Baroness Kidron (CB)

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. I perhaps did not say it at the beginning of my remarks on this section, but I fully support the Government’s efforts to create a trust framework. I think I started with criticism rather than with the fact that this is really important. Trust is in the name and if we cannot trust it, it is not going to be a trust framework. It is important to anticipate and address the likelihood that some will seek to abuse it. If there are not sufficient consequences for abusing it, I do not understand quite how we can have the level of trust needed for this to have wide adoption. I particularly want to say that good systems cannot rely on good people. We know that and we see it. We are going to discuss it later in Committee, but good systems need checks and balances. In relation to this set of amendments, we need a disincentive for bad actors to mislead or give false information to government or the public. I am not going to rehearse each amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, explained so brilliantly. The briefing on the trust framework is a very important one for us all. The amount of support there is for the idea, and the number of questions about what it means and how it will work, mean that we will come back to this if we do not have a full enough explanation of the disincentives for a bad actor.