My Lords, this is the first chance Parliament has had to scrutinise this major project. I am not asking for the project to be rushed. I am the last person who would want to set up MaPS or the DWP to fail. I wish them well and to succeed. I do not have a negative view, but I want this project to work.
The Minister gave assurances that there will be a public dashboard, but it is not in the Bill. I could cite various previous occasions when Ministers made assurances about things but they did not materialise. If we accept, which I do, the sincerity with which the Minister has committed to there being a publicly owned dashboard, I see no reason why a little amendment to the Bill could not capture that assurance, so that the next Secretary of State does not change their mind.
On the ownership of the dashboard, I was actually rather worried—not reassured—by one comment the Minister made. He said that ownership in the long term, with a whole series of unknowns about how things will develop, is something that will need to be considered. That may be true; however, given those unknowns and that we do not know how policy will develop, the delegated powers in this Bill should not take to themselves the ability to make fundamental changes to the ownership of the dashboard. Because it is of such significance, that issue should come back to Parliament. Does the Minister accept that point?
7.30 pm
I accept that some people may prefer to use their own provider’s dashboard: I can see situations where one would, if there is a high level of trust. However, I hope the Minister will accept that there is equally strong evidence that consumers want access to a public dashboard outside the commercial environment. Does he accept, equally, that the general public seek this?
This will not work unless the schemes release their data. I do not go behind that but accept it as something that has to be done for a dashboard to work. They are entitled to a level of confidence about the protection of that data and the liability when it is released. In the documents that we have, the state has protected itself: it has reserved that it may not release state data onto the dashboard. I do not want to go behind that. However, if the state is not confident at a given point in time to release its data for whatever reason, one has to ask why it is okay to mandate private schemes, since they will ask that question too. Does the Minister accept that that will be one of the concerns?
I was not trying to over-select—or select at all, in that sense—the Constitution Committee’s comments, and I accept that there is a need for flexibility in the momentum when building the architecture. However, that is different from having open-ended delegated powers on all matters of policy that might emerge on market and consumer behaviour.
In his comments, the Minister said that the dashboard would start with limited functionality, which is reassuring—that is the sort of comment I like to hear. However, on my next amendment I want to address where that functionality moves on. The delegated powers allow it to move on and there are no protections in the Bill for when the functionality extends beyond the collection and display of information.