Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this Committee. I apologise to noble Lords that I was not able to be in your Lordships’ House for Second Reading. I declare my relevant technology interests as set out in the register, variously as adviser to the Crown Estate, Endava plc and Simmons & Simmons LLP, and as non-executive director of Avalanche (BVI), Inc and the Avalanche Foundation. In my set of Committee amendments, I want to assist the Bill by bringing the strands of inclusion and innovation and talent and technology through every possible supportive clause of the Bill. In this group, I speak to Amendments 3, 10 and 13 in my name. Amendment 3 sets out provisions to establish a digital life-cycle service for right to buy. In doing so, it would provide greater empowerment, knowledge, connection and communication to those who may wish to avail themselves of the right-to-buy service. This would be an effective and important use of digital technology and, through that, could play a positive part in enabling digital inclusion. Critically, the amendment does not seek to rely just on digital; it sets out provisions for alternative means of connection to ensure this life-cycle service could be achieved through systems such as text messaging. Amendment 10 would develop this in the context of fraud requirements, clearly supporting the measures in new Section 124A inserted by Clause 4. Amendment 13 further seeks to use the benefits of technology to provide an immutable record—an audit trail—which is tamper-proof for all Section 122 applications. In 2017, I wrote a report on blockchain called Distributed Ledger Technologies for Public Good. At that stage, I wanted to set out not just the potential public use cases but the public value cases in which the distributed ledger and other technologies could assist across the state. My fear was that, if these potential use cases and value cases were not set out, the debate would get stuck and, whenever blockchain was mentioned, it would naturally be assumed that it meant just Bitcoin, which had nothing to say on beneficial provision for operations of the state across potentially all government departments and local authorities. Amendment 13 is therefore one such potential use case or value case, where there could be a clear audit trail, available for all, of use to the department, and indeed the regulator, with the safety, security and knowledge that it is a clear, accurate, immutable record of applications and any potential fraud hearings and investigations that have happened around right to buy. These three amendments look to deploy the benefits of such potential technologies. I believe they would greatly support the provisions set out in the Bill.