Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Viscount Colville of Culross

Committee stage
Monday 16th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

Discussions with the ICO are taking place at the moment about the scope and intention of a number of issues around AI, and this issue would be included in that. However, I cannot say at the moment that that intention is specifically spelled out in the way that the noble Baroness is asking.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

This has been a wide-ranging debate, with important contributions from across the Committee. I take some comfort from the Minister’s declaration that the exemptions will not be used for web crawling, but I want to make sure that they are not used at the expense of the privacy and control of personal data belonging to the people of Britain.

That seems particularly so for Amendment 137 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I was particularly taken by her pointing out that children’s data privacy had not been taken into account when it came to AI, reinforced by the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, telling us about the importance of the Bill. She said it was paramount to protect children in the digital age and reminded us that this is the biggest breakthrough of our lifetime and that children need protecting from it. I hope very much that there will be some successful meetings, and maybe a government amendment on Report, responding to these passionate and heartfelt demands. On that basis, I sincerely hope the Minister will meet us all and other noble Lords to discuss these matters of data privacy further. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Viscount Colville of Culross

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th December 2024 Grand Committee

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

I thank the Minister very much, but is she not concerned by the preliminary opinion from the EDPS, particularly that traditional academic research is blurrier than ever and that it is even harder to distinguish research which generally benefits society from that which primarily serves private interest? People in the street would be worried about that and the Bill ought to be responding to that concern.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I have not seen that observation, but we will look at it. It goes back to my point that the provisions in this Bill are designed to be future facing as well as for the current day. The strength of those provisions will apply regardless of the technology, which may well include AI. Noble Lords may know that we will bring forward a separate piece of legislation on AI, when we will be able to debate this in more detail.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, this has been a very important debate about one of the most controversial areas of this Bill. My amendments are supported across the House and by respected civic institutions such as the Ada Lovelace Institute. I understand that the Minister thinks they will stifle scientific research, particularly by nascent AI companies, but the rights of the data subject must be borne in mind. As it stands, under Clause 67, millions of data subjects could find their information mined by AI companies, to be reused without consent.

The concerns about this definition being too broad were illustrated very well across the Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said that it was too broad and must recognise that AI development will be open to using data research for any AI purposes and talked about his amendment on protecting children’s data, which is very important and worthy of consideration. This was supported by my noble friend Lady Kidron, who pointed out that the definition of scientific research could cover everything and warned that Clause 67 is not just housekeeping. She quoted the EDPS and talked about its critical clarification not being included in the transfer of the scientific definition into the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, asked what in the Bill has changed when you consider how much has changed in AI. I was very pleased to have the support of the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, who warned against the abuse and misuse of data and the broad definition in this Bill, which could muddy the waters. He supported the public interest test, which would be fertile ground for helping define scientific data.

Surely this Bill should walk the line in encouraging the AI rollout to boost research and development in our science sector. I ask the Minister to meet me and other concerned noble Lords to tighten up Clauses 67 and 68. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Generative AI: Intellectual Property Rights

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Viscount Colville of Culross

Monday 11th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will know that there was an attempt to come to a voluntary agreement on this under the previous Government that would have been a way forward for both sectors. Unfortunately, that voluntary agreement did not work out, so the ball has bounced back into our court. The noble Baroness is absolutely right about journalism: if we do not have a vibrant journalistic bedrock for this society, we do not really have a democratic society; we need to know what is going on in the UK and the world. The noble Baroness is right that we need to protect journalists: we need to ensure that their work is rewarded and paid in the right way. We are working on this. I am sorry that I am beginning to sound a bit like a stuck record, but I assure noble Lords that we are working at pace to try to resolve these issues.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, many creators sold their IP rights to big publishers before the advent of large language models. Since then, those publishers have been exploiting creators’ work for the training of large language models and the creation of new AI performances, but they have failed to recompense the original creators. Does the Minister think that creators’ performance and moral rights should be updated in the face of the new use by AI of their work?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

That is exactly what we are trying to achieve. Creatives need to be properly respected and rewarded for their activities. We need to make sure that when scraping and web-crawling takes place, there is transparency about that and the originators of the material are properly recognised and rewarded.

Electronic Media: False Information

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Viscount Colville of Culross

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, of course I am very happy to meet the noble Baroness to discuss this further, and I pay tribute to the work she has done on this issue in the past. On “small but risky” services, as she knows, the Secretary of State has written to Melanie Dawes, the CEO of Ofcom, and a very detailed reply was received today from Ofcom. We are still absorbing everything that it is proposing, but it is clear that it is taking this issue very seriously. That will give us the focus for our discussion when we meet.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, we have seen the first charge under the Online Safety Act’s false communications offence. To facilitate further prosecutions for false communications, can the Minister support statutory guidance to further define the term “non-trivial psychological harm” on a likely audience caused by disinformation?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, all this information will be detailed in the Ofcom guidance to be published in due course. This includes not only illegal harms but all the other issues under the category that the noble Viscount mentioned, all of which will be covered by the Ofcom codes to be published in due course.