Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Committee stage
Saturday 12th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, as I indicated earlier today, in this House we have a responsibility to ensure that legislation is properly scrutinised and debated, and that it does not give unlimited powers to the Executive without the essential checks and balances that are largely portrayed in the work in depth of this House, in particular.

My noble friend Lady Laing of Elderslie reminded us that, in its report, Fast-track Legislation: Constitutional Implications and Safeguards, the Constitution Committee stated that

“whenever possible sunset clauses should be incorporated into emergency legislation particularly in relation to legislation that impacts upon civil liberties”.

It continued,

“emergency legislation should automatically be subject to post-legislative review”.

A number of us have had a chance to reflect not only on the debate we have just had but on the words of the Minister, who, in her closing speech, said that she would regularly update the House every four weeks. Reflecting, though, on what the Constitution Committee said, we do not believe that that goes far enough. That is why my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower and I have tabled this amendment, to ensure that there is a sunset clause. We look forward to hearing from the Minister as to whether or not she accepts the need for some check on the power of the Executive.

A number of noble Lords quoted from the Bill, which we have, of course, seen for the first time only today. One such quotation was the unfortunate wording in Clause 3 that:

“The Secretary of State may do anything for the purpose of securing the continued and safe use of the specified assets”.


It is essential that that power is there available for the sake of the future of the Scunthorpe steelworks, but should it be there available in perpetuity? That is the key question that this Chamber must now decide.

The fact that the Government are saying that they may need to return to Parliament to extend these powers is not, as they seem to believe, an argument against a sunset clause. I believe that it is imperative that emergency powers are subjected to constant oversight, and I hope that the House will agree with me. These amendments that we are proposing would simply allow Parliament to do its job. Emergency powers should never be allowed to become permanent by default. Surely, they have to be justified continually, not assumed indefinitely.

We recall the Coronavirus Act, as my noble friend pointed out. That was a piece of emergency legislation containing a sunset clause. That was in recognition of the fact that the Bill provided extraordinary powers—it was not power that should ever be delegated to the Government indefinitely. What we are now proposing has a strong precedent, and we would strongly encourage the Government to adopt this. If these are emergency powers designed to allow the Government to intervene in Scunthorpe’s steelworks in the short term, why would the Government resist a sunset clause? Indeed, in the debate in the other place, the Secretary of State said in response to an intervention that these are short-term measures to deal with an emergency situation, and he used “temporary” in opening. Why can the Government not accept that these are temporary but necessary powers?

I suppose there is also the argument that there is greater certainty if we know exactly where we are so far as the powers devolved to the Government are concerned. Earlier today, I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Fox, in calling for a sunset clause, and heard his further comment that a debate might perhaps help to focus attention in a way that would then enable Parliament to understand the motivation behind it. I am slightly nervous at that. There is no substitute for an out-and-out sunset clause, which I believe is the right thing to do in these circumstances. I hope that the Minister, particularly accompanied by the wording of the Bingham lecturer, the person sitting alongside her—with which I agreed and have quoted on many occasions—agrees that it is time for a reset between Parliament and the Executive. This is the time. I beg to move.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I speak very briefly to my Amendment 2. Clause 3(4) makes it clear that the Secretary of State has power to enter premises and make orders on the premises, but the wording in subsection (4)(a), in which it says that

“the Secretary of State may … be accompanied by any person”

could be read to imply that the powers are invested in the Secretary of State in person—that is, that the Secretary of State themselves would need to be present on the premises. After speaking to the Public Bill Office, I wanted to give the Government the opportunity to clarify that a designated representative of the Secretary of State would be imbued with these same powers, so that any intransigent company could not seek to delay government action by demanding that the Secretary of State was present in person.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise on the back of that very interesting amendment to take the brief opportunity to ask again the question that I asked when we debated the Bill earlier today, which relates to the same clause of the Bill—namely, when the Bill says that the Secretary of State has the power to exercise force on entering premises, which force in practice would he intend to use? The Bill gives him no power to direct chief constables; it would be practically, and probably constitutionally, improper for him to send civil servants from his department to force entry into premises. There is also no provision in the Bill allowing him to seek a warrant that would result in bailiffs being able to enter the premises.

I genuinely want to know how, in practice, the Secretary of State would exercise force. When I asked that question in today’s earlier debate, I did not get a satisfactory answer—or, indeed, any real answer at all. I have no doubt that, now that the Minister has had the opportunity to discuss it with the Attorney-General, who is sitting next to her, it may be possible that she can answer me in her response to this debate.

Public Authority Algorithmic and Automated Decision-Making Systems Bill [HL]

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

I would like to pick up on three important aspects of this Bill that perhaps set it aside from what we might discuss in Committee on Monday. One is the fact that it covers decision support tools, not just fully automated decision-making; one is the fact that it covers tools being considered for procurement, not just once they are in use; and the most important aspect to my mind is that it at least hints at the need for some evaluation of the efficacy and usefulness of such tools.

Until recently, I was in charge of the governance and communication around the algorithmic online decision support tools to predict prostate and breast cancer, which are used extensively around the world to help patients and doctors make shared decisions about treatment options. Because of that, they come under the Medical Devices Regulations, which meant that we needed to provide evidence of efficacy and that they were the right tools to be used in these decisions.

Decisions about financial and judicial aspects of people’s lives are equally important and I do not think we currently have the legislation to help govern these sorts of decision-support tools in these circumstances. These tools are incredibly useful, because they help ensure that the right questions are being asked, so that the decision-maker and the tool can have as much of the salient information for that decision as they can. They can then give a range of outcomes that happened to people with those characteristics in the past, often under different circumstances, allowing them to play out “what if?” scenarios. This can be helpful in making a decision, but only if the decision-maker knows certain things about that tool. The Bill is quite right that these things need to be known by the procurer before the system is unleashed in a particular scenario.

I mentioned that these tools can help ensure that the right questions are being asked. If someone feels that a tool does not have all the salient information about them, they will naturally and correctly downgrade their trust in the precision of the output. An experienced doctor who knows that the tool has not asked about the frailty of a patient, for instance, will naturally know that there is uncertainty and that they will need to look at the patient in front of them and adjust the tool’s output, using their clinical judgment. However, a decision-maker who is not aware that the tool is lacking in some important piece of information, perhaps because that information cannot easily be quantified or because there was not enough data to include it in the algorithm, needs to be alerted to this major cause of uncertainty. Because the algorithms are built using data from what has happened to people in the past, users need to know how relevant that data is to their situation. Does it include enough people with characteristics similar to them? Because for some longer-term outcomes that data might necessarily be quite old, does that add more uncertainty to the outputs? Without knowing the basis for the algorithm, people cannot assess how much weight to put on the tool’s results.

These are questions that can be asked of any algorithmic tool supplier, but any procurer or user should be able to ask about the effectiveness of the tool as used in a real-world scenario as well. How accurate is it in every dimension in your scenario, which might be very different from the situation in which it was developed? How do decision-makers respond to outputs? Do they understand its limitations? Do they overtrust it or undertrust it? These are vital questions to ask, and the answers need to be supplied for any form of decision support tool.

This Bill is the only time I have seen the suggestion that those sorts of questions about efficacy and applicability, and user experience such as training, are talked about as stages that should be completed before procurement, as well as during use, and made transparent. I urge that these aspects are considered.