Digital Economy Bill — House of Commons, 2016-11-28
Topic: Mixed Topics
Calum Robert Kerr (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Six-party support; I thank the hon. Gentleman for his clarification. He is well deserving of his TV licence—when he gets old enough. I truly support new clause 8 and also back the other measures relating to the BBC in new clauses 17 and 18. If we believe in public service broadcasting, the way to protect it is to cherish it, to look after it and to ensure its listings appear as technology evolves, not to give it a huge liability and line it up for a potentially deeply unpopular future decision Turning to new clause 15, it was interesting to hear and largely concur with the comments of the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale). I support the idea of pushing for something further on search engines, but I am conscious that there is a dialogue between parties that both have a stake in something. It is interesting that the right hon. Gentleman is now coming around to the idea of some legislative intervention, but we look to the new Front-Bench team for answers to what that might be and when. What movement do they expect to see before they would legislate? The Minister touched on that in Committee, but what would be the trigger for intervention if the industry was not going far enough Digital ticketing has been well discussed already. If someone behaves illegally by going into a shop and buying all the produce and then selling it in a way that was not intended, the answer is not necessarily better security; the answer is making it illegal. I get the point of the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), but let us make it illegal and drive out this morally unacceptable behaviour. If I may paraphrase the US moral philosopher Eric Holler, as I did in Committee, every great idea begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket. That is what we have here. Fan-to-fan ticket exchanges have led to rampant touting Finally, I commend the Labour Front-Bench team for their valiant efforts to rescue part 5 of the Bill through measures such as new clause 5. We had two days of evidence in Committee, during which witnesses were fairly damning of the approach being taken on data sharing or data access. As we have gone along, the Government have tried to give us a little more information and have applied sticking plasters here and there, but nothing has convinced me that they have learned from things such as the Concentrix episode. Somebody tried to buy bulk data and apply it to people receiving tax credits, leading to some of the most vulnerable in our society having their money stopped, being forced into debt or other far more severe consequences I remain unconvinced that the Government are heading in the right direction. There is an inherent paternalism. They say, "Don’t you worry. We’ll be fine. Trust us," and give us a pat on the head, but when it comes to protecting people’s data we should be looking at the Estonian model, which puts the citizen at the centre. We should be open. I should be notified every time my data are shared if it is for my benefit. We should not hide that. Right from the start of the evidence-taking, people were saying that data-sharing is a good thing, but we must earn and retain public trust. I see little evidence that the Government understand that and are willing to do anything other than learn the hard way by making mistakes. I look forward with trepidation to the many debates in this place as various data breaches emerge. I urge the Government to consider removing this whole part of the Bill and to revisit it once they have actually done a proper job.