King’s Speech

Baroness Harding of Winscombe Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the three excellent maiden speakers today and wish the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, luck in a few minutes’ time.

I will restrict my comments to technology. Much of the gracious Speech involves and impacts tech, but I was sad to see nothing that holistically addresses the positive and negative impacts of technology, especially AI, on society. There was no resolution on protecting copyrights, no updated online safety Bill for the AI age, no approach to societal guardrails for superintelligence and indeed no AI Bill at all. Instead, there are various references to growth being equated with inward investment, and specifics such as the NHS single patient record and digital ID.

Noble Lords may say that it is right that tech is embedded in everything now, so it should just be part of each piece of legislation, but I think that that misses the point. We are living in an era of huge technology change. It is reminiscent of the late 19th century. Tech companies are more powerful than countries. They are making huge fortunes and delivering much positive innovation, but also great societal harm. We need to build the moral and legal frameworks for this new AI age, and in this regard, the gracious Speech is sorely lacking.

There are two Bills in particular that will be important in establishing this moral and legal framework but, unfortunately, not for the right reasons. The competition reform Bill will change how the Competition and Markets Authority makes competition decisions. It risks reducing the CMA’s independence. This matters because AI investment is like catnip for all politicians: we risk being bedazzled by short-term investment from these tech titans. In this House, many of us fought hard for the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, and I worry that the competition reform Bill risks weakening this regime as it only just gets started. Can the Minister say how this Bill will not reduce the CMA’s independence and how it will ensure we have fair and competitive digital markets rather than even stronger tech monopolies with faster CMA decision-making?

The second Bill that I am concerned about is the one on regulating for growth. The critical question is: what kind of growth do the Government want—short-term investment in data centres or sustainable growth that comes from competitive and fair markets? Will this Bill place beyond doubt copyright owners’ rights and prevent tech companies stealing their content? The robber barons of the 19th century needed regulation—anti-trust regulation and health and safety regulation—for society to get the sustainable and fair benefits that growth from their technologies promised. The same is exactly true for the digital AI era, and it is only if we regulate sensibly that we will get that sustainable growth.

Finally, what is missing is a legal and moral framework for AI that does not accept that “just because we can” means “we should” and instead sets out the legal barriers we wish to impose on new tech, just as we do in all other parts of society—a proper AI Bill that addresses child safety in an AI age and that puts to rest any doubts about copyright protection and starts the process of building genuine citizen trust, so that we can benefit from the undoubted upsides the technology could bring. Without that, I fear all these other Bills will not actually bring society with us. Like my noble friend Lord Elliott in front of me, I fear that this is a big hole in the gracious Speech.