King’s Speech

Baroness Hazarika Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hazarika (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lords, Lord Hobby and Lord Blackwater, on two fine debuts. I think we can all look forward to many important contributions in their many years ahead.

I very much agree with the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and I urge the Government to engage positively and constructively with the creative industries to strike the right balance with AI. I declare my interest as a board member of the BPI, which represents recorded music.

We all want growth, but there is a feeling sometimes that we are compelled to worship at the altar of AI, no matter at what cost to other industries. There are other very powerful engines of growth, and those include the creative industries and culture.

We are blessed across these shores with such creative riches. Our creative talent is a precious national resource. We export our music, film and fashion all over the world. Our museums, galleries, opera, orchestras and theatre bring people to our great cities, and they support and nourish hospitality and tourism. If anyone is looking for something to watch, I can highly recommend “1536”, which is about three young women in a small village in Essex in Tudor England, and the satirist Rosie Holt’s play called “Churchill’s Urinal”, which is all about a rather stressed out and frazzled female Chancellor—it is entirely fictitious, by the way; it is also very funny.

We get that AI is very important, but so too are our creators, and intellectual property and strong copyright laws are the bedrock of a successful knowledge-based economy.

This debate also draws together education, tech and culture, and I welcome the Government’s ambition to regulate young people’s access to social media, but we cannot delay and cannot be timid. We are seeing young men and women scarred and, I think, permanently damaged because of their access to hardcore violent pornography in the palm of their hands. Of course, there are many other threats from social media, and not just for our young people.

One of the most frightening things we are witnessing as a result of unfettered and unregulated social media is the rise of extremism and polarisation: unhinged hate, antisemitism, racism, anti-Muslim vitriol, misogyny—the list goes on. We are living in deeply anxious times, where algorithms run by billionaires who have an agenda are exploiting very human emotions of fear and insecurity and manipulating them into something far darker. We used to hear, “It is just words”; it is not. We are seeing this play out with terrifying consequences on our streets, in our schools, campuses and colleges, in our synagogues and in our mosques. People are being threatened, maimed and even killed. We know that bad-faith foreign actors are using social media to unleash fear, loathing, terror, division and violence in this country. We have to ask in this House why we are just letting this happen. This is the time to fight back. We need action, courage and a sense of urgency—for the sake of our country, our children and our grandchildren. If we do not try to take on the algorithm of hate now, we will regret it for generations to come.