My Lords, the debate so far has been—in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—a Committee debate. That is partly because this set of amendments from the Government has come quite late. If they had been tabled in Committee, I think we would have had a more expansive debate on this issue and could have knocked it about a bit and come back to it on Report. The timing is regrettable in all of this.
That said, the Government have tabled some extremely important amendments, particularly Amendments 196 and 198, which deal with things such as algorithms and functionalities. I very much welcome those important amendments, as I know the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, did.
I also very much support Amendments 270 and 272 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser. I hope the Minister, having been pre-primed, has all the answers to them. It is astonishing that, after all these years, we are so unattuned to the issues of the devolved Administrations and that we are still not in the mindset on things such as research. We are not sufficiently granular, as has been explained—let alone all the other questions that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked. I hope the Minister can unpack some of that as well.
I want to express some gratitude, too, because the Minister and his officials took the trouble to give us a briefing about remote access issues, alongside Ofcom. Ofcom also sent through its note on algorithmic assessment powers, so an effort has been made to explain some of these powers. Indeed, I can see the practical importance, as explained to us. It is partly the lateness, however, that sets off what my noble friend Lord Allan called “trigger words” and concerns about the remote access provisions. Indeed, I think we have a living and breathing demonstration of the impact of triggers on the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, because these are indeed issues that concern those outside the House to quite a large degree.
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I really think the Minister will have to take us through the safeguards again, and there are some he has already mentioned: the limits to the information that can be viewed, and the fact that this is done offline in operation but is limited to functionalities rather than content. He did mention that it was privacy-protecting, that it was justifiable only where proportionate, that the fact that Ofcom is accessing remotely can be made public, that it is challengeable, and that Ofcom cannot disclose information obtained. These are non-trivial powers which require a non-trivial response and a great deal more explanation, particularly, as my noble friend said, on how they differ from those in the Investigatory Powers Act; otherwise, I think concerns will continue. That is the reason for my noble friend’s Amendment 247B, which attempts to place further safeguards.
Amendments 237ZA, 272AB and 262AA, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, and spoken to by the noble Baronesses, Lady Harding and Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, are really important. Of course, we welcome the tweak to Clause 148 that the Minister has introduced today but, as all noble Lords have said, this does not take us far enough. At the risk of boring the House to death, as usual, I will refer to the original Joint Committee report again. We keep returning to this because it does set out a great deal of sense.
There are three areas I want to mention. The Joint Committee said at the time:
“We heard from Dr Amy Orben, College Research Fellow at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, that lack of access to data is ‘making it impossible for good quality and independent
scientific studies to be completed on topics such as online harms, mental health, or misinformation’”.
In another paragraph, the report says:
“We heard there is evidence that social media usage can cause psychological harm to children, but that platforms prevent research in this area from being conducted or circulated”.
Then we actually heard from Meta. It said:
“One of the things that is a particular challenge in the area of research is how we can provide academics who are doing independent research with access to data really to study these things more deeply”.
On all sides, there is a need for teeth when it comes to access for independent researchers.
Our recommendation was very clear; it was not just a recommendation that this should be reviewed but that there should be these powers. Obviously, the Minister has agreed to a compromise, in terms of a report on access, but he really should go further and have default powers, so that the Government can institute the access that is required for researchers, as a result of that report. So far, with the amendments today, the Minister is not strengthening the Bill, because there is no way for Ofcom to compel compliance with the guidance or any incentive for companies to comply with any guidance that is produced.
I very much hope that the Minister will take on board what the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, had to say, in a very eloquent way. If he cannot do it here and now on Report, I very much hope that he will come back with a proposal at Third Reading. As the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, said, we have done this in virtually every other case where there is a report. As we have seen, the Minister has agreed to have a review or a report, and then the backstop powers are in place. That is not the case with this, and it should be.