My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for outlining the developments that have taken place in midata and related projects in recent months. Clearly, the Government have in mind the need to address some of the problems that arise from this range of data and the opportunities that they give and the dangers that they present.
The exchanges between my noble friend Lord Knight and the noble Baronesses, Lady Oppenheim-Barnes and Lady Wilcox, indicate the difficult road that we have to travel on this because there are some serious potential public benefits from the use of aggregated data and their use in individual circumstances provided the individual understands and knows that that is what is being done to their own individual information and has clearly consented to that.
In many fields this is not yet an issue but it will become one in a range of fields, as was recognised when the midata project was first being discussed. I am grateful for the information on the progress that has been made in relation to current accounts, for example. The purport of my amendment is not to tell the Government where they are to draw the line or where the need to protect the consumer should prevent potentially beneficial use of the data, or vice versa—that
is, where the rights of the consumer could be overridden by the use of public data—but to assess across the board where we are on all this.
We ask for a report within six months. That may be a bit fast given that one or two other things have to happen within the next six months. However, the Government should pull all this together within a reasonable period. This is not a prescriptive amendment; it would require an overall analysis by the Government. I still think that is necessary. Some big issues are involved here and there is great potential in both the public and private sectors but there are also issues around confidence, control and vulnerability on the part of individual consumers which also need to be addressed, and I do not think that an entirely sector by sector approach will be sufficient.
I hope that the Government will consider this again, perhaps over a slightly longer timescale than is prescribed in the amendment. We will have to return to this issue at some stage, not necessarily during the passage of the Bill, but within a relatively short period of time. In the mean time, I accept that I should withdraw the amendment.