Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Friday 5th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, in the last four years, in the role of the First Civil Service Commissioner, I have increasingly seen AI being used in all stages of recruitment. The Civil Service uses AI and so does the commission, but we have always been very clear that AI is supposed to support the human decision-maker, rather than to remove the human decision-maker.

The Cabinet Manual, which we were told earlier this week would be updated, does not make any reference to AI, but it does say:

“Ministers have a duty to give fair consideration and due weight to informed and impartial advice from civil servants, as well as to other considerations and advice in reaching policy decisions”.


The core value of the Civil Service is objectivity, and basing your advice and decisions on rigorous analysis of the evidence. But where does that advice come from? What is the basis? What is the information we are using? AI is increasingly giving us a vast number of sources and data, but at some stage someone has to make a decision and, more to the point, someone has to use their judgment.

I then thought that I would use AI to ask about how to make judgments. It gave me two spellings: without the e, it is a court judgment, and the one with the e in it, which is slightly more nuanced, it told me was rather old-fashioned and falling out of use. I thought, “It may be old-fashioned, but I still quite like the nuance of those two”. I went back and thought, “Right, what do I do when I use judgment?” The advice came back with a whole checklist on when I use my judgment and examples of how you use your judgment, whether it is as a customer service manager or whether you decide to stop the car because the rain is too heavy.

But then I thought, “What will it say if I say that I am bad at making judgments?” It came back and said, “Would you like some help with self-assessment for professional applications?” I said, “Yes. What do I say in my self-assessment when I’m bad at making judgments?” It came back and said, “Don’t use the word ‘bad’. Say you are actively working to refine your decision-making processes”. I said, “But what if I always get it wrong?” It said, “Well, show how you learn from mistakes”. I thought, “How far do I have to go before the answer comes back, saying, ‘Well, maybe you’re not the right person for this job’?” It never did.

With that positivity bias, on the one hand, you could say, “Does it matter?” I would say “Yes, it does”, because all these things have underlying assumptions. In this example, they are very easy to spot, but with a great many others it is much more difficult. It gives you the strange belief that all you need is more information and you can resolve whatever question is coming your way.

I cast my mind back to many a Friday in the last Session which we spent on the assisted dying Bill. If I were to ask, “Would a society in which assisted dying is normalised be better because it has enhanced personal autonomy and reduced suffering, or worse, because it has devalued lives that others have judged are not worth living?”, I am afraid that AI could not help with that. We still have to develop the ability to make judgments. Technology is a tool, and we should always use it as a tool. Those who look to AI as a salvation, as the planetary superintelligence that echoes the absent god of monotheism, will be disappointed. But the sociopolitical shock of our workforce and the realisation that human intelligence is losing its scarcity value is a real one, and it is coming. The knowledge class will experience what the agricultural labourers experienced during the Industrial Revolution. The Luddites may have tried to smash the spinning jennies, but that never resolved the problem.

However, there is something that we can do, and something we can prevent, and it is our individual responsibility to do so. It is that human redundancy does not happen in personal relationships and it does not happen in our perceptions of reality. It is our own sense and responsibility to be clear that we do not end up saying, “Alexa, it’s over to you, you’re in charge now”. Ultimately, we remain in charge of our decision-making. We have a responsibility in our decision-making, and we have a responsibility to the next generation to allow them to make their judgments, to learn from their errors and to actually realise that moral judgment is what makes us human.

El Niño: Impact

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right: 2022 was the UK’s hottest year on record and saw over 20,000 hectares of land in England burned, the destruction of over 70 properties across the UK and at least 14 fire and rescue services declaring major incidents in their areas, as well as 2,985 excess deaths. We have to learn from each event as it happens and make sure that the lessons learned are reflected in our resilience plans going forward, which is why we now have a severe weather resilience network, which is led by COBRA but includes MHCLG and the Department of Health as key aspects of it. We need to make sure that the most vulnerable are protected and that those who need resources, whether at a local or national level, have what they need to keep us all safe.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, some local authorities have in the past identified places such as churches, which may provide cool shelter during very high temperature periods. Are the Government doing any work with local authorities to make information available for those kinds of preventative action as and when it might be needed?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. We saw during Covid and see during every crisis moment that communities come together, and the church and faith communities tend to be at the heart of a response. Details about how communities can respond are available on gov.uk/prepare, which outlines not just what is available and what individuals can do but what communities can do to prepare for any extreme event, whether related to a pandemic or to severe weather. We thank everyone who steps up at times of national emergency, especially those within our faith communities who take local leadership roles.

The UK’s Demographic Future

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, it is an honour and a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbott, opening this debate, and I add my admiration for his work over the years. Although in those years when I was a party-political politician we were “on the other side” in many ways, I was a West Midlands politician, so I would have come across a great many of the people who have played a role in his political life.

I am particularly glad that we are having this debate, because it is on a subject which is so important but which, for reasons I do not entirely understand, we are extremely reluctant to debate. The noble Lord started by hinting at some of the problems we appear to be having. I sometimes wonder whether it goes back to the 1970s, when you had countries such as China and India trying to address this, either with a one-child policy or in India a particularly aggressive population control policy; perhaps that started our shying away from this as a subject which we should not address. However, we would be wrong to do so, and for a number of reasons.

The aspect I want to focus on, which is in the report, is national security. In the report Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, the chapter by Professor Michael Clarke is headed, “‘Ask not what your country can do for you’—The implications for national security of demographic change”. Very accurately and importantly, he focuses on what is national cohesion. He takes us through the various arguments but essentially says:

“The UK’s demographic development and the way it interprets its own deep and erstwhile pluralism can be either a strength or a weakness in these circumstances – on the one hand, a source of deeper resilience; on the other, a series of fault-lines capable of exploitation by the country’s adversaries”.


It is this danger that could be a strength; we must not allow it to become a weakness by not addressing some of the issues and having some open discussions. Professor Clarke essentially concludes that, as long as we do not face these,

“internal and external security challenges … our demographic evolution will be addressed largely through strategies merely of hope, rather than anything more precise, or new approaches based on better knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon”.

So I think he identifies the things which we need to look at if resilience, national defence and national security play into the debate about demography.

In a sense, the Government have acknowledged that that is an issue. If we go back to the strategic defence review from 2025, we see that it includes “home defence and resilience” and explicitly calls for a “whole-of-society approach”. In that whole-of-society approach, it calls on the Government to “Build national resilience” and “Increase national warfighting readiness”. It makes it clear that:

“The Government must promote unity of effort across society, leading a national conversation to raise public awareness of the threats to the UK, how Defence deters and protects against them, and why Defence requires support to strengthen the nation’s resilience”.


It states what ought to be obvious but is often forgotten:

“The connection between the UK Armed Forces and wider society is the longstanding and necessary foundation for the defence of the country”.


All that requires cohesion of society and for that to happen requires certain other elements. This may be the moment to declare that I am an honorary captain in the Royal Navy’s reserve force. On top of that, I am what would be called an immigrant; I came here in the early 1970s.

I would challenge the report when it says that we must not stop thinking about tomorrow, as we probably have not even started to think about tomorrow. If I were to open today’s newspapers or listen to the news, it would ask, “Will residential doctors strike again or is the offer to provide extra places for early-career doctors sufficient?” As the noble Lord reminded us, in demographic terms, 2000 is yesterday. I am now talking about something called yesterday, because it was 25 years ago when we published the Black Country strategy. It identified the needs of the region in terms of doctors. It made connections between doctors’ and nurses’ propensity to remain in the region in which they had trained. It therefore said that, because the region required those extra doctors, who require three, seven or 15 years to be fully trained, Birmingham University required 100 extra places. There was logic in that approach: it took the regional needs and its demography to decide what should happen, so it is not that we do not know how to do it but that, somehow, curiously, we seem to keep forgetting and pull back from the decisions that we have made, which at one stage were long term. When the places at Birmingham University medical school were cut, I literally could not find out who had made that decision. We are seeing the consequences of that in 2025.

We are talking about an ageing population, pension contributions, inheritance tax and, as the noble Lord said, higher education. The system has ended up creating an extraordinary dependency on international students for the funding of our higher education students without having thought through the consequences.

I will not go on with those examples, but I am always taken back to 2008, when Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth went to the London Stock Exchange in the wake of the financial crisis. In essence, she said to them, “Why did nobody notice this? Why did nobody see this coming?” Their answer, roughly speaking, was that at every stage someone was relying on somebody else and everybody thought that they were doing the right thing individually. What they did not do was see either how these individual decisions were hanging together or the consequences of a very complex system.

I fear that with a lot of these debates. I raised this problem with a Minister recently, who looked at me rather surprised and said, “Gisela, the facts are known”. I felt like saying, “Yes, I know the facts are known, but what are we doing with them?” A lot of the facts in this report are known, but we need to pull them together so that they become a meaningful basis for future decision-making.

The noble Lord mentioned an office for demographic change. I can see the logic of that but would like to add an extra dimension because this is a report by the Common Good Foundation and it would therefore be wrong of me not to mention that in all this is a need for identity, community and belonging. These things are too easily overlooked; whether cohesion or resilience, it is a feeling of belonging to a community and having a sense of identity. That is why the national debate should also have a very local dimension.

I would not hasten to ever try to go back to Victorian values, but there is one Victorian value that I would like to recommend to the House: the civic audacity of Joe Chamberlain in Birmingham. It was a kind of confidence in place, where cities would compete with one another to be better. Their competition was not based on having to fight for a central pot of money which was coming out of Whitehall, because that does not lead to good decision-making. Similarly, on the debate on demography, we need national figures, but we also need some very granular regional figures and data which take account of the needs of those communities. I think they will be best met by those local communities themselves; they have to take ownership of those.

This whole-of-society approach, together with a bit of civic audacity, will allow us to have a national view but regional implementation, or we will not be able to face the problems coming our way, whether those are islands and pockets of ageing populations or, in other areas, a shortage of schools or medical facilities. We can see them coming, and we can plan, but only if we are willing to face up to it, have the data and implement it in a much more granular way than we do at the moment. If we do not start to think about the future, it is going to happen whether we like it or not, and we cannot go on just being surprised by things.

Permanent Secretaries: Appointment and Removal (Constitution Committee Report)

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for this thoughtful report. I am grateful to the committee for having asked the Civil Service Commission to give evidence to it. As the First Civil Service Commissioner, I lead the statutory independent commission that provides assurance that appointment into the Civil Service is on merit, after fair and open competition. I take on board the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Maude, about how we define merit. The commission regulates recruitment into the Civil Service and hears appeals from civil servants under the Civil Service Code. We play a unique role in the recruitment landscape and bring external expertise, acting as one of the checks and balances to the Government. We also provide confidence that recruitment is driven by candidates’ ability to do the job, wherever they may come from.

In my role as the First Civil Service Commissioner, I chair the recruitment panels for the appointment of Permanent Secretaries. The unique arrangements for this are set out in our Recruitment Principles. Throughout the appointments process, we attach great importance to Ministers being involved at the outset and through the various stages. Ministers must give their views on the job specification and person specification, and agree on the panel. They can meet all the shortlisted candidates, with the commission present, to give their views. However, the decision on which candidates meet the criteria rests with the independent panel, and the final choice of whom to appoint as a Permanent Secretary is for the Prime Minister. It is worth noting that, for other competitions for lower senior Civil Service grades, the panel not only arrives at a conclusion as to who is appointable but produces a merit order of those appointable candidates.

We agree with the committee that this balance of involvement is about right but that more must be done to make sure Ministers are aware of the ways in which they can be appropriately and rightly involved in these appointments. These are the most important public service leadership roles in the country. As a result of appearing before the committee and the concerns raised, the Deputy Prime Minister and I wrote to all Permanent Secretaries and ministerial offices in April this year outlining the existing process, and as a reminder that there is clarity on where Ministers could and should be appropriately involved.

We are proud of our permanent Civil Service in this country, which exists to serve the Government of the day. I like to think that what we have is an impartial Civil Service. I have my doubts whether such a thing as it being non-political—with a small “p”—is possible, but it is impartiality and a commitment to the Government of the day which are important.

An effective Civil Service must continue to develop its own people, as well as recruit new talent from outside to bring in new skills. The commission plays a significant part here. We regulate external appointments into the Civil Service and, by virtue of the senior appointments protocol, recruitment at director-general level, which is the level below Permanent Secretary. I welcome the Minister’s commitment to publication of a revised Civil Servants Senior Appointments Protocol in the near future. The independence of the commission is a critical part of how the most senior roles in the Civil Service are recruited on merit, following that open and fair competition.

I also sit on the Senior Leadership Committee in my role as the First Civil Service Commissioner. I agree with the committee that it is important to codify and clarify the remit of the SLC and the first commissioner’s role on it. I am pleased that this work is under way, and look forward to its publication shortly. I also believe that the SLC membership should always include the Government lead NED as a further source of external cross-government expertise.

We believe that there are major benefits to external recruitment, testing the market for the skills the Civil Service needs and refreshing the talent available to serve the country. The commission itself has seen the benefits of recruiting externally by default, but some departments would benefit from embracing “external by default” a bit more enthusiastically.

I share with the Committee that the commission will be carrying out a thematic review into the rigour with which the external by default policy is applied, and we are doing this with the agreement of the Minister for the Cabinet Office. This will be a root-and-branch review, intended to look at the premise of external by default, how it is currently delivered and where there are still opportunities to be realised by recruiting people from outside into the Civil Service. We will be working closely with the Government People Group, which is responsible for Civil Service HR. I believe this is an excellent way to use the unique regulatory perspective of the commission and our 14 commissioners, who come from a wide range of professional backgrounds, including the private sector and the wider public sector.

The commission is currently responsible for entry into the Civil Service. Under the existing arrangements, we play no part in exit. I am pleased that our secretariat also serves the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which is chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Pickles. The commission welcomes the work under way by the Government and the noble Lord on reforms to the business appointment rules. If there are implications for the commission’s own regulatory work, we will respond to those.

The commission is the appellate body for complaints from civil servants under the Civil Service Code. The code itself is owned by the Cabinet Office. We take this role seriously. Now that the full results of the people survey are available to us, we have written to all Permanent Secretaries in Scotland, Wales and England in order to engage in outreach with their departments over the coming year. We will ask each department for a list of the department’s nominated officers, details on the number of code complaints that the department has received, and the number of code complaints that have been upheld by the department. We are keen to ensure that civil servants understand the provisions of the code and are aware of the ways in which they can make a complaint, and that adequate processes are in place within departments.

I wish to take this moment to place on record my thanks to the hard-working commissioners and staff of the commission, who have in the past year regulated more than 90,000 appointments into the Civil Service and chaired 229 senior Civil Service competitions. I thank the committee for having been the spark for two useful commission initiatives and for giving us the impetus to do them in a timely manner.

Extreme Weather: Resilience

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Earl. I am glad he mentioned the NAO report, because it did welcome the work that had been done—I know this has been welcomed across the House—on setting up the Resilience Directorate and, indeed, publishing the resilience framework in 2022. Setting appropriate targets and ambitions for the level of flood resilience—in particular, for critical infrastructure because that is a key part—is part of the Government’s broader thinking on resilience standards.

There are more than 100 risk priorities in our risk register; we are working on all of these and have committed to create by 2030 common but flexible resilience standards right across critical national infrastructure, as well as across the private sector more broadly. One of the lessons of the storms we are seeing is that it is important to work with the private sector as well. One reason that people have been less affected has been the improvements that have been made in power, transport, trains and the rest—partly having early warning, partly working together, and partly having this sense of mission that we must try to respond to the warmer, wetter winters and the arrival of a certain element of Mediterranean weather in our beautiful island, as the noble Earl said.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I am glad that the Minister mentioned the private sector, because I would like to take it to an even more granular level—the individual household sector. Has she had conversations with the insurance industry, to make it absolutely clear to home policy owners what damage is covered and how to deal with neighbourhood disputes resulting from falling trees, falling fences and similar damage, where it may not be immediately obvious whose responsibility it is?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point about insurance. We do have discussions with the insurance industry on resilience. Of course, in recent years we have developed Flood Re, which is a very important reinsurance scheme that makes flood cover more widely available to households that are particularly vulnerable to flooding so that people can get insurance. Another part of the picture is the compensation schemes that are part of the flood recovery framework. In England, for appropriate events, there was £500 per affected household and £2,500 for affected businesses provided through the local authority, and some temporary council tax and business rate relief. The arrangements in the devolved nations are a bit different and, in some cases, more generous.

I think we must look at it in the round. How can the Government help? How can they prevent this? Can they communicate much better to make sure that people are not harmed and are kept safe? Where, sadly, there is damage to property, can we make sure that the insurance system helps to minimise government expenditure, which is occasionally necessary?

Nuclear Test Veterans

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that history, of which I was not aware. I point out that any veteran, including those of the nuclear tests, who believes that they have suffered ill health due to service has a right to apply for no-fault compensation under the War Pensions Scheme. War pensions are payable in respect of illness or injury as result of service in the Armed Forces and with the benefit of reasonable doubt always being given to the claimant, which I regard as very important.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chair of the Royal Mint’s advisory committee on coins and medals. I am grateful to the Minister for mentioning that the medal was announced for the veterans, but can she assure the House that the medal will be available for Armistice Day this year?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that the rollout of the medals has been a little slower than we had expected. We were keen to make progress on this, and we announced last November that the medal would be given to these brave veterans. Others will know that it takes time to design, improve and manufacture a new medal. However, I am absolutely determined—and Johnny Mercer, the Veterans Minister, who everybody will no doubt know, is determined—that we will do everything we can to make those medals available on the chests of veterans on Remembrance Sunday.

Size of the House of Lords

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the Conservative Party has only about 33% of the seats in the Lords, which obviously is way short of its share of the vote. This House has always benefited from negotiation and balance. However, there is a fundamental principle of our constitution that the Queen’s Government must be enabled to carry on, and everybody watches very closely the relationship between this House and the House of Commons.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I refer to my registered interests. I wonder whether it is time to take advice from Albert Einstein, who said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about the solution.” As we are about to enter a period where I think the United Kingdom will reflect on its constitutional arrangements as a whole, it may in that context be appropriate to look at the function of the House of Lords, and then its composition and size may well flow from those conclusions quite naturally.

[Lord True (Con)]

I agree with the noble Baroness that function and role are of substantial importance; too often all aspects of this question fail to be considered together.

COVID-19 Vaccine Certification

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, as ever, raises a very important and sensitive point. The Prime Minister has said that we cannot discriminate against people who, for whatever reason, cannot have the vaccine. I assure her that the review will certainly take that aspect into account.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register. I want to return to the vaccination certificate on a domestic issue, following on from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. Can the Minister ensure that, whatever system we end up with, it is very narrowly and clearly defined and has the consent of those who are excluded from its benefits as well as those who would derive benefits from having such a certificate?

[Lord True (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes an important point. As I have tried to indicate in this series of answers—I said at the outset that my right honourable friend is currently scoping the approach—your Lordships’ advice through all this will be very much valued and a range of opinions, including those just expressed, will have to be considered. As the Prime Minister has said, deep and complex issues are involved.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I refer to my registered interest as the Cabinet Office lead NED.

Today’s Bill completes the process of ceasing to be a member state of the European Union. This is the beginning of a new relationship based on mutual respect and geography, as well as shared values and interests. It preserves the UK’s sovereignty as a matter of law and fully respects the norms of international sovereign-to-sovereign treaties. That was the core of Vote Leave’s promise to “Take back control of our borders, laws, tax and trade”. This deal delivers that promise.

We are leaving on good terms—“good” as in having achieved a better deal than many of us had hoped to expect. This was not easy to achieve, and I congratulate in particular the noble Lord, Lord Frost, and the team. Any deal involves compromises on both sides, and this deal has got the balance about right. It protects mutual interests as well as allowing the UK to make its own decisions and shape its future. But it is also “good” in the sense of amicable and orderly.

Ursula von der Leyen quoted TS Eliot:

“What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

The UK always has been and will continue to be European. Our new relationship can be, and should be, to the benefit of both sides. This is a rare moment in history, when everything is “unfrozen” and as a nation we have the chance to reset. The EU can proceed with the deeper political integration a single shared currency requires, and we can no longer blame the EU for not doing things domestically.

But I acknowledge that for some today is a day of deep regret. I understand that. In Burnt Norton TS Eliot speaks of:

“What might have been and what has been”

and writes:

“Footfalls echo in the memory”.

We should now give these things their proper place and look ahead, grasping the opportunities as well as the responsibilities coming our way. We must invest in our future, with new industries, new skills, and greener technologies; work on smarter regulation to boost our competitiveness while enhancing environmental and social standards; and levelling up so that the four nations of the United Kingdom can prosper and narrow the gap in prosperity between cities, towns and regions across the UK. By passing this Bill today, we now have the certainty of a framework to do all these things.

EU: Visa-free Short-term Travel Mobility

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, at the moment we are continuing discussions in this area. I promise to advise the noble Baroness opposite on the specific point that she raises very shortly.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Michel Barnier has labelled some of the United Kingdom’s proposals as “freedom of movement for service suppliers”. Can the Minister confirm that we are seeking only to lock in, on a reciprocal basis, some arrangements that the United Kingdom already offers to third-country nationals, and that therefore this characterisation is simply wrong?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness to her place. She is exactly right; the comment underlines my point that we are seeking to negotiate arrangements which run very much in the direction that the House is asking for. For example, we are seeking measures on contractual services suppliers who provide services to a client in another jurisdiction. I cannot go through all our mode 4 suggestions, but they are on the table and we very much hope that they will be picked up.