Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)

My Lords, I was very pleased to hear my noble friend Lord Vallance’s words in relation to what we have been doing today and also taking a broader conspectus of what we have been doing in the longer periods of Committee and Report. I think he has answered the question I was going to leave him with, which was on whether the Government were in listening mode when the House took such determined decisions, as it has done on a number of issues, which I know he was opposed to. I hope that I am right in assuming that he is saying that he understands the motivation behind them, which is in no sense to try to wreck the Bill but, in the best interests of this House, to try to make sure that what comes out of it reflects the wider experience and range of views that can come from those who have knowledge and understanding of this Bill. As he said, this is not the first data protection Bill we have—I was going to say “endured”, but that is not right—enjoyed, and we have been through a number of the issues that have surfaced again in the past few weeks at other times. As we heard in Committee—a number of people have said this and I think it is still true—this is really not the data protection and data processing Bill that we need. What we have is an attempt to try to bridge some of the infelicities that have occurred in recent years because of the combination of legislative processes that have happened within the GDPR, Brexit and the Data Protection Act 2018. That does not make it the Bill we could have had. I am not forecasting, but I suspect that we will probably have to return to this within a few years to try to bring forward some of the issues that are still buried in this, which do not come out quite as well as they could do, and I look forward to that. The Minister was right to say that this is his first major piece of legislation. I think he has done extraordinarily well to be able to pick up the mantle and the first steps taken by my noble friend Lady Jones, who we welcome back. I also pay tribute to the Bill team, who have been exemplary in trying to provide the information we need to make the best decisions. We will see the Bill back in due course. It will have, presumably, changes to some of the issues on creative copyright, scientific research and some other points that the noble Lord mentioned. I hope that, when that happens, we will have an opportunity to reflect on that together, and I make an open invitation to the Minister to engage with some of the people he has named already, whose clear interest in this has been flagged to him. I am sure they would want to try to continue the discussion before we go into the formal processes.