Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Our plan—to consult properly and finish the job, carrying out the processes as now mandated in the Bill and then bringing forward legislation that both Houses of Parliament can have confidence in—is surely the right one. A draft Bill is not a plan to solve the problem. Indeed, it could have the consequence of delaying the very reforms that your Lordships have called for. For these reasons, I hope that noble Lords will support the amendments in my name, but not continue to insist on Amendment 49F today.

Before I finish, I will address the question of double insistence. Today, noble Lords have been presented with a question of whether to go even further than we have come so far during ping-pong and choose whether they want the entire Bill to fall if the Government do not accept the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I sincerely hope that it does not come to this, for it would mean that noble Lords are willing to countenance the unprecedented: trying to collapse a Bill that does nothing to weaken copyright law, but which does deliver many of the elected Government’s manifesto commitments—for example, a data preservation process supporting bereaved parents; new offences for intimate image deepfake abuse; smart data schemes such as open banking that businesses have been crying out for; and a framework for research into online safety.

This would mean that noble Lords are willing to try to collapse a Bill that the elected Government are using to grow the economy by £10 billion, the number one mission from their manifesto and election campaign; that makes vital, uncontroversial and necessary amendments to our national security and policing laws to keep us safe; that will save 140,000 hours of NHS time per year, with the potential to reduce medication errors by 6.8 million and prevent 20 deaths per year; and that the elected House has voted overwhelmingly in favour of four times. I urge noble Lords to choose instead the Government’s plan to solve this issue and vote with the Government today. I beg to move.

Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A)

Thirdly, all noble Lords, including me, are concerned about the primacy of the Commons. We are being accused of constitutional wrongdoing. I was very disappointed in the Minister’s opening speech. We are not trying to collapse the Bill. This Bill is a Lords starter. If we vote, we will not be double-insisting. That is entirely, 100%, in the hands of the Commons. Even though we have been here several times—largely because the Commons evoked financial privilege twice, with a very low bar—today is the first time the House would be insisting on any of its amendments. That point has been made by many noble Lords who have been in the House a great deal longer than I have.

If we were to send the Bill back for Commons consideration today, the other place would have three choices. It could choose to accept the amendment, it could choose to replace it with its own amendment in lieu, or it could choose to double-insist—and crash the Bill. I want to make it absolutely clear that, whatever transpires today, I will accept the choice the Government make. This is our last chance to ask the Government to provide a meaningful solution, and it will be in their hands alone to provide one.

Yesterday in the other place, Conservative and Liberal colleagues voted for this amendment enthusiastically, on the basis that it was a minimum that we could ask for—an amendment that the Government told me in advance of our debate that they would overturn. And indeed they did, in 38 minutes. I thank those on the Opposition Benches in the other place, many of whom have written to me this morning expressing support and the hope that noble Lords will, as they say, keep going. I thank colleagues across your Lordships’ House for their eloquent contributions and extraordinary support throughout.

I also thank again Labour colleagues who have sat on their hands and occasionally come through the Lobby with us. I know it is hard, but it is the role of your Lordships’ House to ask the Government to think again, and it is both against convention and a rebuke to the House, a rebuke to the true feelings of their own Back Benchers, a rebuke to a £126 billion industrial sector and a rebuke to the 2.4 million creative workers, to return again and again with no solution to the stealing. Unless this is a tacit deal with big tech, it makes no sense to refuse to take a power just in case, and to refuse to create a timeline or a legislative vehicle for transparency on behalf of our second-biggest industrial sector when it is crying out for our support—the very support that Labour promised.