Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

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

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, with so many codes of practice flying around it would not be hard to lose one in the crowd, but this one stands out. With this amendment, we are suggesting to the Government that there is a need at the top of the pyramid for a code of practice which looks at the whole question of data ethics and morality. We discussed this topic in earlier sittings of the Committee and I think we were of one mind that there was a gap in the overall architecture of the organisations supporting data processing, which concerned us, in the sense that there was a need for an expert body.

The body could be some sort of combination along the lines of the HFEA or the Committee on Climate Change. It would have a duty to look at the moral and ethical issues affecting data collection and use, and be able to do some blue-sky thinking and to provide a supervisory approach to the way in which thinking on these matters would have to go. We are all aware, as has been mentioned many times, that this is a fast-moving technology in an area full of change where people feel a bit concerned about where their data is and how it is being looked at. They are worried that they do not have sufficient control or understanding of the processes involved.

The amendment suggests to the Government a data ethics code of practice which I hope they will look at with some care. It would begin to provide a hand of support to individuals who are concerned about their data and how it has been processed. Under this code of practice the commissioner could set out the moral and ethical issues, rather than the practical day-to-day stuff. It would focus on duties of care and need to provide examples of where best practice can be found. It would increase the security of personal data and ensure that the access to its use and sharing were transparent, and that the purposes of data processing were communicated to data subjects.

Some codes of this type already exist. I think that the Royal Statistical Society has been behind a number of codes on the use of our overall statistics, such as that operated within the OSS. Having read that code, I was struck by how apposite it was to some of the issues faced in the data-processing community. Some of the wording of this amendment comes from that, while other wording comes from think tanks and others who are working in this field. It will also come as no surprise to the Committee that some of the detail in the code’s latter subsections about privacy settings, minimisation standards and the language of terms and conditions also featured in the proposed code recommended to the Committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in relation to children’s use of the internet and how their data is treated. The amendment meets other interests and examples of activity. It seems to fulfil a need, which is becoming more pressing every day, and is ambitious in its attempt to try to make sure that whatever regulatory and statutory provisions are in place, there will also be a wider dimension employed, which I think we will increasingly be part of.

I do not expect the Government to accept the amendment tout court, because it needs a lot more work. I fully accept that the drafting is a bit rough at the edges, despite the fact that we spent a lot of time in the Public Bill Office trying to get it right. I have already explained that I am not very good at synthesising in the way that the Bill team obviously is. I have no doubt that when he responds the Minister will be able to encapsulate in a few choice words what I have been struggling to say over the past three or four sentences—he nods, so it is clearly going to hit me again. I hope that he will take away from this short debate that this is an issue that will not go away. It is an issue that we need to address, and it may be that the new body, which was, I think, generally accepted by the Committee as something that we should move to in short order, might take on this as its first task. I beg to move.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, is too modest about his drafting—I think that this is one of the most important amendments to the Bill that we have seen to date. I am just sorry that we were not quick enough off the mark to put our name to it. I do not know which hand the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, is using—there seem to be a certain number of hands involved in this—but anybody who has read Jonathan Taplin’s Move Fast and Break Things, as I did over the weekend, would be utterly convinced of the need for a code of ethics in these circumstances. The increasing use of data in artificial intelligence and algorithms means that we need to be absolutely clear about the ethics involved in that application. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned a number of codes that he has based this amendment on, but what I like about it is that it does not predicate any particular code at this stage. It just talks about the desirable architecture of the code. That makes it a very robust amendment.

Like the noble Lord, I have looked at various other codes of ethics. For instance, the IEEE has rather a good code of ethics. This is all of a piece with the stewardship council, the data ethics body that we debated in the previous day in Committee. As the Royal Society said, the two go together. A code of ethics goes together with a stewardship council, data ethics committee or whatever one calls it. You cannot have one without the other. Going forward, whether or not we agree today on this amendment, it is very clear that we need to keep coming back to this issue because this is the future. We have to get it right, and we cannot prejudice the future by not having the right ethical framework.

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

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

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


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

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for tabling this amendment, which allows us to return to our discussions on data ethics, which were unfortunately curtailed on the last occasion. The noble Lord invited me to give him a few choice words to summarise his amendments. I can think of a few choice words for some of his other amendments, but today I agree with a lot of the sentiment behind this one. It is useful to discuss this very important issue, and I am sure we will return to it. The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, brought the 1931 Highway Code into the discussion, which was apposite, as I think the present Highway Code is about to have a rewrite due to autonomous vehicles—it is absolutely right, as he mentioned, that these codes have to be future-proofed. If there is one thing we are certain of, it is that these issues are changing almost by the day and the week.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has rightly highlighted a number of times during our consideration of the Bill that the key issue is the need for trust between individuals and data controllers. If there is no trust in what is set up under the Bill, then there will not be any buy-in from the general public. The noble Lord is absolutely right on that. That is why the Government are committed to setting up an expert advisory body on data ethics. The noble Lord mentioned the HFEA and the Committee on Climate Change, which are interesting prior examples that we are considering. I mentioned during our last discussion that the Secretary of State was personally leading on this important matter. He is committed to ensuring that just such a body is set up, and in a timely manner.

However, although I agree with and share the intentions that the noble Lord has expressed through this amendment, which other noble Lords have agreed with, I cannot agree with the mechanism through which he has chosen to express them. When we previously debated this topic, I was clear that we needed to draw the line between the function of an advisory ethics body and the Information Commissioner. The proposed ethics code in this amendment is again straddling this boundary.

Our new data protection law as found in this Bill and the GDPR will already require data controllers to do many of the things found in this amendment. Securing personal data, transparency of processing, clear consent, and lawful sharing and use are all matters set out in the new law. The commissioner will produce guidance, for that is already one of her statutory functions and, where the law is broken, the commissioner will be well equipped with enforcement powers. The law will be clear in this area, so all this amendment will do is add a layer of complexity.

The Information Commissioner’s remit is to provide expert advice on applying data protection law. She is not a moral philosopher. It is not her role to consider whether data processing is addressing inequalities in society or whether there are public benefits in data processing. Her role is to help us comply with the law to regulate its operation, which involves fairly handling complaints from data subjects about the processing of their personal data by controllers and processors, and to penalise those found to be in breach. The amendment that the noble Lord has tabled would extend the commissioner’s remit far beyond what is required of her as a UK supervisory authority for data protection and, given the breadth of the code set out in his amendment, would essentially require the commissioner to become a regulator on a much more significant scale than at present.

This amendment would stretch the commissioner’s resources and divert from her core functions. We need to examine the ethics of how data is used, not just personal data. However, the priority for the commissioner is helping us to implement the new law to ensure that the UK has in place the comprehensive data protection regime that we need and to help to prepare the UK for our exit from the EU. These are massive tasks and we must not distract the commissioner from them.

There is of course a future role for the commissioner to work in partnership with the new expert group on ethics that we are creating. We will explore that further once we set out our plans shortly. It is also worth noting that the Bill is equipped to future-proof the commissioner to take on this role: under Clause 124, the Secretary of State may by regulation require the commissioner to produce appropriate codes of practice. While the amendment has an arbitrary shopping list, much of which the commissioner is tasked with already, the Bill allows for a targeted code to be developed as and when the need arises.

The Government recognise the need for further credible and expert advice on the broader issues of the ethical use of data. As I mentioned last week, it is important that the new advisory body has a clearly defined role focused on the ethics of data use and gaps in the regulatory landscape. The body will as a matter of necessity have strong relationships with the Information Commissioner and other bodies that have a role in this space. For the moment, with that in mind, I would be grateful if the noble Lord withdrew his amendment. As I say, we absolutely understand the reasons behind it and we have taken on board the views of all noble Lords in this debate.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, do the Minister or the Government yet have a clear idea of whether the power in the Bill to draw up a code will be invoked, or whether there will be some other mechanism?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

At the moment, I do not think there is any anticipation for using that power in the near future, but it is there if necessary in the light of the broader discussions on data ethics.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

So the Minister believes it is going to be the specially set-up data ethics body, not the powers under the Bill, that would actually do that?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I do not want to be prescriptive on this because the data ethics body has not been set up. We know where we think it is going, but it is still to be announced and the Secretary of State is working on this. The legal powers are in the Bill, and the data ethics body is more likely to be an advisory body.