Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)

I thank both noble Lords for raising this; I absolutely concur with them on how important it is. In fact, I remember going to see the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, when he was in his other role, to talk about exactly this issue: whether the digital verification services were going to be robust enough against cyberattacks. I pray in aid the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, who both felt that the new Cyber Security and Resilience Bill will provide some underpinning for all of this, because our Government take this issue very seriously. As the Committee can imagine, we get regular advice from the security services about what is going on and what we need to do to head it off. Yes, it is a difficult issue, but we are doing everything we can to make sure that our data is safe; that is fundamental. Amendment 47 would require the Secretary of State to prepare and publish rules on cybersecurity for providers to follow. The existing trust framework includes rules on cybersecurity, against which organisations will be certified. Specifically, providers will be able to prove either that they meet the internationally recognised information security standards or that they have a security management system that matches the criteria set out in the trust framework. I assure noble Lords that the Information Commissioner’s Office, the National Cyber Security Centre and other privacy stakeholders have contributed to the development of the trust framework. This includes meeting international best practice around encryption and cryptology techniques. I will happily write to noble Lords to reassure them further by detailing the range of protections already in place. Alternatively, if noble Lords here today would benefit from an official technical briefing on the trust framework, we would be delighted to set up such a meeting because it is important that we all feel content that this will be a robust system, for exactly the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Markham, explained. We are absolutely on your Lordships’ side and on the case on all this; if it would be helpful to have a meeting, we will certainly do that.