I shall speak also to the rather more substantial Amendment 81A for which Amendment 50L is the paving amendment. For this purpose I have briefly and temporarily transformed from a humble Back-Bencher to speak on behalf of the Labour Front Bench, but it will not last.
These amendments are about access to data for consumers. It is true that under existing data protection legislation British consumers have a legal right to request access to the personal data that businesses hold about them, but the majority of consumers have no idea of that, very few of them do it and, for those who do, it takes an inordinately long time to get the information out. Which? did a survey indicating that for those who do, it can take up to 40 days.
The Government are seized of this issue because in 2011 they set up the midata project, which is a voluntary programme covering four specific sectors. They are very important sectors, but there are only four: energy, mobile phones, providers of credit cards and providers of current accounts. The aim was to give consumers better access to their personal data in portable electronic form. The midata project has so far been somewhat disappointing. After 2012, the Government took an order under the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act to compel businesses within those areas to release consumers’ consumption and transaction data in a machine-readable portable electronic form on request. This has not really worked, and there has been no extension beyond those sectors. Data sharing between individuals and services providers and between intermediaries and those suppliers is still clunky and limited and, particularly for vulnerable consumers, difficult and potentially hazardous.
Our amendment in the new schedule which Amendment 81A would introduce is designed to tackle these problems by, first, ensuring that access to data is clearly a key consumer right and, secondly, by making sure that the Government use the powers that, in general, they already have to ensure that consumers are able to access portable data through the midata project and the provisions of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act. That includes engaging third parties—the so-called next generation intermediaries in particular—to that data with appropriate protections. That can lead to redressing the balance significantly by at least allowing for the possibility of some collective bargaining for a group of consumers.
The amendment also asks the Government to report on other sectors to which the present midata provisions should and could apply, provides for traders to have to ensure that they have the best information, ensures safe data handling, including the consent of the individuals concerned and the appropriateness and identity of those concerned, and ensures that where there is a
public benefit from generalising that data on an anonymised basis, it is genuinely anonymised and that consumers know their rights about their own data.
This amendment requires the Government to use their existing powers and to report back on how those powers should be extended. It requires them to look at other services and at the interplay with the intermediaries. First-generation intermediaries are what we call, generally speaking, comparison sites. There are problems with the quality of the data in comparison sites, as recent reports have shown. It is not always clear what range of companies within the sector comparison sites cover, nor is the commercial relationship between the comparison site and the providers clear.
The authentication of comparison sites is not yet substantially in place. The former Office of Fair Trading attempted to establish a confidence code. In the energy sector, there was a point when my old organisation, Consumer Focus, was subcontracted by Ofgem to look at the effectiveness of comparison sites, but there is no overall approach to ensure that those sites are genuinely doing the intermediary job of providing a range of information that would ensure that consumers can make a sensible and understandable choice. Millions of consumers benefit from access to comparison sites, but some sites are significantly better than others. Some are more subject to possible corruption—although corruption may be too strong a word. The relationship with the people whose information they provide to consumers is on a commercial basis and excludes other providers. This is an area in which the Government should intervene, as technology allows us to move further into the use of consumer data in these areas.
My noble friends under earlier amendments referred to the issue of the public sector, which also runs major projects on consumer transactions, particularly in the NHS and social care. Access to and knowledge of that information needs to be covered by any regulation and any provision of extension of rights for consumers on the data that public services provide. That includes not only the public services in the sense of the NHS itself but also those organisations commissioned by the NHS to provide public services—so when they are outsourced, data also need to be covered by the provisions. We need tough penalties for the public sector as well as for the private sector when such information is misused.
This is a wide area on which we are asking the Government to report, but an important one. An empowered consumer should be able to rely on these intermediaries to present the information to them and to ensure that their own transactions are not misused in the compilation of both the providers’ and the intermediaries’ use of data. I would hope that the Government could at least accept the principle that a report on these areas should be required and should be, in our words,
“within six months of the passing of this”,
Bill, so that we can look at what further provisions are necessary. Then we can protect the consumer while enhancing the effective use of data and access to data in a way that empowers rather than threatens consumers, particularly the more vulnerable ones. I beg to move.