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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“We will not have many strong players in the UK who are able to take action in the courts, so we will be wholly reliant on the Information Commissioner to take action. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister reassured the Committee how the commissioner will ensure that clause 67 is enforced if the processor of the data is not on our shores.”
“There is a growing risk that in the years to come, more of the data and information service providers based in the UK will go somewhere safer, such as Ireland, because they are worried about the future of our adequacy agreement with the European Commission. We really need to understand in detail how the Information Commissioner, who is based here, will take action on behalf of British citizens against companies in the event of data breaches. For example, how will she ensure notification within 72 hours? How will she ensure the enforcement of clause 67(4), which sets out the information that customers and citizens must be told about the problem? This morning we debated the Government’s ludicrous proposals for class action regimes, which are hopelessly inadequate and will not work in practice.”
“Even one of the companies closest to the Government—Equifax, which signed a joint venture agreement with the Government not too long ago—has had a huge data breach. It took at least two goes to get a full account from Equifax of exactly what had happened, despite the fact that Her Majesty’s Government were its corporate partner and had employed it through the Department for Work and Pensions. All sorts of information sharing happened that never really came to light. I am not sure whether any compensation for Equifax data breaches has been paid to British citizens either. My point is that most citizens of this country have a large amount of data banked with companies that operate from America under the protection of the first amendment.”
“The Committee is looking for some guidance and for tons of reassurance from the Minister about how the clause will bite on data processors who do not happen to base their operations here in the United Kingdom. This morning we debated the several hundred well-known data breaches around the world and highlighted some of the more recent examples, such as Yahoo!—that was probably the biggest—and AOL. More recently, organisations such as Uber have operated their systems with such inadequacy that huge data leaks have occurred, directly infringing the data protection rights of citizens in this country. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I am unaware of any compensation arrangements that Uber has made with its drivers in this country whose data was leaked.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for that helpful clarification. Let me phrase the question differently, with different examples. The Home Office and many police forces are outsourcing many of their activities, some of which are bound to involve data collected by global organisations such as G4S. Is she reassuring us that any and all data collected and processed for law enforcement activities will be held within the boundaries of the United Kingdom and therefore subject to easy implementation of clause 67?”
“Where G4S, for example, is employed to help with deportations, the Minister is therefore reassuring us that the data controller would never be G4S. However, if there were an activity that was clearly a law enforcement activity, such as voluntary removal, would the data controller always be in Britain and therefore subject to clause 67, even where private sector partners are used? The Minister may outsource the contract, but we want to ensure that she does not outsource the role of data controller so that a law enforcement activity here can have a data controller abroad.”
“Confidence levels differ, but we in the Committee are pretty confident about the legal safeguards around those kinds of operations in this country. We can be less sure about the safeguards that some of our partners around the world have in place. The Court of Appeal has expressed its view, which was reinforced in 2016 by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The Committee echoed the finding that “front-line personnel…should be entitled to more legal certainty” than they have today. This section of the Bill gives us the opportunity to ensure that our intelligence services are equipped with a much more robust framework than they have today, to ensure that they are not subject to the risks flagged by the Court of Appeal or by the Joint Committee on Human Rights.”
“All Committee members will be familiar with the drone strike that killed Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin, and many of us will have heard the Prime Minister’s assurances in the Liaison Committee about the robust legal process that was gone through to ensure that the strike was both proportionate and legal. The challenge—the public policy issue that arises under chapter 5 of the Bill—is that there is a number of new risks. First, there is the legal risk flagged up by the Court of Appeal in 2013, when justices said that it was not clear that UK personnel will be immune from criminal liability for their involvement in a programme that involves the transfer of intelligence from an intelligence service here to an American partner and where that American partner uses that information to conduct drone strikes that involve the loss of life.”
“I want to flag up an issue that we will stumble across in a couple of stand part debates: the safeguards that will be necessary for data sharing between this country and elsewhere. We will come on to the safeguards that will be necessary for the transfer of data between our intelligence agencies and foreign intelligence agencies. Within the context of this clause, which touches on the broad principle of data sharing from here and abroad, I want to rehearse one or two arguments on which Ministers should be well briefed and alert. Our intelligence agencies do an extraordinary job in keeping this country safe, which sometimes involves the acquisition and use of data that results in the loss of life.”
“(3) In this paragraph, “individual at economic risk” means an individual who is less able to protect his or her economic well-being by reason of physical or mental injury, illness or disability.”— (Victoria Atkins.) Part 2 of Schedule 1 describes types of processing of special categories of personal data which meet the requirement in Article 9(2)(g) of the GDPR (processing necessary for reasons of substantial public interest) for a basis in UK law (see Clause 10(3)). This amendment adds to Part 2 of Schedule 1 certain processing of personal data which is necessary to protect the economic well-being of adults who are less able to protect their economic well-being by reason of a physical or mental injury, illness or disability .”
“(2) The reasons mentioned in sub-paragraph (1)(c) are— (a) in the circumstances, consent to the processing cannot be given by the data subject; (b) in the circumstances, the controller cannot reasonably be expected to obtain the consent of the data subject to the processing; (c) the processing must be carried out without the consent of the data subject because obtaining the consent of the data subject would prejudice the provision of the protection mentioned in sub-paragraph (1)(a).”
“Amendment 86, in schedule 1, page 126, line 38, at end insert— “Safeguarding of economic well-being of certain individuals 14B (1) This condition is met if the processing— (a) is necessary for the purposes of protecting the economic well-being of an individual at economic risk who is aged 18 or over, (b) is of data concerning health, (c) is carried out without the consent of the data subject for one of the reasons listed in sub-paragraph (2), and (d) is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.”
“(4) In sub-paragraph (1)(a), the reference to the protection of an individual or of the well-being of an individual includes both protection relating to a particular individual and protection relating to a type of individual.” Part 2 of Schedule 1 describes types of processing of special categories of personal data which meet the requirement in Article 9(2)(g) of the GDPR (processing necessary for reasons of substantial public interest) for a basis in UK law (see Clause 10(3)). This amendment adds to Part 2 of Schedule 1 certain processing of personal data which is necessary for the protection of children or of adults at risk. See also Amendments 116 and 117.”
“(3) For the purposes of this paragraph, an individual aged 18 or over is “at risk” if the controller has reasonable cause to suspect that the individual— (a) has needs for care and support, (b) is experiencing, or at risk of, neglect or physical, mental or emotional harm, and (c) as a result of those needs is unable to protect himself or herself against the neglect or harm or the risk of it.”
“(2) The reasons mentioned in sub-paragraph (1)(c) are— (a) in the circumstances, consent to the processing cannot be given by the data subject; (b) in the circumstances, the controller cannot reasonably be expected to obtain the consent of the data subject to the processing; (c) the processing must be carried out without the consent of the data subject because obtaining the consent of the data subject would prejudice the provision of the protection mentioned in sub-paragraph (1)(a).”
“Amendments made: 85, in schedule 1, page 126, line 38, at end insert— “Safeguarding of children and of individuals at risk 14A (1) This condition is met if— (a) the processing is necessary for the purposes of— (i) protecting an individual from neglect or physical, mental or emotional harm, or (ii) protecting the physical, mental or emotional well-being of an individual, (b) the individual is— (i) aged under 18, or (ii) aged 18 or over and at risk, (c) the processing is carried out without the consent of the data subject for one of the reasons listed in sub-paragraph (2), and (d) the processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.”
“I rise to put on record my thanks to the Minister for listening carefully to my noble Friend Lord Stevenson. There was strong cross-party consensus on these common-sense reforms. We all know that in our own constituencies there are extraordinary people doing extraordinary things in local groups. They are the life-blood of our communities. Many of them will be worried about the new obligations that come with the general data protection regulation and many of them will take a least-risk approach to meeting the new regulations. Putting in place some common safeguards to ensure that it is possible to keep data that allow us to spot important patterns of behaviour that can lead to appropriate investigations is very sensible and wise. These amendments will therefore be made with cross-party support. Amendment 84 agreed to .”
“They are a signatory to the UN universal declaration of human rights and the UN convention on the rights of the child; the Human Rights Act 1998 is still in force—I have not yet heard of plans to repeal it—and of course the Equality Act 2010 was passed with cross-party support. However, those old statements of rights, which date back to 1215, were basically to correct and guard against dangerous imbalances of power. Things have moved on since 1215 and the worries that the barons had about King John. We are no longer as concerned as people were in 1215 about taking all the fish weirs out of the Thames, for example.”
“When we look around the world at the most advanced digital societies, we can see that a strong regime of data rights is common to them all. I was recently in Estonia, which I hope the Minister will have a chance to visit if she has not done so already. Estonia likes to boast of its record as the world’s most advanced digital society; it is a place where 99% of prescriptions are issued online, 95% of taxes are paid online and indeed a third of votes are cast online. It is a country where the free and open right to internet access is seen as an important social good, and a good example of a country that has really embraced the digital revolution and translated that ambition into a set of strong rights. The Government are not averse to signing declaratory statements of rights that they then interpret into law.”
“We had a useful debate this morning about the whys and wherefores of whether the article 8 right to privacy should be incorporated into the Bill. Although we were disappointed by the Minister’s reply, what I thought was useful in the remarks she made was a general appreciation of the importance of strong data rights if the UK is to become a country with a strong environment of trust within which a world of digital trade can flourish. I will briefly alert the Minister to a debate we want to have on Report. The reality is that we feel schedule 1 is narrowly drawn. It is an opportunity that has been missed, and it is an opportunity for the Minister to come back on Report with a much more ambitious set of data rights for what will be a digital century.”
“I beg to move amendment 153, in clause 14, page 7, line 30, at end insert— “(1A) A decision that engages an individual’s rights under the Human Rights Act 1998 does not fall within Article 22(2)(b) of the GDPR (exception from prohibition on taking significant decisions based solely on automated processing for decisions that are authorised by law and subject to safeguards for the data subject’s rights, freedoms and legitimate interests).” This amendment would clarify that the exemption from prohibition on taking significant decisions based solely on automated processing must apply to purely automated decisions that engage an individual’s human rights.”
“We also know that sometimes it is very difficult for citizens to seek remedies for those problems. Very often, the reason they have come to see us in our surgeries is because, as they so often say to us, we are the last port of call and the last hope that is kicking around; if we cannot fix it, frankly, our constituent is about to give up. That is an unfortunate situation that we do not want to see multiply.”
“There are great risks in algorithms taking decisions in ways ungoverned by us. As parliamentarians, we have a particular duty to ensure that the appropriate safeguards are in place. Clauses 14 and 15 allow automated processes where they are authorised by law. That creates the obligation of giving notice and what is, in effect, an ex post facto right of appeal. The Opposition’s argument is somewhat different: it is better not to take decisions on the basis of automatic processing of data where those decisions affect our human rights. They say that to err is human, but to really mess things up you need a computer. We all know from our casework, whether about the benefits or the social care system or any other kind of system that constituents might name, that sometimes the most terrible, egregious errors are made.”
“The challenge of algorithms was put best by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge on Second Reading: the great risk of such developments is that old injustice is hard-coded into new injustice. That is particularly troubling when we think about the provisions and exemptions the Government have brought forward that allow the automatic processing of data in public services. Many public servants around the world are beginning to look at predictive public services and how algorithms can scan great swathes of, for example, health data and crime data, and make decisions about where police should attend, who should or should not get bail, who should be added to police databases such as the gangs matrix, and how healthcare should be targeted in parts of the country or to what kinds of families.”
“The amendments touch on what I am afraid will become an increasing part of our lives in the years to come: the questions of what decisions can be taken by algorithms; where such decisions are taken, what rights we have to some kind of safeguards, such as a good old-fashioned human being looking over the decision that is taken and the outcomes that arise; and whether we are content to acquiesce in the rule of the robots. In a number of areas of our lives—particularly our economic and social lives—such algorithms will become more and more important. Algorithms are already used to screen job applications, for example, and to create shortlists of candidates for interview. Insurance companies use them to adjudge what premiums someone should enjoy, or whether they should be offered insurance at all.”
“The Minister must realise that she is risking an explosion in the number of decisions that have to be taken to Government agencies or private sector companies for review. The justice system is already under tremendous pressure. The tribunal system is already at breaking point. The idea that we overload it is pretty optimistic. On facial recognition at public events, for example, it would be possible under the provisions that she is proposing for the police to use facial recognition technology automatically to process those decisions and, through a computer, to have spot interventions ordered to police on the ground. The only way to stop that would be to have an ex post facto review, but that would be an enormous task.”
“Will the Minister explain to the Committee how a decision to stop and search based on an automated decision can be retaken? Once the person has been stopped and searched, how can that activity be undone?”
“I fear that the Minister is taking some pretty serious gambles on the application of this technology in the future. We think it is the business of this place to ensure that our citizens have strong safeguards, so we will put the amendment to a vote. Question put, That the amendment be made.”
“It would be useful if the Minister could say a little more about the safeguards around the controllers charging reasonable fees for dealing with requests. It is quite easy to envisage situations where algorithms take decisions. We have some ex post facto review; a citizen seeks to overturn the decision; the citizen thinks they are acting reasonably but the commercial interest of the company that has taken and automated the decision means that it wants to create disincentives for that rigmarole to unfold. That creates the risk of unequal access to justice in these decisions. If the Minister is not prepared to countenance the sensible safeguards that we have proposed, she must say how she will guard against another threat to access to justice.”
“It is an unwise provision. If I were a Home Office official, I would have tried it on—I would have tried to get it through my Minister and through the Houses of Parliament, but it is unwise and a step too far. I hope the Minister will accept the amendment and delete the provisions.”
“As someone who served in the Home Office for two years, I had to take some very difficult decisions, including to release subject access request information that I absolutely did not want to go into the public domain. Sometimes it was right to release that information because it helped ensure that justice was done in the courts of this land. The Minister has some very strong safeguards in the Bill. There are strong safeguards that create exemptions for her where the interest is in crime prevention, such as, for example, illegal immigration. However, the power that the provision seeks, at which we take aim in our amendments, is a step too far and risks the most terrible injustices. It risks the courts being fouled up and our being challenged in all sorts of places, including the European Court of Human Rights in the years to come.”
“We were losing JRs and therefore denying justice to those who brought a legitimate claim against the Crown. There were occasions when I lost cases because of information that was disclosed to the applicant through a subject access review. SARs are one of the most powerful instruments by which anybody in this country, whether a citizen or someone applying to become a citizen, or applying for a legal right to remain, can acquire information that is crucial to the delivery of justice. Many of us are incredibly sympathetic to the job that the Home Office does. Many of us will want a tougher regime in policing immigration, in particular illegal immigration, but I suspect every member of the Committee is also interested in the good conduct of justice and administrative justice.”
“They have been underfunded by the Treasury under this Government and, in my view, we did not get enough out of the Treasury in my day. However, they are human and make mistakes. That is why we have such a complicated immigration tribunal system, where people can take their complaints to a first tier tribunal but very often need to seek a judicial review down the line. The challenge is that, if the Home Office wants to create a process and an administration for making the right decision, which can be defended in a tribunal and in a judicial review case, that process must be robust. When we streamlined the immigration tribunal system, we realised that we had to change, improve and strengthen the way that we took decisions in the Home Office because too many were made in a way that was not JR-proof.”
“We created a Border Agency that could run a biometric visa programme abroad, checking fingerprints against police national computers before anyone got on a train, plane or boat to our country. We introduced much stronger controls at the border, increasing those nice new blue signs, creating smart uniforms for immigration officials, and we increased immigration policing by around £100 million a year I said earlier that to err is human but it takes a computer really to foul things up. That is a lesson that I learned with some force during my time at the Home Office. The dedicated, fantastic officials in the Home Office and the extraordinary officers who work in what was the UK Border Agency—it has since been revised a couple of times—do an amazing job. They are dramatically underfunded by the Treasury.”
“Where the rubber hits the road is that, crucially, the effect will be to ensure that subject access requests are basically put beyond the scope of someone seeking information that they might be able to use either in representations that we all might make to Ministers or, more importantly, in an immigration tribunal. I want to sound a warning note to the Minister, as I hinted on Second Reading. I was brought into the Home Office as a Minister in 2006 and, after a glorious fortnight as Minister for Police and Counter-terrorism, I was moved by my boss John Reid to become Immigration Minister, where I was asked to conduct the biggest shake-up of our immigration system for 40 years. I created the UK Border Agency; I took UK visas out of the Foreign Office; I took Customs out of the Treasury.”
“It has drawn concern from the other place, the Information Commissioner and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The Minister will try to assure us by saying there are safeguards wrapped around the exemption and that there are limits on the way it can be used, but those limits are drawn so vaguely and broadly that they are not safeguards at all. They have been drafted to apply where matters are likely to prejudice immigration control. Who gets to judge the likelihood of prejudicing immigration control is not terrifically clear. In my Home Office days, we used to call that carte blanche. Through the powers and exemptions in the Bill, the Home Office seeks to collect data for one purpose and then use it without informed consent.”
“I beg to move amendment 156, in schedule 2, page 136, line 30, leave out paragraph 4. This amendment would remove immigration from the exemptions from the GDPR. We are trying to provide some careful and considered constraints on the exemptions that the Government are asking for, in particular the exemptions that Ministers seek for the purposes of immigration control. The Bill has been drafted essentially to enable the Home Office to do two things: win cases and create a hostile environment for those who are here illegally, where it has no capacity to trace and deport individuals. In conducting its work, the Home Office draws on a wide range of private providers, from G4S to Cifas. They have a mixed record, including on data protection. The carve-out that the Government seek for immigration purposes has caused widespread concern.”
“The Under-Secretary of State will know better than anybody that there are very tight time limits over the windows within which people can ask for entry clearance officer reviews or reconsideration, either by an immigration official or, in extremis, by the Minister. How long will the pause last, and can she guarantee the Committee today that the pause will never jeopardise the kick-in of time limits on an appeal or a reconsideration decision?”
“That is not an answer to my question. I am asking for a guarantee to the Committee this afternoon that the pause will never jeopardise somebody’s ability to submit a valid request for a reconsideration or an appeal with the information that they need within the time windows set out by Home Office regulations—yes or no.”
“As I understand it, the derogations that are sought effectively remove the right to information in article 13; the right to information where data is obtained from a third party in article 14; the right of subjects’ access in article 15; the right to erasure in article 17; the right to restriction of processing in article 18; the right to object in article 21(1); the principle of lawful, fair and transparent processing in article 5; the principle of purpose limitation in article 5(1)(b); and the data protection principles in article 5 of lawfulness, fairness, transparency, purpose limitation, data minimisation, accuracy, storage limitation, integrity, confidentiality and accountability to the extent that they correspond to the rights above. That is a pretty broad set of rights to be cast out.”
“The Minister will know that in paragraph 2(1)(a) we already have a set of exemptions that relate to the prevention or detection of a crime, including, presumably, all of the crimes that fall into the bucket of organising or perpetrating illegal immigration. Despite constant pressing during the debate in the other place and here, we have not yet had a clear answer as to why additional powers and exemptions are needed, over and above the powers expressly granted and agreed in paragraph 2(1)(a).”
“If someone has overstayed, they have committed a crime. Therefore, paragraph 2(1)(a) absolutely bites. We are seeking to prevent that crime. Someone who has overstayed their visa has committed a crime. It is kind of as simple as that.”
“If someone has submitted false information in support of an application to the Government, and signed it, as they must, that is called fraud. That is also a crime, and is covered by paragraph 2(1)(a).”
“I just want to dissolve one confusion in the Minister’s remarks. The nature of the Home Office response, whether it is a prosecution through a civil court, a civil sanction or a civil whatever else, does not affect the nature of the offence that is committed. The Home Office has a range of sanctions and choices in responding to an offence, but that does not stop the offence being an offence. The offence is still a crime, and is therefore covered by paragraph 2(1)(a).”
“What is not clear is when those temporary provisions would be activated and, crucially, when they would be suspended.”
“Anyone who was not alarmed by this provision certainly will leave this Committee Room thoroughly alarmed by the Minister’s explanations. First, we were invited to believe that we could safeguard due process and the rights of newcomers to this country by suspending those rights and pursuing people through civil court. We were then asked to believe that the Home Office’s ambition to deal with these cases with civil response rendered inoperable the powers set out in paragraph 2(1)(a), confusing the response from the Home Office and the nature of the offence committed up front. Then, we were invited to believe that this was not a permanent provision—even though that safeguard is not written into the Bill—but a temporary provision.”
“Perhaps when the Minister intervenes, she could set out what “temporary” means, where it is defined and where are the limits, and she still has not answered my question whether she will guarantee that the implementation of this pause will not jeopardise someone’s ability to submit either a request for an entry clearance officer review or an appeal within the legally binding time windows set out in Home Office regulations.”
“I am happy to give way in a moment. Most of us here who have done our fair share of immigration cases—I have done several thousand over the last 14 years—know that on some occasions, the Home Office interpretation of time is somewhat different from a broadly understood interpretation of time. I have cases in which a judge has ordered the issue of a visa, and six months later we are still chasing the Home Office for the issue of the visa. I will not be alone in offering these examples.”
“I am really sorry to have to say this, but that is utter nonsense. The idea that the Home Office will seek to regularise someone’s immigration status by denying them access to information that might support their case is, frankly, fanciful. This is not a new debate; we last had it in 1983. The Home Office tried to sketch this exemption into legislation then, it failed, and we should not allow the exemption to go into the Bill, especially given that all the explanations we have heard this afternoon are about cases where paragraph 2(1)(a), or the safeguarding provisions drafted by the Government, would provide the necessary exemptions and safeguards in the contingencies that the Minister is concerned about.”
“I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for clarifying a point that was not at issue. No one is concerned about what rights kick back in at the end of a process. We are worried about how long the process will last, who will govern it, what rights newcomers to this country or courts will have to enforce some kind of constraint on the process and how we will stop the Home Office embarking on unending processes in a Jarndyce v. Jarndyce-like way, which we know is the way these cases are sometimes prosecuted. The Home Office is full of some of the most amazing civil servants on earth, but perhaps, a little like the Under-Secretary, they are sometimes good people trapped in bad systems and, dare I say it, bad arguments. Question put, That the amendment be made.”