Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reported deaths of Palestinian individuals while trying to access distribution points for humanitarian aid.
Answered by Lord Collins of Highbury - Lord in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
We are horrified by repeated reports of mass casualty incidents in Gaza, with desperate civilians killed when trying to access aid. The UK calls for urgent investigations to establish what has happened and to ensure accountability. We have been clear that the Government of Israel must allow the full and unhindered resumption of aid into Gaza and facilitate the UN and aid partners to deliver aid safely and with dignity to Gazans wherever they are.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government which (1) public bodies, (2) initiatives, and (3) programmes, on the governance of artificial intelligence have provided advice to Chief Constables on the use of artificial intelligence in policing.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Shadow Minister (Business and Trade)
Where artificial intelligence tools are used, or plan to be used, in policing they must comply with existing legal standards and principles. The Government is supporting the College of Policing and Police Chief Scientific Advisor to create guidance which will advise police forces on how to approach the adoption of new data driven technologies including AI. This will include sections on transparency and accountability. Where AI is used, the Government is enabling collaboration between police forces and independent experts to build trust in its performance. On 5 April 2023 the NPL published independent research, funded by the Government, looking at the performance of facial recognition algorithms in police operational settings.
The Government’s consultation on its AI regulation white paper closed on 21 June. The white paper proposed five cross-cutting principles - which included transparency and accountability - and, following an initial non-statutory period, proposed introducing a statutory duty requiring regulators to have due regard to the principles. The Government will update on the proposals in its response to the white paper consultation.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what advice they will give to Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners on the use of artificial intelligence by police Chief Scientific Advisers.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Shadow Minister (Business and Trade)
Where artificial intelligence tools are used, or plan to be used, in policing they must comply with existing legal standards and principles. The Government is supporting the College of Policing and Police Chief Scientific Advisor to create guidance which will advise police forces on how to approach the adoption of new data driven technologies including AI. This will include sections on transparency and accountability. Where AI is used, the Government is enabling collaboration between police forces and independent experts to build trust in its performance. On 5 April 2023 the NPL published independent research, funded by the Government, looking at the performance of facial recognition algorithms in police operational settings.
The Government’s consultation on its AI regulation white paper closed on 21 June. The white paper proposed five cross-cutting principles - which included transparency and accountability - and, following an initial non-statutory period, proposed introducing a statutory duty requiring regulators to have due regard to the principles. The Government will update on the proposals in its response to the white paper consultation.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure transparency and accountability in the use of artificial intelligence by the police; and what rules, if any, they plan to introduce to achieve this.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Shadow Minister (Business and Trade)
Where artificial intelligence tools are used, or plan to be used, in policing they must comply with existing legal standards and principles. The Government is supporting the College of Policing and Police Chief Scientific Advisor to create guidance which will advise police forces on how to approach the adoption of new data driven technologies including AI. This will include sections on transparency and accountability. Where AI is used, the Government is enabling collaboration between police forces and independent experts to build trust in its performance. On 5 April 2023 the NPL published independent research, funded by the Government, looking at the performance of facial recognition algorithms in police operational settings.
The Government’s consultation on its AI regulation white paper closed on 21 June. The white paper proposed five cross-cutting principles - which included transparency and accountability - and, following an initial non-statutory period, proposed introducing a statutory duty requiring regulators to have due regard to the principles. The Government will update on the proposals in its response to the white paper consultation.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure proper scrutiny of the technical and ethical issues arising from the use of artificial intelligence by the police.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Shadow Minister (Business and Trade)
Where artificial intelligence tools are used, or plan to be used, in policing they must comply with existing legal standards and principles. The Government is supporting the College of Policing and Police Chief Scientific Advisor to create guidance which will advise police forces on how to approach the adoption of new data driven technologies including AI. This will include sections on transparency and accountability. Where AI is used, the Government is enabling collaboration between police forces and independent experts to build trust in its performance. On 5 April 2023 the NPL published independent research, funded by the Government, looking at the performance of facial recognition algorithms in police operational settings.
The Government’s consultation on its AI regulation white paper closed on 21 June. The white paper proposed five cross-cutting principles - which included transparency and accountability - and, following an initial non-statutory period, proposed introducing a statutory duty requiring regulators to have due regard to the principles. The Government will update on the proposals in its response to the white paper consultation.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the impact of the benefit cap on levels of child poverty.
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott - Opposition Whip (Lords)
It is not possible to produce a robust estimate of the impact of the benefit cap policy on levels of child poverty.
The benefit cap provides a strong work incentive, which reflects our long-term focus of continuing to support parents into, and to progress in, work. Our multi-billion-pound Plan for Jobs, which has recently been expanded by £500 million, will help people across the UK to find work and to boost their wages and prospects.
Official child poverty statistics, covering the period 2020/21 will be published in March 2022, as part of the Department’s (a) ‘Children In Low Income Families’ and (b) ‘Households Below Average Income’ publications, subject to the usual checks on data quality.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the timetable for the ratification of International Labour Organisation Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No.190).
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott - Opposition Whip (Lords)
As of 15 December 2021, the Violence and Harassment Convention Command Paper has cleared without objection which indicates that the Government can proceed to ratification.
The Instrument of Ratification will be drawn up for signature by the Foreign Secretary and deposited at the International Labour Organization as soon as is practicable in the new year. The Convention would enter into force for the UK one year after the date of the UK’s ratification.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what objections they have received, if any, to their Command Paper declaring their intention to ratify the International Labour Organisation Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No.190).
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott - Opposition Whip (Lords)
As of 15 December 2021, the Violence and Harassment Convention Command Paper has cleared without objection which indicates that the Government can proceed to ratification.
The Instrument of Ratification will be drawn up for signature by the Foreign Secretary and deposited at the International Labour Organization as soon as is practicable in the new year. The Convention would enter into force for the UK one year after the date of the UK’s ratification.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Baroness Buscombe on 17 June (HL Deb, col 653), why child poverty has been “rising almost entirely in working families”.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
The Institute for Fiscal Studies published “Living Standards, poverty and inequality in the UK: 2019” on 19 June which acknowledged that the rise of in-work relative poverty is a complex issue with no easy answer. They cited a number of reasons, including that there are more people in work overall and far fewer workless households, for example, there are 667,000 fewer children in workless households compared with 2010. Furthermore, far fewer pensioners are poor than ever before, primarily driven by increased government spending on pension benefits. This has raised the relative poverty line resulting in more ‘in work’ households falling below the line in recent years than they would have done without these increases in pensioner incomes.
The IFS estimated that the remaining third of the increase is due to two main factors: that earnings have risen less quickly towards the bottom of the distribution than the top and that housing costs have risen faster for poorer households than richer ones.
We know that there is more to do to support working people. The Chancellor has set out the Government’s ambition to end low pay across the UK. The National Living Wage, rose to £8.21 an hour in April 2019 and is expected to benefit over 1.7m people. The government is working to ease issues around high housing costs by delivering over 1.3 million extra homes in England since 2010. The Government is now on track to raise housing supply to 300,000 per year on average by the mid-2020s. Over £44 billion of new financial support will be available for housing over the next five years.
Asked by: Baroness Primarolo (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Baroness Buscombe on 17 June (HL Deb, col 653), how many children live in the “2.4 million households” who will “keep more of what they earn”.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
The Department estimates there will be around 4.1m children in households in Great Britain that will gain from the change in work allowances by 2023/24.