King’s Speech

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, imagine if, this morning, a child could go to school in the United Kingdom knowing that the technology in their classroom was designed to support their learning rather than simply to harvest their data and that their personal information, whether their educational record or visits to the school nurse, was protected from commercial exploitation.

Imagine if safety by design was the price of access to children, if addictive functionality was no longer the business model of social media, and if online protections started at birth and continued to adulthood. Imagine if social media and AI companies were required to fix all identified risks in their products. Imagine if generative AI systems had to check that they could not be prompted to create child sexual abuse material. Imagine if chatbots were not permitted to manipulate, exploit or provide unsafe advice. Imagine if tech companies had a duty of care.

Imagine if Ofcom had enforcement powers that worked and if tech executives were held responsible for risks they chose to ignore. Imagine if, when a parent watched helplessly as their child was groomed by a chatbot, they could turn to the police, a court, a regulator or a hotline for an emergency halt to the service.

None of that is fanciful. None of that is technologically impossible. It is simply the list of proposals in my name that this Government refused in the last legislative Session.

Last week, Jess Phillips said in her resignation letter:

“It has taken me a year to get you to agree to even threaten to legislate in this space. Not legislate, just threaten”.


She was talking about child sexual abuse material. Her fury mirrors my warnings to Ministers that they will regret kicking these issues into the long grass. A narrow consultation, vast powers to the Secretary of State, long timelines and photo opportunities with bereaved parents are not action.

My amendments did not stop with child safety. They extended to AI accountability, data sovereignty, public sector dependency, workers’ and creatives’ rights to their labour and property, procurement, security and the basic question of whether this Government are willing to govern in the national interest rather than subsidising and creating further dependency on a handful of rapacious American firms. This is not a collection of isolated failures; it is a pattern. Again and again, when forced to choose between the needs of UK citizens and democratic accountability or the demands of Silicon Valley, this Government have chosen the latter.

The King’s Speech says remarkably little about tech, an issue that controls every aspect of private and public life. The Government promise transformation, efficiency and empowerment for UK citizens, but their legislative programme does not provide the means. If there is a beautiful technological future over the horizon, I am afraid this is not it. Unless we recover the confidence to govern technology in the public interest, the Government will be found profoundly wanting, particularly where children are concerned. This weekend, I spoke to campaigners in Canada who are supporting UK families as their loved ones are groomed by chatbots, because our Government refused to provide a route to protection—in fact, they whipped against it. It is on our watch that lives will be lost.