Lord Fuller (Con)

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 368 in support of my noble friend Lord Jackson, because losing your phone is not just inconvenient. When your device is stolen, a crime has been committed, and operators have a responsibility to take a much more leading role in disincentivising the opportunities to steal, to make it a lot easier to reunite people with a phone that might have been lost and to discourage the black market in stolen goods. It is a late hour, but I hope to tell a little uplifting story about my experiences today, because today I found a phone on the Tube as I got off at Westminster. It turns out that the gentleman sitting next to me, who had got off at Victoria on the way from Fulham, had left it behind. I am an honest chap. I had a look: it was a pink case with two phone numbers inside. I called them and there was no answer, but I texted them and, by and by, there was a response. To cut a long story short, the phone was reunited with the owner—perhaps, as I have the phone number now, I might send them the YouTube clip and possibly the Hansard as well. The phone was deposited at Westminster Tube with TfL staff, who were really good. They were actually really interested and keen to help this poor, unfortunate chap. But what if someone had not been quite so honest? What if that phone number was not tucked inside the pink case? How would it have been secured and returned? I did not expect to talk to this group, but my experience today shows how important this amendment is. The man in the street should not rely just on the kindness of strangers. The phone companies should not make it harder to reunite; we should prevent the perverse incentives. But there is another point. The phone is no longer just a phone. It is not just a device to doomscroll on late at night. It is not just a device to play “Candy Crush”. The phone is now a token—part of our security infrastructure and part of the devices that secure our economy. I do not believe that this has been fully understood. I got locked out of my parliamentary account the other day, and because I had left my phone behind, I could not do my work, neither my commercial work nor the work associated with this House. I do not think that the penny has quite dropped with the operators to recognise that they are now part of the security infrastructure of our economy. It is not just the inconvenience of losing a phone and queuing up, as my noble friend says, in the Apple store to replace it; this is part of the technological infrastructure of our nation. Technology has moved on, and the phone companies must do so too.