Digital ID

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Vallance of Balham

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The new part, as I have said, is exactly about the right to work and the ability to have identity related to the right to work. That will form a platform for digital ID and the ability to use that in other ways for the services described in the Data (Use and Access) Act.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the noble Lord may have seen an article in Computer Weekly in June in which the headline talked about the eVisa system as being “error-prone” and “anxiety-inducing”. Among the cases in this extensive report was a doctor with indefinite leave to remain who had been here for 20 years but could not travel to a medical conference because the IT error meant that they could not link their official identity documents to their visa account. The report also talked about a woman they called Athena who had to take a month off work because she was so stressed by the fact that the Home Office computer could not match the name on her passport to the name on her account, despite the fact that her name, which had never changed, was the same on her passport, her eVisa account and her biometric residence permit. Can the Minister tell me why the noble Lord or this House should have any expectation that we would not see the same situation with this proposal?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I am certainly not going to stand here and say that it is going to be absolutely error-free, because nothing is. I am not going to say that it is easy, because it is not. But there is a big gain at the end of this. It is not as though this has not been done elsewhere. It is not as though there are not ways in which countries have got this to work very effectively. Certainly, if you were to speak to anyone from Estonia, they would think we were mad not to have it already.

Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Vallance of Balham

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his enthusiasm for the white heat of SMRs, which is an important point. There is a very clear set of recommendations, from an entrepreneur who understands how to set up and run companies. The approach is one of ensuring that there is funding for start-ups, innovation, regulatory clearance and a procurement pool, which are exactly the types of things that will deliver growth. They are facilitators of growth, because the noble Lord is right that growth comes from the private sector. That is what must be supported and that is what this plan aims to do.

On the power supply, I have already said that the join-up between DSIT and DESNZ in the energy council is exactly the right approach to make sure that we get a joined-up government approach to this. I suspect that it will require SMRs, among other approaches to getting energy in the right place.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I draw the Minister’s attention The AI Mirror, a book by Shannon Vallor, who holds a chair at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. It makes the crucial point that generative so-called artificial intelligence is not intelligent or creative but only reflects back to us—hence the mirror metaphor—what we have previously created. Will the Government acknowledge that one of the great risks of the explosion in the use of AI is stagnation—a building in and entrenching of the discrimination, racism and inequalities that already exist across our public and private systems, as was infamously demonstrated in Australia in the Robodebt scandal?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

It is important to recognise that there is more than one type of AI, including generative AI and specific models. It is the case that AI is very dependent on the data put in, and there are risks of bias being entrenched. That is an important safety issue that must be looked at and that we must be aware of. On whether it is intelligent, the answer is that we are not in the era of general artificial intelligence but at an earlier stage. These are not yet fully intelligent machines. Whether they get to that and over what time period is something of an unknown, but we are in an era where we can do pretty remarkable things, and we should harness that.