is much more dangerous.

The second threshold is that there must a compelling change of technology that would render nuclear submarines irrelevant. That has not happened. The third is a financial capacity that renders us unable to build them. That has not happened. The last is overwhelming evidence of public support shifting against the deterrent. That clearly has not happened.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I believe we should oppose the maintenance of the continuous at-sea deterrent. For me, the arguments are both moral and practical. I will take the moral argument first. I believe it is important that we all give full consideration to the scale of destruction that modern nuclear weapons can deliver. I want to read out a message from the mayor of Hiroshima in a recent statement:

“On August 6, 1945, a single atomic bomb rendered Hiroshima a scorched plain and tens of thousands were burned in flames. By year’s end, 140,000…lives had been taken. Those who managed to survive, their lives grotesquely distorted, were left to suffer serious physical and emotional after effects compounded by discrimination and prejudice. Nuclear weapons are an absolute evil and ultimate inhumanity.”

[Louise Haigh]

In the same statement, the mayor of Hiroshima called on us all to share the sincere message of their hibakusha:

“No one else should ever suffer as we have”.

Does my hon. Friend not share my concern that this latest round of renewal makes it difficult to ignore the fact that we are moving against our international duty into an era of permanent armament?

[Margaret Greenwood]

My hon. Friend makes a good case, and I agree with her.

Contemporary nuclear weapons are capable of delivering much greater levels of devastation, and they are eight to 10 pounds heavier than those that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One modern missile with 12 warheads could wipe out a city of 10 million people and leave it uninhabitable. As the International Court of Justice put it back in 1996:

“The destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time. They have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet.”

That is chilling, and it is important to keep hold of that vision of horror when considering Trident renewal.

I recently visited Woodchurch high school in my constituency, where I met the school council, which comprises pupils from each of the different year groups aged between 11 and 16. I asked them who felt that we should renew Trident. There was a slight sense of agitation in the room, and I wondered whether they were just a little shy on the topic. I then asked if anyone was definitely opposed to the renewal, and every hand shot up in the air without hesitation. The decisions that we make about nuclear deterrence today will have an impact on our children for decades, and it is important to remember that we are making a decision for the next generation.

The defence challenges that we now face are different from those in the post-1945 era when the world seemed divided into ideological blocs and the threat came primarily from other states, principally the Soviet Union. An attack was thought of in terms of a conventional military attack or a nuclear strike. Yes, there are concerns over the intentions of President Putin’s Russia. The annexation of Crimea and Russian involvement in the civil war in Ukraine has had a destabilising effect on security in central and eastern Europe, but we must also counter the threat from non-state actors such as terrorist groups. Nuclear weapons will not enable us to meet that threat, and money allocated to Trident could mean that the defence budget is not focused on the most serious challenges that we face. Trident’s replacement is projected to be operational for 30 years from the early 2030s. Is it possible to be sure that it will be an effective deterrent in 2060? There is plenty of evidence to suggest that it will not.

I recently attended a meeting addressed by Lord Browne, the Labour Defence Secretary in 2006-07. He made a compelling argument against the renewal of Trident, focusing particularly on two practical issues: cyber-security and the detection of submarines by enemy forces. He warned that NATO countries cannot be confident that their nuclear defence systems would be able to survive an attack from a sophisticated and well-resourced opponent that was utilising cyber-capabilities in combination with its military and intelligence capabilities.

The Prime Minister spoke about the value of nuclear submarines patrolling our seas unseen and undetected. That may well be the case today, but it is not a given for the future. There is a real threat that with the increase in under-sea detection technology, the location of submarines is more likely to be compromised, thus undermining the fundamental rationale of continuous at-sea deterrence, which relies on submarines remaining undetected. There is also a real risk that advancement in detection technology will outpace any advancement in counter-measures.

It is important to take into account all the jobs that are reliant on Trident, and that a credible industrial strategy is created and a cogent plan signed off before any action is taken to not renew it. Jobs, skills, and incomes should be protected. I believe, however, that there is a real risk that these expensive weapons may become obsolete over the period of their lives, and we would be better off investing in a defence strategy that addresses the real dangers that we face from current strategic threats.

Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Lady is right. As a matter of fact, the situation is even slightly worse than she suggests. The percentage of disabled senior civil servants—or, at any rate, of senior civil servants who have registered themselves as disabled in staff surveys—is only 3.4%. That is much too low, and it reflects the fact that we have not yet been able to remove all the barriers that we need to remove. I am sitting next to the Minister without Portfolio, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who has shown that it is perfectly possible for someone who suffers from a significant disability to reach the highest level in politics, but we need that to be true throughout our public administration because we need to draw on talent from wherever it comes.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

As the Minister confirmed, since the Prime Minister gave himself the power to appoint, 80% of permanent secretaries are men. In the spirit of open government, will the Minister commit to publish the shortlists from which the Prime Minister has made appointments?

[Mr Letwin]

I will go back and talk to colleagues about the methods by which we publish what happens under that procedure. I would like to point out to the Opposition spokesman—[Laughter.] I would like to point out to the Opposition spokesperson that we draw permanent secretaries from the pool of directors general. If we are to draw on that talent, we have to encourage more women to be directors general. As I have said, I am glad that the percentage of women directors general is now up to 37%. We would like to get up to 50% or beyond, and as we do so we will have the talent from which to draw into the permanent secretary ranks, which is obviously where we want women of talent to end up.

Voter Registration

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

That is an incredibly important question. The eligibility requirements were debated extensively in this House. After someone applies to register online, the application is not taken at face value but is checked against Government data to make sure that that person meets the eligibility rules set by this House. That is one reason why there needs to be time between the deadline and polling day—to make sure that exactly the concerns that my hon. Friend raises are met.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

The Minister keeps saying that yesterday’s significantly higher numbers were unprecedented. There were 525,000 applications yesterday and 485,000 on deadline day in 2015. Why then was the system not prepared and able to cope, and is it not now time for automatic registration?

[Matthew Hancock]

The spike was much bigger than the hon. Lady’s figures, which are accurate for the whole day, I suggest, because there was an intense spike after 9 pm. The question for the system is how many people are trying to apply at once, and that figure was three times higher than in the peak before the 2015 general election.

Debate on the Address

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

On this occasion—and on the day Plaid Cymru supported the Labour First Minister in Wales—I am grateful for Plaid Cymru’s support. The issue jumps out of the Gracious Speech as one that will cause political controversy. The voice of the right hon. and learned Member for Harborough is therefore valuable because it sends a signal to the Government that the Bill will not have an easy passage.

The Gracious Speech also covers strengthening the economy to deliver security for working people, increasing the life chances of the most disadvantaged and supporting the development of the northern powerhouse. The Government have support on all three issues, but I ask them to consider what they mean in practice. In my part of the world, we have a claimant count of 2.8% of the population; 23.6% of the population are deemed as being incapacitated, and unemployment is 4.8%. We have major challenges in the steel industry, and with zero-hours contracts and second bedroom occupancy—the so-called bedroom tax. We still have 690,000 people living in poverty in Wales. If the Government are serious about some of the issues that they claim to be serious about in the Gracious Speech, they need to consider some real policy changes to support business and industry, work with the National Assembly and tackle poverty, which is partly caused by current Government policy. In my constituency and elsewhere, poverty is increasing because of Government policy on benefits and unemployment, while taxes for some of the richest people in our society are cut.

If the Government are serious about the northern powerhouse, they need to work closely with the Mersey Dee Alliance in north-east Wales and north-west England to ensure that we get the benefits from whatever the northern powerhouse means. I am pleased to see the Minister for Children and Families in his place. He knows the importance of Crewe and HS2 to north-east Wales. He knows the importance of electrification of the line from Crewe to Chester and onwards to north Wales. He will also know the importance of direct links to Manchester airport to ensure that not only Cheshire but north Wales benefits from the northern powerhouse, and he knows that it is important to reopen the Halton curve quickly to link north Wales to Liverpool airport and Liverpool. Those are all infrastructure projects that are technically badged “the northern powerhouse”. I am still not sure what the northern powerhouse means to the people of Cheshire and north Wales, particularly Flintshire in my constituency, but if it is to mean something, the Government need to flesh out carefully the finances and the long-term infrastructure projects that benefit Cheshire and north-east Wales and contribute to supporting the cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds and others that are critical to the economic success of the north.

If the decision goes wrong on 23 June and we leave the European Union, the north will be particularly hit by that loss of European influence. I am pleased that the referendum is mentioned in the Gracious Speech and I hope that there will be a yes vote on 23 June.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

The decision to close the BIS office in Sheffield and move it to central London has already been mentioned, and my right hon. Friend talks about the infrastructure projects necessary for the northern powerhouse to succeed. Does he agree that senior civil servant and policy-making jobs must be in the north and across the regions, so that they can be the eyes and ears of the northern powerhouse and deliver those vital projects?

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point, and it is important that the northern powerhouse is not just about the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Tatton. That appears to be the northern powerhouse, but in my view it must be backed up and supported by civil servants, and I support my hon. Friend’s wish to maintain a strong presence in Sheffield and the north. North-east Wales looks to Liverpool and Manchester as much as it does to Cardiff for economic growth and activity, and we need cross-regional support on infra- structure projects, and people on hand to work with that.

Those are my initial observations on important issues, but I wish to focus on the points about prisons that were raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Harborough. He was gracious enough to acknowledge that for two years and one month I was prisons Minister when he was the shadow Minister, so I hope that I speak with some experience of dealing with what are difficult challenges in the prison system.

In the Gracious Speech the Justice Secretary indicated that there will be a prisons Bill, and I look forward to that—perhaps I may even make a bid for pre-legislative scrutiny by the Justice Committee, on which I sit. The Bill as trailed so far suggests that there will be a lot of discussion about the autonomy of prison governors to consider a range of issues, and six prisons have been identified by the Government to pilot and trail those reforms. We have prisons with “potential for reform”—whatever that might mean—and the potential for new-build prisons. That comes on a day when the Coates review has announced two statistics that put into context the points made by the right hon. and learned Member for Harborough. For example, today’s review shows that 42% of adult prisoners were excluded from school, and 24% of adult prisoners currently in the prison estate spent some or all of their time as young people in care before they reached the prison system.

Long-term, deep-seated issues have been highlighted by the Coates review and need to be examined by the Prison Service as part of the prisons Bill, but that raises some questions. I will not rule out support for the Bill—I do not yet know what my hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench will think about it—but we must test what it will mean in practice, and now is as good a time as any to do that. What real autonomies will prison governors have at a local level? Will they have autonomy over pay and conditions? If so, that would be a matter of great concern. Will they have autonomy over procurement, education and employment practices? What autonomies will they have, and how will they exercise them in the Prison Service when the Ministry of Justice in central London is managing the prison population and sector as a whole—the hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned many of the pressures on prison population movements.

Who will judge prison governors and monitor their activity? What benchmarks will we set on that prison service, and how will we judge and monitor them? What will be the relationship with the chief inspector of prisons? What outcomes are expected from the six potential reform prisons? How will we judge whether prison governors have made a difference, particularly given that many prisoners in many prisons—I will speak about Wandsworth prison in a moment—have mental health problems or long-standing drug or alcohol problems. Many prisoners had long-standing unemployment problems before being imprisoned, and perhaps do not spend sufficient time in prison to benefit from schemes such as the Timpson scheme in Liverpool, which I had the pleasure of opening in 2006 or 2007 with the brother of the Minister for Children and Families, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Edward Timpson). It is a great scheme—I cannot walk past a Timpson establishment without wondering whether the person working there has been trained and supported by the family and firm. [Interruption.] I do go in sometimes as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

May I first—one of my many unforced errors in the past 24 hours—apologise to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss)? I should of course have welcomed her to the House of Commons and congratulated her on her by-election victory. She has lost no time in speaking up for her constituents in a very powerful and very accomplished way.

Let me say to my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) that, as we announced earlier this year, there are air quality issues that need to be resolved. We are on our way to working out how to resolve them, and when we do, we can come back to the House and announce what will happen next.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

My constituent’s mother was killed in 1981. At the time, it was covered up as a suicide pact, but 18 years later it was uncovered that she had actually been murdered by my constituent’s father and his mistress. I do not think that anyone in this House will be able to imagine the pain and suffering that she and her family have had to endure. They are now having to relive that pain, because ITV is dramatising their whole ordeal, completely against her wishes, using not only the real names of her family but her own real name. I have raised this with ITV and with Ofcom, and, as far as I can see, no rules have been broken, but does the Prime Minister agree that victims’ voices should have a far greater role in any account of their tragedy? Will he meet me and my constituent to discuss what more could have been done in this case and how we can strengthen regulation in future to protect victims?

[The Prime Minister]

I was not aware of the case that the hon. Lady rightly raises. I remember from my time working in the television industry that there are occasions when decisions are made that can cause a huge amount of hurt and upset to families. I will discuss this case with the Culture Secretary to bring it to his attention and see whether there is anything more—apart from the conversations that she has had with ITV and with Ofcom, which is a powerful regulator—that can be done.

Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

I could not have put it better myself. As I have said, there are 800 civil service buildings outside London. We have important targets for developing important strategic hubs for the civil service all over the country, and more people who get out of the Westminster bubble, the better.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

We know that the Minister’s friend the Paymaster General is very close to the Chancellor, and that he therefore likes to insert the words “northern” and “powerhouse” into every speech he makes. However, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), 98% of senior jobs in the northern powerhouse department are now based in London, and—with no sense of irony—Sheffield policy-making jobs in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills have been moved to Whitehall. The test for the Minister, when he finally gets the promotion that he has been seeking and that he so richly deserves, will be whether he has more senior and policy-making civil servants in London or fewer. Does he have it within him to live up to our expectations?

[Robert Halfon]

I genuinely cannot understand the premise of the hon. Lady’s question. She should be proud, as are councils in the north of England, that the northern powerhouse is devolving powers right across the region. We are one of the most radical Governments when it comes to devolution. Her councils in the north support it, and I am sad that she does not.

Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was listening, but I said that much information is in the public domain, and it is in the public interest that it is public, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act. That is my position. I look forward to hearing what the commission has to say about the operational working of the Act to ensure that it is working in the way Parliament intended.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is confusing to hear the Minister claim to be such a fan of transparency, given that the Cabinet Office has set up a commission designed to weaken FOI—an ex-coalition Minister has described that as a “rigged jury”—botched the release of Cabinet papers, watered down consultation rules, and is now being investigated by the Information Commissioner for withholding thousands of items of spending data. If sunlight really is the best disinfectant, why has the Minister now abolished every single senior civil service post with responsibility for transparency?

[Matthew Hancock]

As a matter of fact, we are the most transparent Government ever. What is more, the hon. Lady will be delighted to know that only this morning the Cabinet Office published further spending information to ensure that we keep that mantle.

Historical Cabinet Papers

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this important debate, given that Ministers have so far failed to come and give a statement to the House on why the Cabinet Office papers have been delayed. Does he agree that it is particularly important that the Government are open and transparent about the documents they retain and release because, as of December 2015, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport now has the responsibility to approve the retention of documents on advice from the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives? Therefore, two advisers to the then Thatcher Government—the right hon. Members for West Dorset (Mr Letwin) and for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale)—are now responsible for both the release and the potential retention of information relating to matters pertaining to that Government.

[Richard Burgon]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She is exactly right: these questions matter because the period covered was one of profound political sensitivity and because Ministers responsible for the release of these files were in the thick of it at that time as advisers to senior politicians.

In 2014—the last time there was a comprehensive release of Cabinet papers—we learned that the former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, had lied to the public about the extent of the pit closure plan, her attempt to influence police tactics, and the involvement of MI5 in spying on officials of the National Union of Mineworkers. That information demonstrated the extent to which the Government can use the institutions of the state against ordinary people. It is good for our democracy that the information was released, and it helps the ongoing fight for justice in the coalfield communities. This year, however, with such a small selection of files released, issues of political importance such as the discussions on the poll tax and the black Monday stock market crash have remained secret. Those were decisions that senior Ministers in the current Government were directly involved in.

Thanks to previous releases covering 1985-86, we know that the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin) advised the then Thatcher Government to use Scotland as a testing bed for the hated poll tax, but there the information, sadly, dries up. We do not know how this young adviser, in the teeth of powerful Cabinet opposition, managed to force through one of the most politically catastrophic and socially toxic policies in post-war history. Not only is that of historical interest, but it gives us an insight into the ideology and motives of the Prime Minister’s senior policy chief. We see a clear progression from the right hon. Gentleman’s policy formulation in the 1980s to policy implementation under the current Government.

[Louise Haigh]

On that point, is my hon. Friend aware that in the 1980s the right hon. Member for West Dorset authored an extreme pamphlet for a think-tank that offered suggestions on exactly how to privatise the NHS? Two of those suggestions have now been implemented by this Conservative Government. Does that not prove the direct link between policy formulation under that Government and the policy being implemented by this one, and further emphasise the need for transparency?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Rob Wilson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) on securing this debate. I start by saying, as he did, that this Government are committed to being the most transparent ever and take their commitment under the Public Records Act seriously.

A key plank of our commitment to transparency is our work on releasing files after 20 years, rather than 30 years as was previously the case. I acknowledge openly that this is a really big, major challenge for the Government, which unfortunately we fell short of in December 2015. I hope it will be helpful to the hon. Gentleman and others here today if I respond to their points by setting out first how the Cabinet Office is working to meet its obligations under the Public Records Act, which sets out how and when Government records should be transferred to the National Archives, and explaining why some may sometimes need to be retained.

The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 shortened the period before which files are released from 30 years to 20 years. This means that for a transitional period, two years of files are being reviewed each year, a doubling of the information in scope. In this process, each file undergoes a series of detailed checks to protect, for example, national security and sensitive personal data. This in no way lessens our commitment to transparency but takes time to do properly. This is a significant challenge for all involved. For Departments, it is a doubling of the workload, and the same considerations need to be made before papers are sent to the National Archives.

The National Archives are meeting these challenges head-on, which means extra papers coming through to them with high public demand as the subjects covered are relatively recent. By 2023, this process of reviewing two years of records in one year will be complete.

In December, we transferred a number of 1987 and 1988 files and this formed part of a press event arranged by the National Archives. We will be transferring more shortly, with the aim of completing the transfer of our 1987 and 1988 files as soon as possible. Files up to 1990 will be released throughout the year.

[Louise Haigh]

I am a little confused. The Paymaster General wrote to me a couple of weeks ago saying the delay in the release of Cabinet papers was due to a change in policy by releasing some earlier in 2015, some in December 2015 and some at an unspecified date later this year. Now the Minister is saying that it was due to lack of resources or an increased challenge. Will he confirm whether it is due to a specific change in policy that will occur next year, or lack of resources?

[Mr Wilson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. If she will bear with me, all will become clear because I will set out in painstaking detail the process by which we are handling the matter.

The Cabinet Office was due to transfer all information from 1987 and 1988 by the end of 2015 but, as is clear, we did not manage to do so. Both 1987 and 1988 were eventful years, as we have heard from the hon Gentleman, and this impacted on the Department’s ability to get these files reviewed as quickly as we wanted. Each file is painstakingly checked before transfer, which is not about withholding secrets and covering up inconvenient facts, as the hon. Gentleman alleged. Let me inform hon. Members about the sort of information that must be checked.

Files emanating from No. 10 will cover the whole range of issues that the Government deal with, from benefits to defence spending, overseas trade, support for community groups and a whole host of other things. They will include things like personal information relating to individuals involved, even home addresses, and everything to do with relationships with other countries and national security. On every appearance of such information a careful consultation process takes place, which may result in documents being redacted or retained.

The transfers that have already taken place mean that nearly 70,000 Cabinet Office files or volumes are held by the National Archives, an amazing repository holding over 1,000 years of iconic national documents, which the public can access free. Its online catalogue is the single point of access to 32 million descriptions of records. In 2014-15, there were approaching a quarter of a billion downloads from its collection.

When files reach the National Archives, a number of processes are involved to make information available to as many people as possible—for example, through digitisation. This means an inevitable time lag between the Cabinet Office transferring files to the National Archives and their appearance in the collection. This is why the Cabinet papers for 1987 and 1988 have not yet appeared in the public catalogue although they have been transferred to the National Archives. Another factor is that files are not always transferred in the year that one might expect as they are not assessed for transfer until the date of the last paper on the file. This explains why papers sometimes appear in the National Archives later than expected.

We are aware of the changing landscape of records management. The National Archives, as trusted experts in information and records management, will help to ensure that in an age when more and more of the Government’s records are born-digital, we open more records to the public as soon as possible. To that end, our intention is now to release files more frequently throughout the year, rather than in a single annual event. This means that, from later this year, we will start to release records from 1989 and 1990 in advance of the traditional release at the end of December. Cabinet Office officials are working closely with the National Archives to strengthen the entire process of how and when Cabinet Office files are released to the public.

Throughout 2016, there will be a number of releases from the Cabinet Office to the National Archives, catching up on the 1987 and 1988 records and then working through the 1989 and 1990 papers. I believe this is consistent with our overall transparency objectives, and that the regular releases will be a more effective way to work, particularly in the context of a doubling of the amount of information in scope.

The hon. Member for Leeds East asked several questions about the Cabinet minutes for 1987 and 1988, and papers from the Prime Minister’s Office for the same period. The Cabinet Office has transferred the Cabinet papers and minutes for the period 1987-88 to the National Archives. Some of the Prime Minister’s papers are already with the National Archives, including those made available at the press event in December. Our aim is for the remainder of those that can be transferred to be with the National Archives as soon as possible.

The hon. Gentleman asked about freedom of information, and he mentioned Hillsborough in his opening comments. No Government have done more than this one to shine a light on the truth, after 13 years of a Labour Government who failed to do what was necessary to open up the facts of Hillsborough to the public in the Merseyside area who were demanding access to them. He said that the Government were pushing for a review of freedom of information. Actually, I think the first person to push for such a review was Tony Blair, who mentioned in his autobiography that he was keen to change freedom of information.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the series of statements that appeared at the end of the last Session. I have to remind him that it was a Labour special adviser who, when the party was in government, described a particular day as

“a good day to bury bad news”.

I hope he remembers that phrase; it certainly did not come from the Conservative Government. I know that there is a new Mulder and Scully “X-Files” series out, and I do wonder about the conspiracy theories that sometimes run riot around this place, because in this case, there are no conspiracy theories to be had.

[Louise Haigh]

The Minister has mentioned conspiracy theories. One of our main conspiracy theories is about the advisers that have been involved in both Conservative Governments, whom the Minister has not mentioned. He mentioned a consultation process. I wonder whether the right hon. Member for West Dorset is involved in that consultation process, and whether he has any say over the documents that are retained or released.

[Mr Wilson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. The consultation process is one that officials handle. As far as I am aware—I think I am as aware as I can be on these matters—I do not believe that my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin) has vetoed any of the files that I think the hon. Lady is referring to in her question. But if there is more information that we can provide her with, obviously I would be very happy to write to her to update her.

I will move on to some comments about freedom of information. Freedom of information remains at the heart of transparency and accountability, and it goes hand in hand with the Public Records Act. The Government fully support freedom of information, but after more than a decade of the process in operation, we think it is time that it was reviewed to make sure that it is working effectively for hard-working taxpayers while allowing free and frank advice to be given to decision makers. That is why we have appointed an independent panel to look at the issue and assess how the practical processes of freedom of information can be improved. The commission will publish a report, as the hon. Gentleman knows, as soon as possible after its oral evidence sessions have been conducted. It would not be appropriate for me to pre-empt its work by getting into discussions today about the relative merits of the different parts of the Act.

I will end by making a few comments on the broader question of transparency. The Government take great pride in the fact that the UK leads the world in transparency and open government. I am not the only one who says so. The World Wide Web Foundation’s open data barometer and Open Knowledge’s global open data index ranked the UK No. 1. Over the past five years we have opened up more than 20,000 Government datasets to the public. We publish an unprecedented amount of data about everything from procurement to the gifts received by Ministers, and we continually strive to go even further.

Releasing open data makes the Government more accountable to citizens, helps to improve the efficiency of public services and drives social and economic growth. We have made expenditure data covering more than £188 billion of Government spending available for public scrutiny, and through our renewed Government data programme and our leading role in the international Open Government Partnership we will continue to be one of the most open and transparent Governments in the world. Those are not insignificant achievements, and we want to go even further. In our next Open Government Partnership national action plan, which is due to be published in the summer, we will develop an offer on transparency—including freedom of information—that strengthens the Government’s commitment to open government overall.

In conclusion, this Government are the most transparent Government ever, and we are a world leader in the quantity of information available from a range of sources. I acknowledge that, in common with other Departments, the performance of the Cabinet Office in transferring papers from 1987 and 1988 has not been perfect, as I said at the outset. I am, however, confident that more of that historical information will be available to the public shortly, including the Cabinet Office papers that have already been transferred to the National Archives and will be available very soon. The aim is to complete the transfer of the 1987-88 papers as soon as possible. In future, we will move to release files more frequently throughout the year rather than in a single annual event. That means that before the end of the year, there will be 1989 and 1990 papers in the National Archives.

Question put and agreed to.