Skills: Importance for the UK Economy and Quality of Life

Baroness Fairhead Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fairhead (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Aberdare on securing this important debate and on his truly excellent opening speech. I also congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell and Lord Marks of Hale, on their optimistic maiden speeches. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my interests as set out in the register.

Today we have had a very wide-ranging debate on this huge and hugely important topic. I will focus on just one issue—artificial intelligence—and aim to provide some specific suggestions for skills-building in this area. AI is a revolution. As Jamie Dimon, the former chairman of Citigroup, said:

“Think the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the internet.”


I know that, as my noble friend Lord Hampton said, AI cannot change a plug, but deploying AI responsibly and securely does have the potential to enhance productivity, improve lives and boost our economy quite significantly. To take just one healthcare example, doctors’ lives can be enhanced massively by AI by combining the spoken word of a consultation with relevant images such as x-rays, adding any of the required prescriptions discussed and possibly scheduling new appointments. The doctor just needs to check the note before authorising, saving huge amounts of time and improving their own lives and those of their patients.

Yet students are not equipped with these skills at school. There are still very few computer scientists entering our market, and businesses are not fully grabbing hold of this capability. A BCC report last September found that less than 50% of SMEs plan to use AI. We need to both increase the skills across the population and reduce the fear of deploying.

Government has a clear role here to educate, promote and, of course, to fund. In schools, more programmes need to be developed to make digital and AI skills adoptable by school leaver age, rather than assuming this happens later. The Department for Education has correctly built AI skills into BTECs and is working with hyperscalers to create bootcamps which link to jobs boards. Whether BTECs continue or the advanced British standard assumes part of that role and picks up the skills of AI, that will not be for 10 years, which is a long time for the current students to wait. More needs to be done now with 14 to 18 year-olds to make them ready for the world of work.

As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, mentioned, it is very difficult to change the curriculum in those years, given its high-stakes, examined nature. However, I urge the DfE to work with headteachers, the British Computer Society, the tech industry, the LSIPs and other interested employers to find a pragmatic solution in the short term. Potentially, a sleeve of UTCs could be added; perhaps there are other solutions.

In further education, real progress has been made since 2018, following the AI industrial strategy. Over 11,000 students have been enrolled in AI and data science conversion courses, and over 25 AI centres for doctoral training—which will train over 1,800 PhD students by 2033—have been created. Much of this was driven by Professor Dame Wendy Hall, with whom I had the privilege of working as a Minister, and whom I consider a national treasure. This momentum needs to be continued. Can the Minister confirm that these programmes will be?

On business education, last week DSIT launched two activities: the AI skills for business competency framework and a flexible AI upskilling fund pilot. These are welcome additions and go some way to removing the skills obstacles and the obstacles of fear surrounding the use of AI. However, they are nascent; the pilot is currently small. If proven out, I hope that it can be expanded rapidly.

That is not enough, and more must be done to promote AI effectively and to inform and connect, which is something that the Government could do. They could promote success stories, highlight major programmes—possibly within government—where the adoption of digital and AI have massively improved productivity, highlight companies like Uber which offer additional AI building skills to all of its 3 million drivers, not for the benefit of Uber but for the benefit of their people, or promote our own tech industries, AI unicorns like Quantexa, which help provide the data and help companies store it, to ensure that IP continues to reside in the UK.

Playbooks for SMEs need to be created to help them take those steps. These must be supported by a database of excellent case studies. As I discovered as Minister, SMEs like to see companies that look like themselves and have done it like themselves, and that is the way to encourage them.

Finally, more needs to be done to harness the offerings of AI companies which are willing to work with Governments as part of social responsibility. I sit on the board of Oracle, which works with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and has a programme for training 50,000 people to build AI skills, primarily focusing on women, and works with government and businesses. A lot of our businesses and other hyperscalers would be prepared to work with the Government on that.

This all needs to be part of an overall framework and strategy, as my noble friend Lord Aberdare said at the beginning. I sincerely hope that we look to future skills, and AI is part of them.