Liam Byrne
MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North · Labour · United Kingdom
“The loss of 4,000 jobs at Jaguar Land Rover is a body blow for workers, families and communities across the west midlands, so I commend Richard Parker, the Mayor of the West Midlands, for moving quickly on Monday to put £500,000 on the table to help ensure that everybody gets back to work.”
“I wholeheartedly welcome this well-rounded statement from the Foreign Secretary, and put on record my thanks to the new Prime Minister for the hard yards that I know he has put in over recent days and weeks.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I offer my warmest congratulations to her on her appointment to the role; she will be a brilliant Minister.”
“Let me start with a word of thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), who is not in her place, who said quite rightly that an awful lot has changed since the Bill was first introduced to this House. Indeed, a lot has been revealed over the course of the summer.”
“The effect of new clause 34 would be to ban off-ramping, ban new forms of digital currency transactions and ban memecoins, which are exactly the kind of measures that Ministers now need to bring forward. If we want to take the crypto system out of political finance, this is what we need to do.”
“No doubt we will learn that Mr Cottrell was in fact on the electoral register when that money was passed. No doubt we will discover that his mother, Fiona Cottrell, declared and did not disguise the fact that the money had ultimately come from her son.”
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“This morning, the Bank of England published figures showing that this Government have presided over the worst productivity figures since the late 18th century. If we are to be masters of the fourth industrial revolution, as we were of the first, the Government will have to do an awful lot better than this.”
“Is it DEL—departmental expenditure limit—funding or loan guarantees? Is it intended to deliver grants or loans? When does that money come online? Is it, in other words, spin over substance? Secondly, the Minister will know that artificial intelligence will accelerate the destruction of existing jobs, so when will we have a White Paper on the future of work? This will be a G20 agenda item in November. We have heard nothing about the Government’s plans to explore this and put in place adequate protections for workers today. Thirdly, where is the strategy to harness Government procurement, with a cross-Whitehall futures unit, to use the power of Government to drive forward this agenda? That is the way that every other western, and eastern, nation drives its science and tech investment. Why are the Government not doing this?”
“Indeed, the Government prayed in aid Jérôme Pesenti in their strategy this morning, but he was told by the Government that he was not allowed to look at the maths curriculum, as he told the House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee when he was giving evidence to its inquiry. That is why we call for science spend not at 2.4% of GDP, but up at 3%. We think there should be universal provision of networks at 30 megabits per second, a Bill of digital rights to restore trust and a national education service to restore the skills base. In the interests of brevity, Mr Speaker, I have some specific questions for the Minister. First, the sector plan makes great play of a £2.5 billion investment fund delivered by the British Business Bank. Is this just for AI, or for innovation generally?”
“Rather, a top-down earmarked amount of cash has already been handed out to research councils. That is fine as far as it goes, but it is an awful long way short of the £1 billion of funding that President Macron has just announced to support artificial intelligence in France. As the Minister knows, a strong AI sector in this country will be built on three basic foundations: good networks, which support the internet of things; trust, which supports big data; and skills, which require a great education system. Today, our science spend is, I am afraid, in the second league, our digital networks are lamentable, our framework of trust is hopelessly out of date—in fact, we still have no date for the Data Protection Bill returning to this House—and our skills base is alarmingly thin.”
“I am grateful for that guidance, Mr Speaker. It is always good to see the Minister in her place. She certainly knows how to pack the House with her statements. I am sorry that I am not able to respond to the detail of her statement, but it only came to me by email at 11.25 am, so I was not able to see it in advance. None the less, it is good of her to show up and present her plans, which were first presented to The Times , rather than to Parliament. It is welcome that the Government have now decided to step into the breach where a policy should be. It is a shame that the Minister has allowed the French, the Americans, the South Koreans and the Chinese to get there first, but better late than never. From what I can divine from what the Minister said to the House, no new money has been announced today.”
“In the 19th century, it was the marriage of design and engineering brilliance in York that ensured it was the centre of the railway industry. Does my hon. Friend take inspiration from that?”
“We hope that the Government will look closely at our results.”
“Other countries are racing ahead of us in terms of the targets that they are putting in place for broadband access. I was privileged to visit South Korea last week, where they have 60% fibre to the premises. What is it here in Britain? It is 3%. Not only do they have much greater penetration of fibre than we do, they have not one but three mobile networks delivering 100% broadband access, and they will commercialise 5G not in 2020, but this year. That is why the Government should be far more ambitious about universal service obligation for broadband access. We proposed 30 megabits per second, and proposed putting £1.6 billion behind that. The Government should be more ambitious than they are today. We will soon go to consultation on what it would take in terms of public investment to commercialise widespread 5G.”
“It is the foundation of what is now the most advanced digital society on Earth. The Government need to put in place those important foundations of trust. The second point is on infrastructure. It is not just here in the Houses of Parliament where the digital infrastructure is appalling. I do not know about you, Ms McDonagh, but I certainly cannot get a mobile signal in my office, on the fifth floor of Portcullis House, and I know that frustration is widely shared, but it is not just a problem here. In fact, the areas of this country that Brexit will hit hardest are those where download speeds are slowest. The parts of the country that will be hurt most by Brexit are therefore the least prepared to prosper in the new digital society that we are all so much looking forward to.”
“How do we ensure that we democratise both the protections that we need and the progress that we want to share? That is why a Bill of digital rights is so important. It is important that the Government pick up on one crucial component of trust: the electronic ID system—a public choice for EID—that we currently lack. At the moment, public data is scattered between the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the Passport Office, the Department for Work and Pensions, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and the Government Gateway, which I see the Minister’s Department has now claimed. At the moment, that information is so disjointed that we cannot use it as citizens to create a secure public EID system, as they have done in Estonia. That has been the key to Estonia’s creation of 3,000 public e-services and 5,000 private e-services.”
“The truth is that we are going into a period of rapid regulation and re-regulation. That is perfectly normal and sensible. There was not just one Factory Act during the course of the 19th century; there were 17. We regulated again and again as the technology and the economics of production changed. That is what we are about to do in this country, yet if we do not have a clear statement of principles, that regulation will be difficult for anybody, frankly, to anticipate. It should not simply be about our rights as consumers; it should be, as the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) said, about basic equalities. In South Korea, they want to use wearable technology to increase life expectancy by three years. How do we ensure that those new privileges are not simply the preserve of those who can afford the technology?”
“That country is now backed by the biggest science spend on Earth. There are countries around the world moving much faster than us, and if we want to ensure that this great superpower of the steam age does not become an also-ran in the cyber age, the Government will need to make a number of important policy reforms and changes of direction, three of which I will touch on very quickly. First, we have to ensure that the digital economy in this country has a much more robust foundation of trust. Trust is the foundation of trade; it always has been and always will be. However, as we have seen in the debate surrounding Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, that trust is evaporating very quickly, which is why we need a clear statement of principles and a clear Bill of digital or data rights for the 21st century.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms McDonagh. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing the debate. I recognise the enormous progress that many of us have celebrated this afternoon, but I want to sound a note of warning about becoming complacent. For all the progress that we have talked about in our constituencies and around the country, the truth is that, across the horizon, others are moving much faster. We have heard about some of the big technology firms that are troubling us from the west coast of the United States, but look east, to Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. Look at the fact that China is now not only the country that invented paper currency, but will soon become the first cashless society, where everybody pays for everything on WeChat.”
“We are the nation of the industrial revolution, but if we do not change course soon, this foundation of the industrial revolution will not be the leader in the fourth industrial revolution.”
“By the age of 52, a working-class man in this country has paid £103,000 in national insurance. What happens if he loses his job? He gets sent down the job centre like everybody else, with no extra help, retraining or reskilling for the digital economy. Yet this is the country of the Open University, the Workers’ Educational Association, Unionlearn, and great education entrepreneurs such as Dr Sue Black and Martha Lane Fox. We should be bringing those players together to create a different kind of lifelong learning for the 21st century. This is a nation of scientific genius. We have been burying our sovereigns with our scientists since we interred Isaac Newton over the road in Westminster abbey. We are the only country in the world that could make films about great scientists such as Turing and Hawking.”
“He brought engravers and artists from France, Germany and central Europe. That was the strength of the business; it married design brilliance and technical brilliance. What do we have today, 250 years later? In Jaguar Land Rover, we have a company producing vehicles where the infotainment system is now worth more than the engine. Design brilliance and technical excellence need to go together, but design brilliance is being smashed out of the curriculum at the moment. I speak as a father of a boy going through his GCSEs, so I see it first-hand when I go home. Young people are at the sharp end of the jobs risk of automation—that was confirmed by the International Monetary Fund yesterday, and by the OECD a week or two ago. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West mentioned, older workers are also crucial.”
“Well, lucky you! If the west midlands had enjoyed a per capita bung on the same level as Northern Ireland, an extra £600 million would be coming into my region; I know I am not the only one to look at the deal that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues skilfully struck with some jealousy. The final component is skills. My hon. Friends the Members for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell) made brilliant speeches about the importance of skills. I come from the city that is home to Soho House. Soho Manufactory was the first great factory, built in 1766. People have heard, of course, of James Watt, but many forget Matthew Boulton. It was Boulton who put together not only the best engineers in the world, but the best designers in the world. Where did he get them from?”
“Something like 40,000 different data controllers were invited to respond to the consultation that led to the regulations, and 2,000 data controllers responded, but some affected parties, including minor stakeholders such as the Local Government Association, were not invited to contribute their views. That is a serious problem, because local authorities are some of the most important data controllers in the country, and they face a 480% increase in their charges. It is not clear to me that the consultation was well organised. Events have moved on—I have some sympathy with the Minister about the fast-moving nature of her brief. I am afraid that the basics of the consultation should have been done differently, which is why I object to these regulations.”
“Friend the Member for North Durham rightly said, is that Government have declared that there will be a series of exemptions to the regulations sometime in the future. The Minister is inviting the Committee to agree the regulations this afternoon, and yet the exemptions will be organised and implemented sometime down the track. I do not think that is the right way round. The Minister should have organised a consultation on the exemptions before the regulations came to the Committee, and the exemptions should have been hard-wired into the regulations before the Committee was asked to agree to them. The most significant problem that I want to flag up for the Minister is the appalling lack of consultation with local authorities.”
“The idea that the Information Commissioner can investigate companies such as Facebook with a budget of £30 million is, frankly, fanciful. We had a debate last week about the need to empower the Information Commissioner. When the Secretary of State intervened in the House a couple of weeks ago, he gave many of us the impression that that would happen under the Data Protection Bill, but the Minister walked back from that commitment in the Bill Committee last week. If we do not equip the Information Commissioner with the powers she needs to do her job and investigate some of the biggest companies on Earth, we need to look again at the budget and resources she has to do that job. The second issue, as my hon.”
“It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, I think, Mr Bone. I want to develop the points rehearsed by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham and the hon. Member for Windsor. The Minister needs to rethink the consultation and these regulations for three reasons. First, as the hon. Member for Windsor rightly said, they are based on a budget of about £30 million for the Information Commissioner, which is an increase of about one third. The budget was set before the events of the past couple of weeks, when the implementation of GDPR was in mind. We did not foresee that the Information Commissioner would have to struggle for literally a week to get a search warrant to get into the offices of Cambridge Analytica.”
“The Prime Minister will know that, since General Gerasimov updated the playbook of Russian active measures, intervention in democracy abroad has been one of the mainstays of Russian activity around the world. Our national security strategy does not include an explicit objective to defend the integrity of our democracy, and our election law defences are hopelessly out of date. Will she now update that national security strategy and, crucially, update the election law, so that our regulators have the power to keep our democracy safe?”
“See the explanatory statement for Amendment 65. Amendment 68, in clause 183, page 106, line 11, at beginning insert “rights under”.— (Margot James.) See the explanatory statement for Amendment 65. Clause 183, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill . Clause 184 Data subject’s rights and other prohibitions and restrictions Amendment made: 69, in clause 184, page 106, line 41, leave out “(including as applied by Chapter 3 of that Part)”.— (Margot James.) This amendment is consequential on Amendment 4. Clause 184, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill . Ordered , That clause 184 be transferred to the end of line 39 on page 105.—( Margot James .) Clause 185 Framework for Data Processing by Government Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.”
“Amendment 64, in clause 183, page 105, line 44, leave out “certain rights” and insert “the data subject’s rights under Articles 77, 78 and 79 of the GDPR (rights to lodge complaints and to an effective judicial remedy)”. In words summarising Article 80(1) of the GDPR, this amendment adds information about the rights of data subjects that may be exercised by representative bodies under that provision. Amendment 65, in clause 183, page 106, line 7, leave out “under the following provisions” and insert “of a data subject”. This amendment and Amendments 66, 67 and 68 tidy up Clause 183(2). Amendment 66, in clause 183, page 106, line 9, at beginning insert “rights under”. See the explanatory statement for Amendment 65. Amendment 67, in clause 183, page 106, line 10, at beginning insert “rights under”.”
“9));”.— (Margot James.) In a list of functions of the Secretary of State in relation to people sentenced to detention, this amendment removes a reference to section 73 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1968 (which has been repealed) and inserts a reference to Article 45 of the Criminal Justice (Children) (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 (which replaced it). Schedule 17, as amended, agreed to . Clause 182 ordered to stand part of the Bill . Clause 183 Representation of data subjects Amendments made: 63, in clause 183, page 105, line 42, leave out “80” and insert “80(1)”. This amendment changes a reference to Article 80 of the GDPR into a reference to Article 80(1) and is consequential on NC2.”
“Amendments made: 128 in schedule 17, page 206, line 21, at end insert— “ Relevant health records 1A ‘Relevant health record’ means a health record which has been or is to be obtained by a data subject in the exercise of a data subject access right.”. See the explanatory statement for Amendment 127. Amendment 181 in schedule 17, page 207, line 22, leave out sub-paragraph (iii) and insert— “(iii) Article 45 of the Criminal Justice (Children) (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 (S.I. 1998/1504 (N.I.”
“I thank the Minister for that explanation. She is absolutely right to say that subject access requests are extremely powerful in how they operate. It is therefore such a shame that they are not a right or a power that the Government will see fit to extend to newcomers to this country, who will seek to use and have in the past sought to use subject access requests to access important information about their immigration status and history, and the decision-making processes in the Home Office and UK Border Agency about their immigration status. I am sure that we will come back to this debate on Report, and I hope that it is something that the Minister will reflect on. Amendment 127 agreed to.”
“I invite the Minister to say a bit more about how she will reflect on a very different strategy for appointing and managing data controllers in the NHS, compared with the strategy that currently pertains in those three big administrative parts of Her Majesty’s Government.”
“If someone is bringing a tribunal case or wants to contest something about benefits, sometimes the fastest way to do that is to file a subject access request just to get in one place how HMRC or the DWP did the calculations. Like the rest of us, the Minister will have had surgery cases along those lines. The first thing to do is to try to create a single picture of how the Department came to the decisions it made, which have a material impact on our benefits, health and wellbeing. If the only way to assemble that full picture is to file a subject access request right the way up the chain to a civil servant at the top of the organisation, that is a very slow and fraught process.”
“The big Departments—the DWP, the MOD and HMRC—do not operate that strategy. It would be useful to know whether the Government, in the codes of practice that they issue to Departments, will persist with the practice of nominating data controllers at the very top, so that there will be a single data controller in a very large Department with ultimate responsibility for enforcing the Bill right the way through some of the biggest and most complex organisations on earth. The Minister will know, having long been in her role, that all kinds of problems arise, particularly in the DWP, when information is sought, for example, for tribunal cases.”
“The challenge that that creates for people who seek to exercise their data rights under this Bill is that subject access requests or other requests go into the Department, and it takes for ever to get a response. That is not a reflection on the quality of the civil servants who run the Departments; it is simply that they are sitting on top of millions of records—potentially hundreds of millions of bits of data—and the records may be held or processed by thousands of people operating at the frontline of a particular business. The way we get around that problem in the national health service, which is probably the biggest Government data processor in the country, is that the data processor is often nominated at the trust level. The data controller may be a clinical commissioning group or an NHS hospital trust.”
“I seek a bit of reflection and clarification from the Minister on this point. Clause 185 touches on the way in which the data processing regime operates for Her Majesty’s Government. Within Her Majesty’s Government, there are three very significant Departments that employ tens of thousands of people and process millions of bits of data every year. The three big data-processing parts of Her Majesty’s Government are the Department for Work and Pensions, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Ministry of Defence. Very often, the formal data controller is the person who sits at the top of the office. Sometimes it is someone who has a relationship with the accounting officer at the top of the Department.”
“My concern is how we practically operationalise this in a way that allows us continually to strengthen and improve the service that we provide to our constituents. It is very hard for us to do that if we have a data management regime operationalised by Her Majesty’s Government that gets in the way. When does the Minister expect to issue this framework? How will she ensure that there is a period of soft consultation with, perhaps, the Speaker’s Committee here in the House so that we are not presented with a final draft of a document that we have 40 days to consider, moan about and make representations about, all of which will then basically be ignored because the approval process requires an up-down vote at the end.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for taking those points on board. I suppose it begs the question of when she thinks we might see this framework. The process set out in the clause is a wise and practical course of action. We all have constituency experience that could have a bearing on how this piece of guidance is drafted and presented. We have the luxury of serving our constituents week in, week out. That is not a privilege that the civil servants who are asked to draft these frameworks enjoy. It is important that the Minister goes through a good process, which allows her not to present the House with a fait accompli or something for an up and down motion. That will not be in any of our interests.”
“If, for example, a code of practice is brought forward that says, “For the DWP, the data controller is going to be the accounting officer of the Department or someone associated with the accounting officer of the Department,” that is not going to be a practical strategy for operationalising this Bill within a Department as big and complicated as the DWP. So it may not be possible. We have to accept that. We have to accept the way statutory instruments are put through this place, and the political reality of that. Let us be mature about that. However, we have a belt-and-braces approach set out in clause 187, in that we have the chance to review it. Perhaps the Minister could say a word about how frequently she expects to review and update the legislation, so that it continually improves in the light of experience?”
“The only issue arising from this clause is the frequency with which the Minister expects the framework to be updated. I welcome the steer that she has given the Committee about how clause 186(5) will be operationalised, but that does not quite get round the problem that I am concerned about. Sometimes, and it has been known to happen, regulations get somewhat hard wired before they are presented to the House. Although it is in the Bill, sometimes that 40-day consultation period does not provide an opportunity to revise and update a measure if we do not think that it is practical.”
“We do not yet know, because the Mueller inquiry has not been completed, who was paying for the dark social ads targeted at individuals, as allowed by Cambridge Analytica’s methodology. The reality is that under Facebook’s privacy policy, and under the law as it stood at the time, it is unlikely that the collection and repurposing of that data was illegal. I understand that the data was collected through an app that was about personality tests, and then re-deployed for election targeting. My understanding of the law is that that was not technically illegal, but I will come on to where I think the crime actually lies.”
“We now come to offences, and crucially in clause 189, the question of penalties for offences. The real world has provided us with some tests for the legislation over the past few days. We have reviewed clauses 189 to 192 again in the light of this week’s news. Some quite serious questions have been provoked by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the revelations about the misuse of data that was collected through an app that sat on the Facebook platform. For those who missed it, the story is fairly simple. A Cambridge-based academic created an app that allowed the collection not only of personal data but of data associated with one’s friends on Facebook. The data was then transferred to Cambridge Analytica, and that dataset became the soft code platform on which forensic targeting was deployed during the American presidential elections.”
“I mentioned this morning that I am concerned that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office may be bringing some of them together for its computational propaganda conference somewhere in the countryside this weekend. The point I really want the Minister to address is whether she is absolutely content that the sanctions proposed under the clause are sufficient to deter and prosecute the kind of misbehaviour, albeit still only alleged, that has been in the news this week, which raises real concerns.”
“I very much hope that the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport reflects on our exchange on the Floor of the House this morning and uses the information he has about public contracts to do a little more work to expose who is in the network of individuals associated with Cambridge Analytica and where other companies may be implicated in this scandal. We know, because it has said so, that Cambridge Analytica is in effect a shell company—it is in effect a wholly owned subsidiary of SCL Elections Ltd—but we also know that it has an intellectual property sharing agreement with other companies, such as AggregateIQ. Mr Alexander Nix, because he signed the non-disclosure agreement, was aware of that. There are relationships between companies around Cambridge Analytica that extend far and wide.”
“I say that because we know that the companies that contract with organisations such as Cambridge Analytica are often shell companies, so a fine that is cast as a percentage of turnover is not necessarily a sufficient disincentive for people to break the law. That is why I ask the Minister again to consider reviewing the clause and to ask herself, her officials and her Government colleagues whether we should consider a sanction of a custodial sentence where people get in the way of an investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office. I am afraid that such activities will continue.”
“Of the two or three things that concerned me most this week, one was how on earth it took the Information Commissioner so long to get the warrant she wanted to search the Cambridge Analytica offices. The Minister may want to say a word about whether that warrant has now been issued. That time lag begs the question whether there is a better way of giving the Information Commissioner the power to conduct such investigations. As we rehearsed in an earlier sitting, the proposed sanctions are financial, but the reality is that many of Cambridge Analytica’s clients are not short of cash—they are not short of loose change—so even the proposed new fines are not necessarily significant enough.”
“I read his statement when it finally materialised on Facebook last night, and it concerned me that there was not one word of apology to Facebook users in it. There was an acknowledgement that there had been a massive data breach and a breach of trust, but there was not a single word of apology for what had happened or for Facebook basically facilitating and enabling it. That tells me that we simply will not be able to rely on Facebook self-policing adherence to data protection policies. The hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster is absolutely right—that is why the Bill is absolutely necessary—but the question about the clause is whether the sanctions for misbehaviour are tough enough.”
“Absolutely. That is why the European Commission has been working on it for so long. Today’s legislation incorporates a bit of European legislation into British law. The crime that may have been committed is the international transfer of data. It is highly likely that data collected here in the UK was transferred to the United States and deployed—weaponised, in a way—in a political campaign in the United States. It is not clear that that is legal. The scandal has knocked about $40 billion off the value of Facebook. I noted with interest that Mr Zuckerberg dumped a whole load of Facebook stock the weekend before the revelations on Monday and Tuesday, and no doubt his shareholders will want to hold him to account for that decision.”
“I was listening carefully to the Minister’s reply. She said that the sanction is an unlimited fine in England and Wales. Let us take the hypothetical case of Cambridge Analytica, which is a one-man shell company, in effect; in the UK, it is wholly owned by SCL Elections. I am concerned about what happens if that holding company—let us say it is SCL Elections—is registered outside England and Wales, in the United States or Uruguay, for example? Will the fine bite on the one-man shell company, Cambridge Analytica? If so, the shell company will just go out of business—the directors will be struck off and that will be the end of it. That is not much of a sanction.”
“My reading of the extraterritoriality provisions is that the implementation of GDPR and the sanctions around it may well bite in Europe—we will get on to this issue in the debate on extraterritoriality, as the Minister has said—but where companies are registered in, heaven forbid, various tax havens around the world such as Panama or Belize, will the Information Commissioner be able to, in effect, bring prosecutions that will result in action biting on a director of a holding company domiciled somewhere abroad, such as Belize? That is a pretty plausible scenario. Again, this touches on whether the sanctions in the Bill are sufficient to deter the kind of misbehaviour that we now know is running loose around the wild west that the Secretary of State described.”
“The debate presents what is potentially a good opportunity to offer a flow of advice to the Minister, if I might pose my question like this: if a company based in the UK has committed an offence, but its holding company is based somewhere else, in what way will clause 191 bite not on the UK operations, but on the holding company elsewhere?”
“I would be grateful if the Minister wrote to me on that this afternoon, because if there are deficiencies we will have to get on with preparing amendments for consideration on Report. Question put and agreed to. Clause 191 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clauses 192 to 195 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 196 Tribunal Procedure Rules Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.”
“Questions have arisen on the procedure rules associated with tribunals. The Opposition are concerned that the rights conferred in the Bill are rights in reality, not in theory. That is why we moved important amendments earlier, which were unwisely rejected by the Government, on collective forms of class action. If we are to ensure that our constituents genuinely have access to the kind of justice mechanisms set out in the clause, we are obviously required to confront the reality that people will sometimes not have the resources for the financing of solicitors or representatives to help them to make their cases. Will the Minister say a word about whether our constituents will have access to resources such as legal aid to fight those cases in a tribunal?”
“That is a helpful explanation. It is obvious from the Minister’s response that those tribunal rules will be incredibly important in providing democratic access to justice where our constituents have been maligned and their data rights abused. The tribunal procedure rules, given what she has said, will be of great interest to right hon. and hon. Members. Will the Minister clarify what oversight and scrutiny we may have in the House of those tribunal procedure rules, or whether they are purely rules that are the child of the tribunal authorities? Are they something the tribunal authorities can just issue, or is there some oversight, amendment or improvement that we in the House can provide?”