HM Government

I will now update the house on the fifth round of negotiations with the EU.

In view of the fact that the October European Council is this week, I will also review the progress of the five negotiation rounds since June.

Whilst at times the negotiations have been tough, both Michel Barnier and I have acknowledged the new dynamic that has been created by the Prime Minister’s speech in Florence.

This momentum was maintained during November. Both negotiating teams continued to work constructively together.

Since June we have steadily developed our shared political objectives. Now nevertheless there is still still some way to go to secure a new partnership.

But I am confident we are on the right path.

Mr Speaker, I will now take the House through each of the negotiating issues in turn.

Citizens’ Rights

On citizens’ rights, we have made further progress towards giving British citizens in the EU and EU27 citizens in the UK the greatest possible legal certainty about the future.

In future our legal orders will be distinct and different.

Last week, we explored the ways in which we will make sure that the rights we agree now will be enforced in a fair and equivalent way.

We also explored ways in which we can fully implement the Withdrawal Treaty into UK law.

That will give confidence to European citizens living in the UK that they will be able to directly enforce their rights – as set out in the Agreement – in UK courts.

The two sides also discussed ways of ensuring consistent interpretation of our Agreement.

Although we have not yet arrived at a single model that will achieve this, we have explored a number of solutions.

And we should also not lose sight of the fact that we have made significant progress in this area since June.

We have reached agreement on:

• The criteria for residence rights;

• The right to work and own a business;

• Social security rights;

• Rights for current family members;

• Reciprocal health care rights;

• The rights of frontier workers;

• And the fact that the process for securing settled status in the UK will be streamlined and low cost.

But, of course, there are still some issues outstanding for both sides, including the right:

• to continue to enjoy the recognition of professional qualifications;
• to vote in local elections;
• The right to onward movement move as a UK citizen already resident in the EU27;
• the right to return;
• the right to bring in future family members;
• the right to export a range of benefits;

And in many of these areas it is a straightforward statement of fact that our proposals go further and provide more certainty that those of the Commission. We are trying to find on both sides I think, pragmatic solutions. In the fourth round we offered the guaranteed right of return for settled citizens in the UK in exchange for onward movement rights for British citizens currently living in the EU. We look forward to hearing the Commission’s response on this offer, we haven’t had it yet.

Mr Speaker,

I recognise that there has been some concern regarding the new system which European citizens will have to use to gain settled status in the UK.

So last week, I confirmed that while there will be a registration process, the administration process will be completely new, streamlined, and – importantly – low-cost.

Furthermore, any EU citizen in the UK already in possession of a permanent residence card will be able to exchange it for settled status in a simple way.

They will not need to go through the full application process again.

The tests associated with this process will be agreed and set out within the Withdrawal Agreement.

As a result of our productive discussions, the Commission is also able to offer similar guarantees in return for those British citizens in the European Union.

These clarifications, on both sides, have helped build further confidence.

Northern Ireland

This round also saw further detailed discussions on Northern Ireland and Ireland.

In a significant step forward we we have developed joint principles on the continuation of the Common Travel Area and associated rights.

These joint principles will fully preserve the rights of UK and Irish nationals to live, work and study across these islands. They will also protect the associated rights to public services and social security. To provide legal certainty, these principles recognise that the Withdrawal Agreement should formally acknowledge that the UK and Ireland will continue to be able to uphold and develop these bilateral arrangements. Our teams have also mapped out areas of cooperation that function on a North-South basis. And we have begun the detailed work to ensure this continues once the UK has left the EU.

We also agreed a set of critical guiding principles to protect the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement in all its dimensions. And we are working on the necessary steps to make this a reality. And throughout this process we have reaffirmed our commitment to protecting the rights of people of North Ireland to choose to be British, Irish or both, as they choose. I have set out before our shared determination to tackle the unique circumstances of Northern Ireland by focusing on creative solutions and we have begun to do so.

But we cannot fully resolve these issues without also addressing our future relationship.

As the Prime Minister said in her statement to this House last week, “We owe it to the people of Northern Ireland—and indeed to everyone on the island of Ireland—to get this right.”

Financial Settlement

On the financial settlement, discussions continued in the spirit fostered by the Prime Minister’s significant statements in her Florence speech.

The Prime Minister reassured our European Partners that they will not need to pay more or receive less over the remainder of the current budget plan as a result of our decision to leave.

And she reiterated that the UK will honour commitments we have made during the period of our membership.

Off the back of this, in the September round we agreed to undertake a rigorous examination of the technical detail where we needed to reach a shared view.

This work has continued.

This has not been a process of agreeing specific commitments — we have been clear that this can only come later.

But it is an important step, so that when the time comes we will be able to reach a political agreement.

Separation Issues

Finally, on separation issues, we have continued to work through the detail on a range of issues, particularly those areas relating purely to our withdrawal, such as nuclear safeguards, civil judicial co-operation and privileges and immunities.

Whilst we’ve made good progress the remaining issues in this sector are dependent on the future discussions on the future relationship, so we are ready and prepared to start those discussions.

Conclusion

In conclusion Mr Speaker,

Our aim remains to provide as much certainty as possible to businesses and citizens on both sides.

I have made no secret of the fact that to fully provide that certainty we must be able to talk about the future.

We all have to recognise that we are reaching the limits of what we can achieve without consideration of the future relationship.

The Prime Minister’s speech in Florence set out the scale of our ambition for the new partnership with the European Union and she also laid out the case for a simple clear and time-limited period of implementation on current terms.

At the European Council later this week, I hope the leaders of the 27 will recognise the progress made and provide Michel Barnier with the mandate to build on the momentum and spirit of cooperation we now have.

Doing so, will allow us to best achieve our joint objectives and move towards a deal that works for both the UK and the EU.

Mr Speaker,

There has been much discussion of what will constitute sufficient progress.

Let me be clear that sufficient progress, and the sequencing of negotiations, has always been an EU construct, not the UK one.

Negotiations require both parties to not just engage constructively but also to develop their positions in advance.

For the UK’s part, I have I have always been clear that we will be conducting these negotiations in a constructive and responsible way, we have been entirely reasonable in that.

The work of our teams and the substantial progress that we have made over recent months proves that we are doing just that.

And we are ready to move these negotiations on.

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Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Rt Hon James Brokenshire MP said:

I want to pay tribute to the efforts of everyone from the civil contingency groups and the emergency services who have been working diligently to help keep people safe during the last 48 hours as Storm Ophelia hit Northern Ireland.

The close co-operation between these groups mean that effective action was taken to ensure public services and people’s lives were protected.

While there is still more to do, significant efforts have already been put in to see that electricity supplies are restored and debris on our road networks is removed. The recovery operation, which has involved hundreds of people through the night and taken place in very challenging circumstances, will continue over the coming hours.

What we have seen over the last 48 hours is the resilience of Northern Ireland, the resourcefulness and community spirit of its people, and the commitment and professionalism of Northern Ireland’s front line responders.

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From 23 October 2017, customers who use our portal will receive the results of their applications to register land for the first time (known as first registration applications) online when:

• all the supporting documents they lodged with their application were certified copies rather than originals. See our announcement about lodging certified copy deeds with first registrations
• the title plan that we send the customer when we complete their application can fit on an A3 (or smaller) piece of paper – as with all other application types
• their application was for adverse possession or lost deeds and they did not lodge any original deeds or documents with their application

We will also send cautions against first registration applications to customers online from this date.

When we return application results or documents online, customers retrieve them from their PDF downloads area of the portal.

Business customers can receive email alerts when their application results are available online.

When we register land for the first time (a first registration), we give the plot of land a unique register title with a corresponding title number and a plan. The title register states who owns the land, whether there are any conditions to owning the land and whether there is any money lent against it (such as a mortgage). The title plan shows the indicative boundary of the land on a map.

When we complete a customer’s application for a first registration, we can only send them the results (the title register, title plan, and a Register Completion Sheet) through the post. In contrast, customers who use the portal, our online channel for transactions, get their results for most other types of application (such as updates to existing registers) online, via the portal, even when they send us their application through the post.

During recent research, customers asked us to send their first registration results to them online. We we will be able to do this under the conditions listed above from 23 October.

We continue to offer customers more online options and services based on user need as part of our digital transformation.

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Thank you for the invitation to join you here today.

I always feel at home when I’m at the IoD. I feel at home, because when I am at home, I’m surrounded by entrepreneurs.

My first job was solving the Y2K bug in cobalt in my family tech company. Both my parents started businesses. All my siblings have started their own businesses. I’m the one who took the low risk career – although given the last couple of years it doesn’t always feel like that.

With that background, it would have been easy for me to go into business too. I love it, find it interesting, and I profoundly believe that business, done right, is a force for good in the world.

But I didn’t, and there’s a reason. When I was growing up, the business that my parents ran – my stepfather wrote the code, my mum was in charge – the business was all around me and the main subject at the dinner table.

In the early 1990s, I was a teenager. When recession hit, one of our big customers was struggling, and couldn’t pay their bills. We got to a point when if a cheque didn’t arrive by the end of the week, the business would collapse. We would lose everything as a family, and both my mum and stepdad would have been unemployed, and the twenty or so people who worked in the business, who we felt very strongly for, would have lost their jobs too. All through no fault of our own.

Thankfully, late in the week the cheque did come. I remember the moment to this day. The business was saved, and the software became a big hit. So now, every time you type your postcode into the internet and it brings up your address, you can thank my stepdad Bob. I hope we’ve helped you with your christmas shopping over the years.

This searing experience, as a teenager, made me start to ask the bigger questions: how can a perfectly decent business nearly go bust, because the economy had gone wrong? What can be done to stop that happening again.

And while I did go on to work for the business, I then went to the Bank of England as an economist, and there I discovered that all the big decisions are made in Westminster. So here I am.

And it is an honour and a privilege to be the UK’s first ever Minister for Digital, working to give others the opportunities I had, and to stop others suffering the fate we escaped so narrowly.

So what does this mean, in this time of digital revolution?

It means harnessing this amazing new technology, so that it works for the benefit of everyone. It means mitigating the risks, and ensuring the benefits can be accessed by all. It means supporting a thriving digital sector, a digital infrastructure that is not only fit for the present but the future, and easy and ubiquitous access for everyone in this country to the building opportunities digital technology offers.

We’ve even changed the name of the department to include Digital. And as a Department we are expanding, bringing some of the finest minds from within Whitehall and from outside to work on getting this right.

Our Digital Strategy, published in March of this year, set out how we intend to make the UK the best place to establish and grow a digital business and the safest place for citizens to be online.

It set out seven pillars that underpin the changes we need to see and I would like to update you now on how we have already delivered on those, and how we are set to deliver further in the very near future.

The Digital Strategy is complemented by the Digital Charter, as set out in the Manifesto, that sets out our approach to making the UK both the best possible place for digital businesses and the safest place for people to be online. On the former, it’s about pursuing a plan that reinforces the work we started with the Strategy, and on the latter, we need to approach the internet from a set of liberal values that allow us to seize the opportunities that unprecedented connectivity provides while also mitigating some of the harms it creates.

Strategies and promises mean nothing if you don’t push them through. I’m pleased to tell you that, only six months since the launch, we are making great progress.

The first pillar, and central to everything is infrastructure. In the Digital Strategy we committed to building a world-class digital infrastructure for the UK. That means ubiquitous coverage, so no one is left out, and with sufficient capacity not only for today’s needs but in readiness for tomorrow.

We are making good progress in delivering today’s technology to all.

We are on track to meet the target, set out in the Strategy, of superfast broadband coverage at 95% by the end of 2017. Then to reach the final 5%, in the Digital Economy Act, which received Royal Assent in April this year, we legislated for a Universal Service Obligation to deliver decent broadband to all. We recognise that broadband is now essentially a utility, not a nice to have. And I’m delighted that this is increasingly delivered by a competitive market of providers.

For mobile reception, each MNO is obliged to provide voice coverage to 90% of the UK by the end of this year, and the speed of rollout has been impressive – 4G premises coverage rose from 29% in 2015 to 72% last year. In our Manifesto we set out that the next step is 95% coverage of the UK landmass, so people are connected where they live, work, and travel.

We’re tackling, with the Advertising Standards Authority, the misleading use of so-called “up to” speeds, and the misdescription of technologies like “fibre” broadband, when it’s actually copper-to-the-premise. And we’re supporting community broadband providers to get to some of the hardest to reach parts of the country with the help of local residents.

At the same time as fixing the current technology, we must focus on the next generation: 5G and full fibre.

Our 5G strategy, released at Spring Budget 2017, outlined the steps we will take. As part of a £1.1 billion investment in digital infrastructure, we are funding a coordinated programme of integrated fibre and 5G trials to ensure the UK leads the world in 5G connectivity.

To meet this ambition, Government, industry and academia must all work together. Just yesterday we launched the first competition for 5G Testbeds & Trials funding in 2018-19. We’re inviting bids for the innovative use of 5G, so we learn very early what we need to do to support its roll out in the real world.

So supporting infrastructure – both the current and future technologies – is the first pillar of the digital strategy.

The next pillar is skills.

Britain needs stronger digital skills at every level, from getting people online for the first time, to attracting and training the very top coding talent in the world.

It’s something we in Government can’t do on our own. So when we launched the Digital Strategy in March, we committed to establish a new Digital Skills Partnership, to both bring greater coherence to provision of digital skills training at a national level, and to increase the digital capability needed to build thriving local economies throughout the country.

When we launched the Strategy, with industrial partners we promised to create more than four million digital training places. Just six months in, we and our partners have already over-delivered on this promise. Since that date, much progress has been made, including through companies like Barclays, Lloyds, Google, and many others.

This comes on top of putting coding in the curriculum from age 8, and last week the announcement that one of the first of our new T-level technical qualifications will be in Digital.

We want all these opportunities to be open to as wide a range of people as possible. We firmly believe that digital skills are essential, for everyone, to thrive in this digital age and that training in such skills should be an entitlement for all our citizens. So we legislated for Digital Skills Entitlement in the Digital Economy Act and are now developing the detail of the policy with the Department of Education. My friend and colleague Karen Bradley – Secretary of State for DCMS and I are working to deliver this entitlement, so that everyone can get the basic skills they need.

Of course the greatest demand for skills is the tech industry itself.

Over the past year we have seen investments in UK tech, including from Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, IBM, Google, and into British stars like Zopa, Monzo, and ARM.

We’ve significantly expanded the British Business Bank’s capacity in scale up capital, and support the opening of incubators across the country. Pushing for a good deal for the tech industry is a core part of our Brexit negotiations, including the free flow of data and seeking to settle the issue of EU nationals at the earliest opportunity – a goal currently being frustrated by the European side.

Ultimately, the goal of this third pillar of the Digital Strategy is to make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a digital business, so that everyone who has an idea and the will to make it happen.

When it comes broadening opportunity, we are committed to helping every British business become a digital business.

That’s the fourth pillar of the Digital Strategy.

In July we launched the Productivity Council, which, developed through discussions with UK business leaders, the Confederation of British Industry and the Institute of Directors, has been designed to encourage and support UK businesses to go digital. Analysis suggests that only a modest improvement across a broad base of firms could unlock billions of Gross Value Added every year.

As an example of how we continue to encourage and support innovation, last month we together with TCUK launched our FinTech For All competition, targeted at fintech startups who show they can make a real difference to people in danger of being left behind by conventional financial services. We want to help startups who show they can help people struggling to manage their money, and make financial services available to all.

The next, fifth, pillar is to make the UK the safest place in the world to live and work online, as set out in detail in our Digital Charter.

As part of the Digital Strategy, our Digital Charter sets out how we need to balance the freedom of the internet with the need to mitigate its harms.

Our Internet Safety Strategy, published last week, sets out our plan for making the UK the safest place in the world to be online.

The Strategy sets out how we all must play our role in tackling issues of online harms. We want to bring together groups from across our whole society and hear from people of all backgrounds – including technology firms, schools, the voluntary sector, and citizens young and old as we turn that ambition into reality.

We will bring in a statutory code of practice for social media companies, we are consulting on an industry levy to support educational programmes and technical solutions, and we want to see more transparency to help inform future policy.

Throughout we will be guided by three core principles. The first is that what is considered unacceptable offline should not be accepted online. Secondly, all users should be empowered to manage online risks and stay safe. Lastly, technology companies have a responsibility to their users to develop safe online communities.

To protect the amazing openness and freedom of the Internet that are its greatest strengths, we must balance an individual’s freedom with respect for the freedom of others online, just as we do offline.

Ensuring the internet is safe means cyber security too, and our National Cyber Security Strategy, funded to the tune of £1.9bn, sets out what we are doing to help improve Britain’s cyber security.

Now of course the security of any data is firmly the responsibility of the owner of that data – a principle that will be reinforced with the new Data Protection Bill – but Government has a role, to protect the nation, set standards so technology is secure by design, to educate, and for incident response.

The sixth pillar of the digital strategy is to digitise Government.

Since the creation of GDS in 2011, Britain has been a world leader in digitising Government.

Dozens of Government services have been digitised, from applying for a passport, to applying for lasting power of attorney. The massive project to make tax digital is proceeding carefully, and the feedback from those who use the new digitised service is excellent. Our G-cloud procurement system is being copied around the world, as it allows and encourages contracts to go to small innovative companies, not the traditional main players. In February this year, we had 3,947 suppliers on the Digital Marketplace, of which 93% were SMEs. And as a result out GovTech market is booming.

Just a fortnight ago, the Lord Chancellor tested the new small courts service digital solution, which seeks to open up access to justice.

And our manifesto set out exciting next steps, including opening up geospatial data, and assuring peoples’ digital identity.

This brings me to the final pillar: data.

The Digital Strategy committed to unlocking the power of data in the UK economy and improving public confidence in its use. Data underpins any digital economy, and the effective use of data is built on trust. Research shows that, currently, more than 80 per cent of people feel that they do not have complete control over their data online, and that is too high.

So we are strengthening our data protection laws through the new Data Protection Bill, making UK law consistent with the EU’s GDPR. Under its proposals individuals will have more control over their data, through the right to be forgotten and to ask for their personal data to be erased. They will also be able to ask social media channels to delete information they posted in their childhood – news that mightn’t yet be as welcome to the teen users of Twitter and Instagram as it will be when they look back on their posts some years from now.

We also want to end the existing reliance on default opt-out or pre-selected ‘tick boxes’, to give consent for organisations to collect personal data, which we all know are largely ignored. The Data Protection Bill will make it simpler to withdraw consent for the use of personal data and require explicit consent to be necessary for processing sensitive personal data. It also expands the definition of ‘personal data’ to include IP addresses, internet cookies and DNA.

On top of all that, new criminal offences will be created to deter organisations from creating situations – either intentionally or through pure recklessness – where someone could be identified from anonymised data. The data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, will be given more power to defend consumer interests and issue higher fines for the most serious data breaches.

And getting the governance around data right is about more than just the legislation.

Good use of data means understanding and living with the ethical dilemmas and boundaries that artificial intelligence brings. When machines are making choices that until now have been made by humans, it’s important they stay inside the rules, but vital too that the ethics of the consequences of those decisions are considered.

Data underpins the insurance industry. But what characteristics is it right for an algorithm to take account of when deciding the level of the premium?

How do we deal with discrimination that can be thrown up by the application of AI to real world examples?

I believe that getting the full governance of data right: the rules, the enforcement, and the ethical norms of behaviour, will set Britain fair to lead in the new world of big data, machine learning, and AI.

Earlier this week we published a stunning report by Dame Wendy Hall and Jerome Pesenti into what we must do to be a world leader. I look forward very much to working with them and others to deliver on their proposals, and make the UK a world leader in this amazing new technology.

So there we have it. Just over six months on from our Digital Strategy and we have been building all seven pillars of our digital strategy.

And I want to end with this message. We can only deliver the UK’s digital strategy in partnership, between Government, yes, providing leadership, a legislative framework, and occasionally taxpayers’ cash.

But Government in partnership with academia, civil society, and businesses large and small.

And coming from small business myself, I know there are more good ideas out there than in here. So I want to hear from you, I want to know what we’re getting right, what we’re getting wrong, what amazing innovations you’re developing, and how we can make it easier for you to grow your businesses here in the UK.

We have a big agenda and much to do, and I look forward to working with you to deliver it.

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Marvyn Iheanacho who killed a 5 year old boy has had his sentence increased by 3 years after representation at the Court of Appeal by the Solicitor General

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