Victims and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Kidron and Lord Hacking

Tuesday 10th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I join the Minister’s fan club and thank her for her engagement on this, which has really helped get this to a better place. I am grateful for that. I believe we will hear from her what the Government’s plan is, but can she also assure me on a couple of points?

First, whatever the new process is to be, how will a person subject to a glitch or misinformation assert their case without having proper access to the system from which the evidence emerged? How will we ensure that the court is quick to understand and question the validity of the information and the system that produced it, and how will we educate the legal profession on the depth and breadth of information that seems plausible but is false? How will we do all that in sufficient time to save the next set of victims?

I too recognise the problems raised by the Minister in those meetings around the ubiquity of computers, but there is an equal and opposite concern that, in an age of AI where hallucinations, deepfakes and melded information are a norm, if we are willing to continue with the presumption, as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, said, that information from a computer is reliable, that not only is untrue but creates distrust in the law. When this moment has passed, could there perhaps be a piece of work looking forward to challenge the presumption in law in a more careful and considered way, which this quick fix does not quite reach?

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and the three other noble Lords who signed Amendment 21. I also support Amendment 22. Concerning Amendment 21, mention has been made of the Post Office/Horizon scandal. As we all now know, this was a very defective computer. The law must in future be on the side of truth and accuracy, in relation to computers or to anything else.

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Kidron and Lord Hacking

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hacking (Lab)]

My Lords, I enthusiastically join my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti in praising the noble Baroness, Lady Owen. I was in the House—it was on a Friday—when she first moved her Private Member’s Bill. The Minister then was the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and he promised that the Government would review and come to the assistance of the noble Baroness. What she is doing now is quite amazing, with a number of very detailed amendments. I will hold myself here to await what my noble friend the Minister will say in reply, but I do hope she will be very positive.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to add my voice to the praise for the noble Baroness, Lady Owen—me too—and to put on record my support. I believe the noble Baroness did such a detailed, forensic laying out of her amendments. I would just like to make a couple of points.

During the passage of the Online Safety Act, we had a lot of discussion about an ombudsman. It was very much resisted. At the same time—in the same time- frame as that Bill took place—I was an adviser to the Irish Government, who put in an ombudsman. I think we are missing something. It was a very big part of the previous discussion about chatbots and so on in an earlier group. I very firmly agree with what the noble Baroness said as she laid out her amendments: we really need a way of alerting the regulator to what is going on, and it is not adequate for the regulator to have only an emerging harms unit that is waiting for us to fill in a form, which is the current state of play. I leave that with the Minister as a problem that needs solving.