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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“The House of Lords Constitution Committee said: “The Government’s desire to future-proof legislation…must be balanced against the need for Parliament to scrutinise and, where necessary, constrain executive power.” The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee said that “it is not good enough for Government to say that they need ‘flexibility’ to pass laws by secondary instead of primary legislation without explaining in detail why”. The Ministers slightly let the cat out of the bag when Baroness Chisholm spoke up for the Government and said that if they were to accept the Committee’s recommendations in full that would “leave the Government unable to accommodate developments in data processing and the changing requirements of certain sectors” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 11 December 2017; Vol. 787, c.”
“Those powers are enshrined in clause 10, and in clauses 35 and 86; we will come on to those debates, but the powers that clause 10 proposes to grant the Minister are in effect unilaterally to vary the conditions and safeguards governing the general processing of sensitive personal data—the general data set out in schedule 1—and then to add new conditions to schedules 1, 8 and 10. That means that we would basically give the Secretary of State the power to expand the permissible reasons to allow processing of sensitive personal data, both generally and particularly for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. That is something that has been considered extensively in the other place.”
“Therefore, the idea that we leave out some fundamental protections of rights, but then hand over to the Minister unfettered power to make regulations as he or she sees fit, does not seem to be in Parliament’s best interest. We think that the Government need to think again. The powers in this particular clause create the possibility that exemptions to data protection rights, which have not been considered or debated in Parliament, go through effectively at the whim of the Minister.”
“We support these amendments very strongly, and if possible we would like to test the Committee’s will on this. The Bill has a succession of Henry VIII powers at a number of different clauses, which in effect give the Secretary of State the power to vary and amend regulations that are incredibly important. We cannot detach this debate from the earlier debate on the incorporation of article 8. We now have a Bill that is pretty weak on the fundamental principles of law that it seeks to enshrine; the Government want to set their face against incorporating some protections that we have in the European charter of fundamental rights.”
“The Prime Minister should know that if by Wednesday she concludes that we are indeed embattled, she will find both unity and resolve across the House as we face down a common threat. Twelve years ago, in the aftermath of a wave of al-Qaeda-inspired attacks, we transformed the capacity of Governments to co-ordinate and fight back against extremism. May I urge the Prime Minister, in respect of the measures that she will introduce on Wednesday, to think radically about how she will create Government capacity to co-ordinate our response to this new level of threat, including new safeguards against the abuse of social media, which we know is part of the Russians’ active measures playbook?”
“None the less, it is what we have, and if we can use regulations attached to it to make progress, in particular in the defence of children and their safety online, we must seize those opportunities with both hands. We will not, therefore, divide the Committee today. However, I ask the Minister to reflect, in her winding-up remarks, on why it has taken so long for those necessary defences to be brought to the House, and invite her to look to the future and tell us how long we will have to wait for proposals for the e-commerce directive to be modernised. Now that we are leaving the European Union, there are all sorts of opportunities to modernise laws in a way that maintains a degree of regulatory harmony, and therefore trade, with our biggest continental market and that also brings regulation of this important industry up to date.”
“This is the first time I have had the privilege of serving under your chairmanship, Mr Austin, and it is of note that we have not only a Chairman from the west midlands but two Front Benchers as well. I am grateful to the Minister for her speech. It was almost as long as her speech last night in winding up five hours of debate on the Data Protection Bill. I am sorry that we none the less managed to stretch business to 10 o’clock. The regulations are important, but the e-commerce directive is hopelessly outmoded and outdated. It regulates internet service providers, but was written before most of them came to enjoy the force and stature they do today.”
“Given the rise in crime that we have in the west midlands, and the fact that we are one of the most dangerous hotspots for counter-terrorism policing in the country, it beggars belief when we put that risk of harm alongside the cuts we have had, which are so different from the financial settlements that other police forces have enjoyed.”
“What great police officers such as Sergeant Hanif and PC Adam Koch need is a Government who are on their side, rather than a Government who are determined to cut their service to ribbons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) so eloquently put it, West Midlands police is now the smallest it has been since it was created in 1974. It has suffered real-terms cuts of something like £145 million. The idea that somehow different decisions on the precept could have corrected a cut on that scale is frankly fanciful.”
“It was five years ago that I had to go and give thanks to PC Adam Koch, who had literally thrown himself onto a knifeman in one of our mosques in Ward End. He put his life on the line to protect the lives of the worshippers in that mosque. Today, we have great police officers such as Sergeant Hanif, who leads an extraordinary team across east Birmingham, cracking down on drugs and drug dealing, seizing the proceeds of crime and taking firearms off the streets at every opportunity. The relationship of trust that he has built with the community has transformed the amount of intelligence coming in to the police and the effectiveness of the police in response.”
“It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. Not so long ago, the Government invited us to believe that it was possible to cut crime and cut the police at the same time. Over the last couple of years the idiocy of that idea has been exposed for all to see. The truth is that crime—violent crime in particular—is now rising, and on the streets of my constituency there is real concern about the growth of dealing in drugs out on the streets, often in broad daylight. When people report that problem, the police simply do not have the resources to respond in the way that the community wants and expects. In the west midlands, as I know from my constituency, we are blessed with some of the greatest police officers in the business.”
“I will happily give way; perhaps my close neighbour can tell me how it is that Hampshire can enjoy a different settlement from the West Midlands police force when we have a threat assessment that is so very different.”
“There has been a provision for counter-terrorism policing, but, as the right hon. Gentleman knows better than I do, neighbourhood policing is the frontline of the fight against terrorism in this country. The stronger the frontline, the safer we are. In the west midlands, our frontline is being cut to shreds.”
“We need a police base in Shard End, because—as was explained to me during my own glorious fortnight as the Minister for police and counter-terrorism, before I went on to serve a further two years as a Home Office Minister—neighbourhood policing creates a different kind of relationship between the police service and the community. It unlocks a level of trust, intelligence and insight that makes it much easier to crack down on crime. When we shut down police bases, we weaken the frontline in that fight. I do not want to see crime, drug dealing and violent crime rise any further. That is why I call on the Minister today to fix the problem in the West Midlands Police finances, give us the money we deserve and let our brave men and women of the West Midlands Police service get on with the job they are so dedicated to doing.”
“Exactly. Those threats are now multiplying across the region. I respect the task that the Police Minister has to try to perform. He has taken the time to listen to representations from west midlands MPs of all political stripes. I am afraid that he was not backed up by either the Prime Minister or the Chancellor; they did not give the Home Office in general, and him in particular, the financial settlement that we needed in order to safeguard our communities. For us in Hodge Hill, that means that we now have the proposed closure of the Shard End police base—something that both Councillor Ian Ward and I disagree with.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is being characteristically courteous in giving way to so many Members. Can he point to another area of public policy in which as many suspicions have been aroused, but that has been improved by our collectively deciding to just move on and leave things in the dark?”
“With the greatest of respect, regulations are forward looking, but the inquiry that we are seeking goes into past malpractice for the simple reason that we would like justice to be done.”
“The Government may make their own proposals, but I suspect that there will continue to be a strong body of support in the other place for those amendments.”
“Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), argue for the importance of honouring promises made in the past, and indeed of making sure that we have a press regulation regime that balances the interests of a free and fair press with the need not to defame people wilfully. The Government are making an odd argument by asking us to take them seriously when they want to install a new data protection regime, while at the same time short-circuiting an inquiry into the most egregious violations of data privacy that we have ever seen in the public sphere. I am afraid that that approach does not inspire a terrific amount of confidence, so I hope that the Minister and the Secretary of State will listen again to the pleas of Lord Leveson and reconsider their support for the amendments that were carried with such force in the other place.”
“Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) made some important points. Politicians on both sides of the House made promises to the victims of phone hacking, and it is an extremely dangerous precedent for a Secretary of State to say, “Yes, I know we made promises about an inquiry but, you know what, we don’t think that inquiry, even though it isn’t finished, really should wind its course to a conclusion.” It is not a satisfactory state of affairs when the Executive can intervene and, in effect, seek to stop inquiries in their tracks, in the teeth of opposition—in this case, from the noble Lord Leveson—setting out why they should actually continue. I hope that many Members will, like the hon.”
“We think that putting in place a strong framework for rights and enforcement now is just a wise precaution for the future. As we have heard in many contributions, there will be quite a lot of toing and froing about some of the amendments made in the other place. I hope that many in the House will not take the approach of the hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones). I feared at times that he was anticipating that we could somehow secure justice regarding suspected historical offences by closing the door, switching off the lights and pretending that nothing had ever happened. I do not think that there are many fields of public policy in which that has proved to be a successful foundation for reform. It is important that we delve into offences that took place in the past. My hon.”
“We need to allow consumer organisations and others to take what are in effect class actions, because otherwise the implementation of rights risks being weak, undermining not simply justice, but the strength of our regulatory regime. We will want to propose other, more comprehensive rights. We are not under any illusions about the Government accepting our data Bill of rights in full, but we want to make sure that such rights are on the table because we are at the start of a process. Just as there were something like 17 Factory Acts during the 19th century, there will be many data protection and e-commerce modernisation Acts over the next 80 years. I am afraid that Members will, for better or worse, have to get used to that process.”
“These powers are not needed, and I hope the Minister will ask her Home Office colleagues to look at the provisions again. For rights to be real, there needs to be a method of enforcing them effectively, which is why the provisions for collective redress are so important. The shadow Secretary of State talked about the work that we have done with people such as Baroness Kidron in the other place on safeguarding rights for children. A third of internet users are children, and we need to ensure that their rights, along with those of everybody else, are actually enforceable. The idea that a child whose rights are violated will take Facebook to court is, frankly, fanciful.”
“The Home Office and the immigration system take decisions that are bad or wrong and that need to be corrected. If we delete the protections under the Bill for newcomers, we will put justice in jeopardy. We will genuinely risk denying justice to those newcomers who need information to fight their cases effectively. I lost cases that were brought because people were able to draw on information through subject access requests, and justice was eventually done in those cases. However, mistakes are made, and I do not think the Minister wants a system that is so prone to error. We have to build in checks and balances to the immigration justice system, and she has perfectly adequate safeguards on crime prevention in the Bill. As a former Home Office Minister, I can recognise what is basically a gratuitous land grab by the Home Office.”
“The Bill does not include adequate safeguards against that at the moment, so we will need to address that. We heard the troubling line of argument in the debate that we should carve out newcomers to this country from the rights and safeguards that are enjoyed by everybody else under the Bill. I have to say to the Minister that the measures on immigration are a mistake. We will seek to delete them, and I hope she accepts that initiative. I was the Immigration Minister who introduced the biggest shake-up to our immigration system for 40 years. I created the UK Border Agency, and I introduced the points system. In my two or two and a half years in the Home Office, I came to learn that our immigration system is not some celestial design—it is a human institution.”
“10 press release, as terribly robust as that is, as ensuring that adequacy provisions will be secured through the commitments that she has made to protect privacy. We would much rather rely on the full weight of the law, because that feels like a much more reassuring position. In the modern economy, there are rights that we need to take into account. Those rights are new and increasingly necessary in the modern age, such as the right not to suffer as a result of decisions made not by humans but by algorithms. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) made the powerful point that the great risk of algorithms that take decisions is that they may hard-code old injustice into new injustice. That idea should trouble us all.”
“Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), our man for definitions and a great deal more, made a very effective point about this not being a one-off exercise. This process will endure, so we are trying to make sure that British and European courts interpret privacy law in a way that is continually consistent over the years to come. We all need to recognise the juggling act that the Prime Minister is trying to perform. We all need to acknowledge with some honesty the creative ambiguity that she sometimes needs to sustain to keep everybody on the train. I think we all recognise the precariousness of her position. We know that her personal position as captain of the ship is not trouble-free, so I think that those on the Treasury Bench will forgive us for not relying on the full weight of a No.”
“However, we are troubled that the privacy provisions are not quite robust enough, and that argument was well made by a number of my right hon. and hon. Friends. In particular, the decision not to include the text of article 8 of the EU charter of fundamental rights to safeguard privacy and ensure that adequacy agreements will be there in years to come was an error. The approach is just too risky, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) warned. These risks of divergence are serious because so much of our exports, in particular to Europe, are services exports. Some 70% to 80% of those services exports may be digitally enabled, so we simply cannot afford any risk whatsoever. We need to put all risk to any future adequacy agreement beyond doubt. My hon.”
“If we are to have a really robust foundation of trust in the digital economy that will take shape over the course of this century, we will need a strong regime of rights. We need rights that are comprehensive and genuinely enforceable in courts, where necessary, and those rights need to live in a democracy that has safeguards, including safeguards around the way in which elections are fought in the digital age—those elections need to be free and fair—with a press that is clean. The problem with the Bill, as we see it, is that it is an opportunity missed. The Secretary of State argued that it was forensic; we would argue that it is a little bit more piecemeal. It is not haphazard; it is seeking to do a job by incorporating a substantive bit of legislation from Brussels into British law.”
“This has been quite a useful debate for rehearsing the arguments and divisions that I suspect we will have when the Bill moves upstairs to Committee. Some of our debate, particularly in the speeches made by Opposition Members, has even been about data protection. It is probably fair that I start with the note of unity that the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson), set out at the beginning of his remarks. I think there is a great deal of optimism on both sides of the House about the possibilities of technology in the years to come. The philosophical difference is that we genuinely believe that the new world of trade for the years to come will be built on a world of trust.”
“I think there is some cross-party consensus about the need for the e-commerce directive to be modernised, so we will table amendments that will encourage the Government to get their skates on. Crucially, however, we will table amendments that put beyond doubt the future of any adequacy agreement with the European Union. As the economy changes, so must the law. There will be many more data and privacy laws to come in the years ahead. We will encourage the Government to put in statute a framework that is not merely fit for today, but fit for the future.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will support the retention of those amendments, and we will seek to offer a much more wide-ranging, comprehensive approach, which we think the Government should take. We will offer a much more comprehensive, well-rounded and thought-through system of rights for the digital age. We will offer an effective means of safeguarding those rights through the introduction of new forms of collective redress. We will offer new safeguards that help to protect our democracy and that ensure free and fair elections and press justice. We will also seek to prompt the Government to confirm precisely when they will modernise the e-commerce directive, because many of the threats to freedom in the digital age will come from the fearsome five data giants of this age, which will need regulating in new ways.”
“The madness of the current system is that it costs students and taxpayers a fortune. Student debt is spiralling up to £55 billion, nearly half of which will be written off and picked up by general taxpayers. I urge the Secretary of State to look forensically at how we knit together further education and higher education so that we radically expand the number of earn-while-you-learn degree places, which are collapsing in great cities such as Birmingham, where they have halved in the past 12 months alone.”
“In the internet safety strategy, the Secretary of State proposed that there would be specific measures to protect children, yet when the Data Protection Bill came to the other place there was a hopeless deficit of any specific measures to protect children. It fell to Baroness Kidron, supported by us, to remedy the gap. When the Bill comes to the Commons, will the Secretary of State agree to work constructively with us to ensure that proper digital rights for children, who make up a third of users, are included in the Bill, like the very good five rights framework proposed by the Baroness and supported by us?”
“It claims to have a system for mobile devices that blocks websites with inappropriate content, but in evidence to the Public Bill Committee, the Open Rights Group said that the system is inaccurate, people have to actively choose the websites that are blocked, the websites are not automatically blocked, the websites are often blocked incorrectly and harmful websites are slipping through. We need to have substantial reassurances that the Minister is absolutely confident that the BBFC has the powers, resources, methodology, people and a strategy for fulfilling the terms of the statutory instrument. I would like some reassurance on those points, but crucially we all want to hear whether “Matt Hancock MP” the app will be included under the terms of the regulator.”
“We are told that the enforcement of age verification will be undertaken not on a proactive basis, but by people reporting in complaints, yet the whole regime for collective redress has been shot through by the Government in the other place. Parents on their own cannot even get together with consumer organisations such as Which? to bring substantive redress under the terms of the Digital Economy Act. The BBFC has given some reassurances that it will be able to distinguish between pornography and sex education, but it has not told us how.”
“The BBFC said this month at the Free Speech Coalition leadership conference that it sees the powers under the Digital Economy Act as meaning that even social media sites such as Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr would have to eliminate adult content or block all under-18s from using them. If the BBFC’s attitude to Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr is that they need to block content for all under-18s, then “Matt Hancock MP” the app should be included in the purview of the regulator. I know the Minister will set our minds at rest. The question for her is how on earth this regulator with 52 people will ensure that Reddit, Tumblr and Twitter are taking down all adult content or blocking under-18s. We need to hear a concrete plan and some substantive reassurance from her this morning.”
“This is a mess, and the Government have to bring forward substantive proposals to clear it up. The challenge she has got this morning is that she is proposing as an age-verification regulator an organisation that is hopelessly underfunded with no sense of what its scope should be. According to the BBFC’s annual report for 2016, it has £5.4 million in turnover. It has a grand total of 52 employees, and that is not up but down on the number for 2015. It receives no subsidy or budget from the Government. The Minister needs to tell us how much money she will ask for in Commons votes to fund the BBFC to fulfil this important new regulatory role. Secondly, the question of mission creep is an important one for the Minister to answer.”
“We have the Information Commissioner, which is responsible for data protection. We have the Advertising Standards Authority, which is responsible for regulating adverts, but not political adverts. If the Republic of Russia paid for attack ads attacking Brexit mutineers, such as some of the hon. and right hon. Members sat on the Conservative Benches, that is not covered by the ASA. Now we have a fourth regulator to add to the mix: the BBFC. The challenge the Minister has is that so much is now falling through the cracks that she is in no way able to rehearse an argument that we have a digital regulation regime that is fit for the 21st century. Let me give the Minister advance notice of some of the arguments we need to have during the consideration of the Data Protection Bill.”
“It is not quite clear whether that is an unintended breach of users’ privacy, but perhaps the Minister can tell us her attitude to that when she winds up as well. If people are posting pornography on it, as I am told they are, perhaps she could raise that with the Secretary of State when she returns. In her wind-up remarks, we expect her to tell us whether her regulator will include in its purview the app launched by the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport this morning. The second substantive point I wanted to make is a plea to the Minister. This morning she has contributed to the complete mish-mash and muddle that is digital regulation in this country. We already have Ofcom responsible for content regulation, unless it is on a platform such as Facebook or Twitter.”
“This morning, before the Minister arrived, the Secretary of State launched his new app, “Matt Hancock MP”. It does not require email verification, so people are already posting hardcore pornography on it. When the Minister winds up, she might just tell us whether the age-verification regulator that she has proposed, and that we will approve this morning, will oversee the app of the Secretary of State as well. I noticed that the main contributors to the app are journalists, although it looks as though Ed Balls has also been on, because someone has posted “Ed Balls”. Those are the only words that have been posted, but it is the second-most favourited comment on the app this morning. For reasons that are not quite clear, when someone signs up to the “Matt Hancock MP” app, the app asks whether it can access that person’s photos.”
“It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma— I think it is the first time I have had that honour. I congratulate the Minister on her new role. This is the first time we have faced each other in such a debate, and I am very much looking forward to spending an awful lot more time with her in Committee Rooms as the Data Protection Bill weaves its way through the House of Commons. At this stage, I would normally preface my remarks with a lacerating attack on how the Government are acquiescing in our place in the world as a cyber also-ran, and I would attack them for their rather desultory position and attitude to delivering a world-class digital trust regime. However, I am very fortunate that this morning the Secretary of State has made the arguments for me.”
“Tom Bateman, a political editor with BBC politics, tells us he denied the app access to his photos and yet it uploaded pictures anyway, so it is not clear to me how the Secretary of State has been able to produce this app in a way that is violating the country’s privacy laws.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is making a brilliant point, but has he noticed that the American national security strategy—published this week—explicitly recognises this threat, whereas our national security strategy does not?”
“I think the Americans looked at 47 accounts, which were all provided to the Mueller inquiry by intelligence agencies, but—the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right—our agencies have offered, I think, only one. The other risk we have to be careful of, though, is that money was transferred onshore—the Electoral Commission is now investigating that—so some of the illicit money may have come from UK onshore accounts.”
“Facebook’s last quarterly profits were nearly $4 billion. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it could afford to conduct the research if the will were there to do so?”
“The Atlantic Council has analysed a number of policy positions and concluded that UKIP MEPs “made similar statements blaming the EU for the Ukraine crisis and asserting Russia’s right to intervene in the ‘near abroad’.” Looking at all this in the round, the US intelligence community concluded that Russia was intervening systematically abroad in the west, and it would be naive of us to think that Russia was not trying to intervene here in this country.”
“The Front National, for example, was given significant loans by Kremlin-backed banks. If we look at the AFD’s relationship with Russia, we see how broadcasters such as Sputnik and Russia-linked accounts systematically intervened to attack Chancellor Merkel and to support the AFD. If we look at the relationship with UKIP, we can see very close links. Nigel Farage famously said that President Putin was the leader that he most admired, back in 2014. In the European Parliament, UKIP has taken consistent positions in favour of the Russian annexation of Crimea.”
“There is simply an attempt to confuse and confound. The way in which this goes to market in the west, however, is through an unholy alliance with extreme leftist groups and extreme right groups. Its aim is to polarise and divide, and to tear down the words on the coat of arms here in the Chamber, which state that we have “more in common” than sets us apart. If we look at the 45 new parties that have been created in Europe over the past 10 to 20 years, we see a clear majority that have some sympathy with Russia. They include Germany’s AFD, Austria’s FPO, the Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik in Hungary, the Front National in France, the Northern League in Italy and, indeed, the United Kingdom Independence party. All those parties have taken a pro-Russia position on matters of huge international interest.”
“Major Kalugin, who was the KGB’s highest-ranking defector to the west, described the approach as “the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence”. Since 2012, under General Gerasimov, this doctrine has now been renewed. Some call it a doctrine, and some call it a philosophy, but the idea is that “the very rules of war have changed”, and that the role of non-military means of intervention behind an opponent’s lines is now very different. As Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev of the London School of Economics have set out, these new tactics are characterised by opportunism and involve an unregulated network of propagandists whose material is distributed online. They point out that Russia is now operating in a post-truth environment, and there is no attempt to win people over to a Russian view of the world.”