Category Archives: Hansard

To ask His Majesty’s Government, following the publication of the AI Opportunities Action Plan on 13 January, what plans they have to introduce legislation in 2025 for regulating artificial intelligence in areas including intellectual property, automated decision-making, and data labelling.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my technology interest as set out in the register.

My Lords, with the world talking AI in Paris this week and with parts of the EU AI Act already brought into force earlier this month, is it not over time for the Government to bring forward AI legislation in the UK: for the jobseeker who constantly finds herself not making the shortlist, not even knowing that AI is in the mix, or for the creative constantly finding her work stolen by AI with no consent, no remuneration and no respect? Does the Minister agree that sector-wide AI legislation, ushering in right-sized regulation, is good for investment, good for innovation, good for creatives, good for citizens and good for all our AI futures?

My Lords, in moving Amendment 47, I shall speak also to Amendment 48.

Here we are again: the Computer Misuse Act 1990 is another year older. It was put into statute at a time when technology looked nothing like it did 10 or 20 years ago, never mind today. I will give some brief facts. We have a fantastic cyber sector in our country, which adds so much to our economy and safety. The Computer Misuse Act constrains the sector from keeping us as safe as it might and constrains businesses in terms of their growth and what they could be adding today to our economy in terms of—yes—growth.

There is no reason for us to continue with the Computer Misuse Act when we have the solution in our hands, set out, I suggest, in Amendments 47 and 48. Our cyber- security professionals, often working way out of sight, for obvious reasons, do such important work and professionally, diligently, keep us safe and keep our country, assets and economy secure.

When the Minister responds, will he say, even sotto voce, that a Division on these amendments might help him in his discussions within the department to get some movement on this issue? We heard in previous debates how doing this would be premature and how the time was not now. Well, for a statute that came into being at the beginning of the 1990s, I suggest that it is high time that we made these amendments for individuals, for businesses, for our economy and for our society, in an extraordinarily uncertain world and at a time when I imagine that every Minister should be looking to every potential source of economic growth. I look forward to the debate and to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

My Lords, I thank everybody who has taken part in this short debate. I was really hoping that we would not hear the phrase “the bowels of the Home Office” twice, but we did—now we have heard it three times. Perhaps it could be the title of somebody’s autobiography. I do not know whose, but I claim the IP rights even though the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said it first.

I am grateful for the Minister’s response. It would probably have been better to have some sense of timeline; much of what he said was very much what we heard in Committee. We are all amenable to having a course of action, but it needs more objectives attached to it as to when we are likely to see some consequences, action and changes. As every day goes by, as the Minister is well aware, risks go unchecked that could be checked, people are less safe who could be made safe and economic growth, the Government’s priority, is prevented which could be enabled.

For now, I will withdraw my amendment, but I am minded to see what is possible between now and Third Reading, because the time is now; otherwise, “in due course” will be even longer than the official statement “later in the summer”. I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 47 withdrawn.

Amendment 48 not moved.

Clause 109: Interpretation of the PEC Regulations

My Lords, I support these amendments and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. Not to do so would be, to quote some of her earlier work, beyond the edge of reason.

I support the noble Baroness because I support creatives. They are the individuals who bring such sweet sound where otherwise there would be silence, who fill a blank page with words that can move our hearts, our souls and our minds, and can change the course of history. I support the amendments because I support the rule of law. IP and copyright are well established over centuries.

This is not complex or controversial. There is an extraordinary tedium to the whole question of TDM. Ultimately, I could do this in three words when addressing big tech: “It’s not yours. Take your audacious hands off other people’s work”. And that is from someone who is pro-innovation, pro-AI and pro-technology—but in a way where there is a negotiation and agreed conclusion as to how artists, rights holders and creatives want to engage with these technologies.

We have already heard many times, rightly, that there has been no economic impact assessment. I ask the Minister for his views on that. While on that subject, I ask him, out of genuine interest, what is the genesis of the £400 billion figure in the AI opportunities plan? Where does it come from, what is it based on and how does it sit against the impact that not acting will have on our creative sector?

I support these amendments, and I urge everyone in your Lordships’ House to do so. To misquote the late, great Dennis Potter, “Vote, vote, vote for Beeban Kidron”.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to open the second day on Report on the Data (Use and Access) Bill. In doing so, I declare my technology interests as set out in the register, not least as an adviser to Socially Recruited, an AI business. In moving Amendment 38 in my name, I will not speak to any other amendments in this group.

Amendment 38 goes to the heart of the issue du jour: regulators have seldom been so much in the press and in the public eye. As the press would have it, they were hauled into No. 11 just a few days ago, but this speaks to what we want from our regulators across our economy and society. At their best, our regulators are the envy of the world. Just consider the FCA when we did the fintech regulatory sandbox: as a measure of success, it was replicated in well over 50 jurisdictions around the world.

We know how to do right-sized regulation and how to set up our regulators to succeed to do that most difficult of tasks—to balance innovation, economic growth, and consumers’ and citizens’ rights. That is what all regulators should be about. It is not straightforward; it is complex but entirely doable.

Amendment 38 simply proposes wording to assist the Information Commissioner’s Office. When it comes to the economic growth duty—“#innovation”—it simply refers back to Section 108 of the 2015 Act. I believe that bringing this clarity into the Bill will assist the regulator and enable all the conversations that are rightly going on right now, and all the plans that are being produced and reported on, such as those around AI, to be properly discussed and given proper context, with an Information Commissioner’s Office that is supported through clarity as to its responsibilities and obligations when it comes to economic growth. In simple terms, this would mean that these responsibilities are restricted and clearly set out according to Section 108 of the 2015 Act. It is critical that this should be the case if we are to have clarity around the commissioner’s independence as a supervisory authority on data protection, an absolutely essential condition for EU adequacy decisions.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. I hope that he likes my drafting. I hope that he will accept and incorporate my amendment into the Bill. I look forward to the debate. I beg to move.

I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate and thank the Minister for his response. I believe my wording would assist the ICO in its mission, but I have listened to what the Minister has said and, for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 38 withdrawn.

Amendment 39 not moved.

I thank everyone who took part in this short debate, in particular the Minister for that full, clear and helpful answer. In a spirit of throwing roses at this stage of the evening, I congratulate him and the Government on the quick identification and implementation of Culham as the first site for one of these centres. It makes complete sense—as he says, the power already exists there. I urge the Government to move with such speed for the remaining five of the first six sites. It makes complete sense to move at speed to identify these resources and the wider benefits they can bring to the communities where they will be located. For now, I am content to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 59 withdrawn.

Amendment 60 not moved.

My Lords, in moving Amendment 59, I shall also speak to Amendments 60 and 66 in my name.

AI has been a recurrent theme running through most, if not all, our discussions on the Bill, because it is utterly absent from the Bill. It seems extraordinary: what is AI without data, and what is a data Bill without AI being considered? It is difficult to see how we will have the clarity, consistency and coherence of approach to address the opportunities and challenges of all these new technologies, not least artificial intelligence, when it has remained absent from the Bill by government design.

Amendment 59 asks about the categorisation and classification of large language models in the UK in terms of the data input and the output from those models. Will the Minister specifically address his comments on this amendment to the issues around Section 27 of the copyright Act of 1988 and how that interacts with the needs of LLMs, whether there should be issues around market access for these large tech companies and whether LLMs in themselves constitute an article under the 1988 Act?

If AI is absent from the Bill by government design, perhaps even more curiously, data centres are largely absent. If AI is nothing without data, what is data without data centres? They are the factories and the boundaries fuelling this new fourth industrial revolution. Data has often been described as the new oil; I suggest that it is nothing of the sort, but we need so much actual new oil—that is, the renewables and SMRs—if we are to power this fourth industrial revolution, not least the data centres therein.

Amendment 60 looks at the current supply of data centres. Is the Minister satisfied not just with how quickly the Government plan to have data centres coming onstream but how possible it is for them to be in places where they can be hooked up to the grid, not just for existing fuels but, crucially, for renewables and potentially SMR technologies, which will absolutely be required if this fourth industrial revolution is to be not only efficient and effective but sustainable?

Amendment 66 addresses the power usage effectiveness measure used to measure the power use of data centres. Does the Minister feel that that measure is accurate, effective and useful for what we are all trying to get at here? It may be worth the Government looking again at that measure and leading some work to assess new, more effective and more modern ways of measuring the power usage of this critical national infrastructure, as he described.

In his response to the last group, I sensed that the Minister let rather an important cat out of the bag. I am always looking for the Government to be doing policy development, but he used a key word in that answer which I would very much like him to use in his answer on this group. For the Government, it seems that it is not policy development that matters but “active” policy development. I look forward to his response and the debate on this group. I beg to move.