I want to say a couple of words on consent, because it is something I have been thinking about for a while. Consent is often seen as a great panacea to this whole thing about protecting people, but I do not think it really is. The requests that really irritate me are the ones that ask for unnecessary information such as your date of birth, when all you are trying to do is to sign up for a warranty on a bit of equipment or whatever, because firms are trying to profile their customers. Those I agree should be stopped. But other consent requests are essential to giving a good service.
There are two things to say about such requests. One is that most people do not mind, because they assume that people know everything about them anyway—particularly the Government and the big boys. They just want the thing to be done properly so that they can get their money, or whatever it is. To put blocks in the way so that they have to click on or sign lots of different consent forms does not get them any further and just irritates them more. Those provisions are very sensible.
3.30 pm
There is another problem with consent. These days, when you go on any website, there is this great thing about cookies. The website will ask, “Do you mind that we’ve got all these cookies? And, by the way, I’m afraid the website won’t react properly if you do mind”. That is perfectly true; the cookies are necessary to drive the websites. Everyone clicks on the things or just lets them go, so the thing that is supposed to prevent websites spying on you is totally ineffective. That is a typical example of where we put consent into a Bill and all it does is irritate people—it does not do any good at all. So this may be a case where we are going too far on consent, which will just be a nuisance to everybody and will disadvantage some people.