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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“I too pay tribute to the Committee. I also pay tribute to The Guardian newspaper and Carole Cadwalladr for pursuing this with such utter relentlessness, despite the harassment that she has received. If true, these allegations provide an utter indictment of the permissive environment that this Government have created, which has allowed the data giants in this country to be both careless and carefree in their misuse of data. If they are true, 50 million data records have been misused in a way that means rights have been breached, but also in a way that could have affected the outcome of elections and referendums. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for considering amendments to the Data Protection Bill. Will he confirm that he will bring forward amendments for stronger powers for the Information Commissioner?”
“This is a wise and carefully crafted amendment. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is especially needed because the Government have rather unwisely decided not to incorporate article 8 into British law, which means there is a risk of courts in Europe and Britain interpreting data protection regimes differently, leading to divergence in future?”
“I hope that the Government will accept the amendment.”
“Therefore, if the Government wanted to do away with the risk to any future adequacy agreements, they would look for any and every opportunity to create bridges between the EU data protection regime and the British regime. The more bridges that are put in place, and the more girders that yoke us together in this field of public policy, the better. Companies will consider whether regulatory harmonisation in data protection will continue when they make investment decisions in the technology space in the UK. I am afraid that that is now a fact of economic life. The simpler and faster the Government can help companies take those decisions, by putting beyond dispute and doubt any future adequacy agreement, the better. It is in our common interest to try to create stronger links than the Bill offers.”
“It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I rise to support my hon. Friend on his excellent, very helpful amendment. Earlier in the week we had a debate about the wisdom of incorporating article 8 into the Bill. I want to underline that we now have two different foundations for privacy that will operate post-Brexit in Europe and in the UK. The law is not fixed in aspect; it is a dynamic body of thought and ideas, and in the years to come there is a risk that courts in Europe and in the UK will diverge in how they interpret those fundamental principles. That risk is all the more profound in this area of public policy because technology is moving so quickly.”
“The Minister seemed to rest her argument on the need to preserve the Information Commissioner’s discretion, which implies that she is trying to protect the commissioner’s ability to go her own way. That will not help us to secure, lock down or nail to the floor an adequacy agreement in years to come. It will put an adequacy agreement at risk.”
“Article 81 basically allows group or class actions to be taken, and article 82 says that the national law can allow representative bodies to bring proceedings. The challenge with the way in which the Government propose to activate that power is that the organisation bringing the class action must seek a positive authorisation and people must opt in. The risk is that that will create a burden so large that many organisations will simply not step up to the task.”
“Friend the Member for Bristol North West was right to celebrate the strength of our current Information Commissioner, but the Government have not blessed the Information Commissioner with unlimited resources, and that will not change in the foreseeable future. What that means is that in the last year for which we have information—2016-17—the Information Commissioner issued only 16 civil monetary penalties for data breaches. That is a very small number. We think we need a regime that allows citizens to bring actions in court. That would multiply the power of the Information Commissioner. Article 80 of the GDPR addresses that problem in a couple of ways, and the Minister has alluded to them.”
“is a case in point. It had one of the biggest data breaches so far known, but it took many months before the truth came out. That has been true of Government partners, too. Sometimes a lesser offence is admitted to. There is muttering about a particular problem and then, as the truth unfolds, we hear that a massive data breach has taken place. The reality is that these firms are by and large going unpunished. Although the Bill proposes some new remedies of a significant scale, unless those remedies can be sought by ordinary citizens in a court, they frankly are not worth the paper they are printed on. To underline that point, I remind the Committee that often we look to the Information Commissioner to take the lead in prosecuting these offences. My hon.”
“We think that the argument is clear cut, so we do not see why the Government have chosen to implement something of a half-measure. The Bill gives us the opportunity to put in place an effective, efficient and world-leading form of redress to ensure that data protection rights are not breached. The reality is that large-scale data breaches are now part and parcel of life. They affect not only the private sector but the private sector, which is partnering with Government. We have seen a number of data breaches among Government partners where financial information has been leaked. The reality is that data protection breaches around the world are growing in number and size. What is particularly egregious is that many private sector companies admit to the scale of a data breach only many years after the offence has taken place. Yahoo!”
“I will speak to amendments 154 and 155, which are in my name and those of my hon. Friends. The broad point I want to start with is a philosophical point about rights. If rights are to be real, two things need to be in place: first, a level of transparency so that we can see whether those rights are being honoured or breached; and, secondly, an efficient form of redress. If we do not have transparency and an effective, efficient and open means of redress, the rights are not real, so they are theoretical. We think there are some unique circumstances in the field of data protection that require a slightly different approach from the one that the Government have proposed. The Government have basically proposed an opt-in approach with a review. We propose an opt-out approach.”
“Let us take Uber—one of the most recent of the 200 data breaches listed on Wikipedia. In that case, 57 million records were leaked. How is one of those drivers going to take Uber to court to ensure justice?”
“It is not unprecedented. Look at the Wikipedia page on data breaches. There are 200 of them, including Uber, Equifax, AOL, Apple, Ashley Madison, Betfair—the list goes on and on. I want an answer to a very simple question. How is a humble Uber driver, who is busting a gut to make a living, going to find the wherewithal to hire a solicitor and take Uber to court? What is the specific answer to that question?”
“There is only one major precedent for the kind of scenario the Minister has sketched out today, which is Various Claimants v. Wm Morrisons Supermarket plc—a case she knows well. That case illustrates the difficulties of opt-in. It is by far the largest group of data protection claimants ever put together. Even then, the total number of people who could be assembled was 5,000 out of 100,000 people whose data rights were breached. That was incredibly difficult and took a huge amount of time. Even if the claim succeeds, the 95% of people not covered by the claim will not receive justice. I am not quite sure what new evidence the Minister is waiting for so that she has enough evidence to activate the kind of proposals we are talking about today.”
“The idea that the Minister can present the Morrisons case as some kind of success when 95% of the people whose data rights were breached did not receive justice because they did not opt in to the class action betrays it all. She is proposing a system of redress that is good for the few and bad for the many. If that is her politics, so be it, but she will not be able to present the Bill as the gold standard if she persists with that argument.”
“If the Government pursue that line of argument on Report, in the other place and through to Royal Assent, we will not permit the Minister ever again to refer to the Bill as a gold standard in data protection. It is a shoddy, tarnished bronze. She has sought to ensure that the legal playing field is tilted in the favour of large organisations and tech giants, and away from consumers and children. That will lead to a pretty poor state of affairs. We now have enough precedents to know that the regime she is proposing will not work. This is not a theoretical issue; it has already been tested in the courts. Her proposal will not fix the asymmetry that potentially leaves millions of people without justice.”
“I am incredibly disappointed with the Minister’s response, and I am not quite sure I believe that she believes what she has been reading out. I hope that between now and Report, or whenever the amendment is pressed to a vote, she will have the opportunity to consult Which? and her officials. The reality is that for complex public policy decisions, whether relating to organ donation or auto-enrolment pensions, we have well-established procedures for opting out, rather than opting in. There has been strong cross-party support for that over the past seven or eight years, and it reflects a reality in new economic thinking. Behavioural economics shows that opt-out is often better than opt-in.”
“I actually wanted to ask about interpreters who support our armed forces. There is cross-party consensus that sometimes it is important to ensure that we grant leave to remain in this country to those very brave civilians who have supported our armed forces abroad as interpreters. Sometimes, those claims have been contested by the Ministry of Defence. Is the Minister confident and satisfied that the Ministry of Defence would not be able to rely on this exemption to keep information back from civilian staff employed as interpreters in support of our armed forces abroad when they seek leave to remain in this country?”
“I am sorry to press the Minister on this point, and she may want to write to me as a follow-up, but I think Members on both sides of the House have a genuine interest in ensuring that interpreters who have supported our troops abroad are able to access important information, such as the terms of their service and the record of their employment, when making legitimate applications for leave to remain in this country—not asylum—or sometimes discretionary leave.”
“It should be defended, protected and enhanced, especially when the data collection powers of the intelligence services are so much greater than they were 30 years ago when data protection legislation was first written.”
“The Minister is setting out the mechanics of the system with admirable clarity. The point in dispute, though, is not the mechanics of the process but whether the data controller is able—unilaterally, unchecked and unfettered—to seek a national security exemption. Anyone who has worked with the intelligence agencies, either as a Minister or not, knows that they take parliamentary oversight and the defence of parliamentary supremacy extremely seriously. What we are seeking with this amendment is to ensure that a data controller does not issue a national security certificate unchecked, and that instead there is an element of judicial oversight. The rule of law is important.”
“I have spoken to the outgoing Council of Europe information commissioner about the issue, and he has put on the record his grave reservations about the regime that we have in place, because we simply do not have the right kind of judicial oversight of the information gathering powers that are now available to our intelligence services. Our intelligence services are very good, and they need to be allowed to do their job, but they will be allowed to do that job more effectively—and without additional risks to our adequacy—if there is some kind of judicial oversight in the right timeframe of the decisions that are taken.”
“Quite helpfully, we are coming to the nub of the question. It is now incumbent on the Minister to lay out for the Committee why the oversight regime for obtaining information should be so remarkably different from the regime for processing it.”
“I reassure the Minister that I went through the methodologies during my time at the Home Office. The justification that she still needs to lay out for the Committee—she is perhaps struggling to do so—is why there should be one set of judicial oversight arrangements for obtaining information and another for processing it. Why are they not the same?”
“Anyone who has spent time working with our intelligence agencies knows that they see their mission as the defence of parliamentary democracy. They believe in scrutiny and oversight, which is what we are trying to insert in the Bill. The reason the Investigatory Powers Bill was passed in that way was because we were successful in ensuring that there were stronger safeguards. The Minister has been unable to explain today why the safeguarding regime should be different for the processing of data as opposed to the obtaining of data. We have heard no convincing arguments on that front today. All that we are seeking to do is protect the ability of the intelligence agencies to do their job by ensuring that a guard against the misuse of their much broader powers is subject to effective judicial oversight, and not in public but in a court.”
“As the Minister well knows, the debate internationally is a result of the radical transformation of intelligence agencies’ ability to collect and process data. There is an argument, which has been well recognised in the Council of Europe and elsewhere, that where powers are greater, oversight should be stronger.”
“Very briefly, subsection (1) includes the phrase “must be lawful and fair”. Could the Minister say a little more about the word “fair”? What definition is she resting on, and who is the judge of it?”
“I am grateful for the Minister’s extensive definition, given in response to a question I did not ask. I did not ask for the definition of “lawful” but for the definition of “fair”.”
“My only reason for speaking at this stage is to suggest to Ministers that if they were to have discussions with some of those organisations about possible Government amendments on Report to refine the language, and provide some of the reassurance people want, that would attract our support. We would want to have such conversations, but it would be better if the Government could find a way to come forward with refinements of their own on Report.”
“We had a good debate on what I think was a shared objective across the Committee: to ensure that those running our big national archives—whether they are large or small organisations—should not be jeopardised by frivolous claims or, indeed, a multiplicity of claims from individuals who might seek to change the records held there in one way or another. I mentioned to the Minister in an earlier debate that we were anxious, despite the reassurances she sought to give the Committee, that a number of organisations, including the BBC, were deeply concerned about the Bill’s impact on their work. They were not satisfied that the exemptions and safeguards in the Bill would quite do the job.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for that response. I am happy to write to her with the representations that we have received, and perhaps she could reflect on those and write back. Question put and agreed to. Clause 41 , as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 42 Safeguards: sensitive processing Amendment made: 21, in clause 42, page 24, line 29, leave out “with the day” and insert “when” . — (Victoria Atkins.) This amendment is consequential on Amendment 71 . Clause 42, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause s 43 to 46 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 47 Right to erasure or restriction of processing”
“It could be that the Minister decides to answer those questions in the debate on clause 50, but it would be useful for her to say a little more about her understanding of the phrase “significant decision” and a little more about what kind of safeguards will be needed to ensure that decisions that are cast in such a broad way do not impact on people in a negative way.”
“We had a good debate on possible amendments to the powers of automatic decision making earlier and this is an important clause in that it creates a right not to be subject to automated decision making. Clause 49(1) states: “A controller may not take a significant decision based solely on automated processing unless that decision is required or authorised by law.” I hope Ministers recognise that “required or authorised by law” is an incredibly broad set of questions. I would like to provoke the Minister into saying a little more about what safeguards she believes will come into place to ensure that decisions are not taken that jeopardise somebody’s human rights and their right to appeal and justice based on those human rights.”
“We have to contend with the reality that automated decision-making processes are under way in the labour market that could make inequality worse rather than better. The safeguards that we have in clause 50 do not seem up to the job. I hope the Minister will say a bit more about the problems that she sees with future algorithmic decision making. I am slightly troubled that she is unaware of some live examples in the Home Office space in one of our most successful police forces, and there are other examples that we know about. Perhaps the Minister might say more about how she intends to improve the Bill with regard to that issue between now and Report.”
“There should be new rights about algorithmic fairness at work to ensure equal treatment where an algorithm or automated system takes a decision that impinges on someone’s rights. There should be a right to explanation where significant decisions are taken based on an algorithm or an automated decision. There is also a strong case to create a duty on employers, if they are a large organisation, to undertake impact assessments to check whether they are, often unwittingly, discriminating against people in a way that we think is wrong. Over the last couple of weeks, we have seen real progress in the debate about gender inequalities in pay. Many of us will have looked in horror at some of the news that emerged from the BBC and at some of the evidence that emerged from ITV and The Guardian.”
“Women and people over 50 are most likely to be stopped from seeing an advert. Around 32% of company executives admitted to discriminating among those over 50; 23% discriminated against women; and 62% of executives who had access to profiling tools admitted to using them to actively seek out people based on criteria such as age, gender and race. Female Uber drivers earn 7% less than men when pay is determined by algorithms. A number of practices in the labour market are disturbing and worrying, and they should trouble all of us. The challenge is that clause 50 needs to include a much more comprehensive set of rights and safeguards. It should clarify that the Equality Act 2010 and protection from discrimination applies to all new forms of decision making that engage core labour rights around recruitment, terms of work or dismissal.”
“The challenge is that our current labour laws, which were often drafted decades ago, such as the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1965, are no longer adequate to protect people in this new world, in which employers are able to use such large and powerful tools for gathering and analysing data, and making decisions. We know that there are problems. We already know that recruiters use Facebook to seek candidates in a way that routinely discriminates against older workers by targeting job advertisements. That is not a trivial issue; it is being litigated in the United States. In the United Kingdom, research by Slater and Gordon, a group of employment lawyers, found that one in five bosses admits to unlawful discrimination when advertising jobs online.”
“I remain concerned that the safeguards the Government have proposed to ensure people’s human rights are not jeopardised by the use of automated decision making are, frankly, not worth the paper they are written on. We know that prospective employers and their agents use algorithms and automated systems to analyse very large sets of data and, through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, make inferences about whether people are appropriate to be considered to be hired or retained by a particular company. We have had a pretty lively debate in this country about the definition of a worker, and we are all very grateful to Matthew Taylor for his work on that question. Some differences emerged, and the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee has put its views on the record.”
“May I ask for your guidance on this question? We are in a Bill Committee that is tasked with scrutinising the Bill line by line. Is it customary for Ministers to refuse to give way on a matter of detail?”
“Let me remind the Minister. What we are concerned about on the question of law enforcement is whether safeguards that are in place will be removed under the Bill. That is part and parcel of a broader debate that we are having about whether the safeguards that are in the Bill will be adequate. So let me return to the point I made earlier to the Minister, which is that we would like her reflections on what additional safeguards can be drafted into clauses 50 and 51 before Report stage.”
“Will the Minister confirm that I have understood the mechanics accurately and say a little more about the content of the messages from the police to the Information Commissioner and from the Information Commissioner to the person who files the request?”
“This is a significant amendment—I understand the ambition behind the clause—so it is worth dwelling on it for a moment. I would like to check my understanding of what the Minister said. In a sense, if an investigation is under way and the individual under investigation makes a subject access request to the police and gets a “neither confirm nor deny” response, the data subject will be able to ask the Information Commissioner to investigate. Will the Minister say a little more about what message will go from the police to the Information Commissioner and the content of the message that will go from the Information Commissioner to the data subject? I have worked on such cases in my constituency. Often, there is an extraordinary spiral of inquiries and the case ultimately ends up in a judicial review in court.”
“Unless the Information Commissioner is able to provide some kind of satisfactory response to the person who has made the original request, we will end up with an awful administrative muddle that will take of lot of the courts’ time. Perhaps the Minister could put our minds at rest on that.”
“Perhaps I can pose the question in a sharper way. I do not think that is entirely the case. It must be possible for the Minister to be a little more specific, and perhaps a little more knowledgeable, about the content of the message that will go from the Information Commissioner to the data subject. Will that be a standard message? Will it be in any way detailed? Will it reflect in any way on the information that the police provide? Or will it simply be a blank message such as “I, the Information Commissioner, am satisfied that your information has been processed lawfully”? I do not think the Information Commissioner is likely to ask for too much detail about the nature of the offence, but she will obviously ask whether data has been processed lawfully. She will want to make checks in that way.”
“Does she see any relationship between the fees being delivered to her Majesty’s Government and the budget that is made available for the Information Commissioner? Many of us are frankly worried, given the new obligations of the Information Commissioner, about the budget she has to operate with and the resources at her disposal. Could she say a little more, to put our minds at rest, and reassure us that these fees will not be extortionate? Where sensible fees are levied, is there some kind of relationship with the budget that the Information Commissioner might enjoy?”
“We have just agreed a set of amendments that, on the face of it, look nice and reasonable. We can all recognise the sin that the Government are taking aim at, and that the workload of the Information Commissioner’s Office and of others has to be kept under control, so we all want to deter tons of frivolous and meaningless requests. None the less, a lot of us have noticed that, for example, the introduction of fees for industrial tribunals makes it a lot harder for our constituents to secure justice. I wonder, having now moved the amendment successfully, whether the Minister might tell us a little more about what will constitute a reasonable fee and what will happen to those fees.”
“Friend has given a number of really good examples. The automatic number plate recognition database is another good example of mass data collection and storage in a way that is not especially legal, and where we have waited an awfully long time for even something as simple as a code of practice that might actually put the process and the practice on a more sustainable footing. Unless the Government take on board my hon. Friend’s proposed amendments, we will be shackling the police, stopping them from embarking on many of the operational innovations that they need to start getting into if they are to do their job in keeping us safe.”
“We know that there are police forces around the world beginning to trial what is sometimes called predictive policing or predictive public services, whereby, through analysis of significant data patterns, they can proactively deploy police in a particular way and at a particular time. All these things have a good chance of making our country safer, bringing down the rate of crime and increasing the level of justice in our country. The risk is that if the police lack a good, clear legal framework that is simple and easy to use, very often sensible police, and in particular nervous and cautious police and crime commissioners, will err on the side of caution and actually prohibit a particular kind of operational innovation, because they think the law is too muddy, complex and prone to a risk of challenge. My hon.”
“I rise briefly to support my hon. Friend’s excellent speech. The ambition of Opposition Members on the Committee is to ensure that the Government have in place a strong and stable framework for data protection over the coming years. Each of us, at different times in our constituencies, have had the frustration of working with either local police or their partners and bumping into bits of regulation or various procedures that we think inhibit them from doing their job. We know that at the moment there is a rapid transformation of policing methods. We know that the police have been forced into that position, because of the pressure on their resources.”
“Does the Minister not have some sympathy with the poor individuals who end up being data controllers for our police forces around the country, given the extraordinary task that they have to do? She is asking those individuals to come up with their own frameworks of internal guidance for what is high, medium and low risk. The bureaucracy-manufacturing potential of the process she is proposing will be difficult for police forces. We are trying to help the police to do their job, and she is not making it much easier.”