Open Artificial Intelligence Service

Earl of Devon Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The AI Security Institute was set up to look at the potential risk of new models. It works closely with model developers and gets access to models early, tests them for things that might be problematic, and is an important source of identifying possible issues. There are of course much broader questions, such as the one that has just been asked, which are beyond what happens inside government. That is why the work the Alan Turing Institute started, looking at some of those issues, is important. I am very pleased that many of the people who led that are now being established in academic positions and will continue to address these very important questions as we go forward.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, we have heard repeatedly about the importance of data to the success of our AI industries. We are also well aware that people’s relationship with AI is very much guided by the fear of their data being misused. I understand that Sir Tim Berners-Lee is looking closely at this issue and how we return the ownership of our data to us as individuals from companies that are harvesting it and using it without our consent. What are the Government doing to pursue this and to look at how we as citizens can control our own data in this new AI world?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Of course, this is a major issue, particularly in health data. I was intrigued when speaking recently to colleagues in Denmark. They made the point that they have a very simple message: they provide a health service free of charge, and in return citizens of Denmark are expected to provide their data to improve that service, but they still own the data. The question of how we manage that with data ownership in the UK, in health and beyond, is one of the things the National Data Library and Health Data Research UK will have uppermost in their minds as they develop their services.

Artificial Intelligence: Emissions

Earl of Devon Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Recent estimates from 2022 show that data centres, including those for AI, account for about 4% of UK electricity consumption. The recently formed AI Energy Council, which is co-chaired by the Secretaries of State for DSIT and DESNZ, is set up to do exactly what the right reverend Prelate is suggesting, which is to ensure that we have a joined-up approach between energy and AI.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, do His Majesty’s Government have a view on the merits of the Xlinks power project, which is designed to bring renewable energy from Morocco to the south-west peninsula via cables? Were it to be successful, this would provide a good renewable source of energy for data centres in the south-west.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Earl of Devon Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Lords Chamber

If someone owns a host of bricks lying at the end of the street and I use them to build a house, I should pay for those bricks. I honestly believe that, if electricity were available for free without meters, the big tech companies would use that electricity without paying. It is only because we have a means to force them to pay—to be clear about what they are using and to make sure that there is a trading market—that they are not. These amendments do that and, as my noble friend said, they do it in a way that is not prescriptive. I urge the Government to listen to the genuine cross-party support for these amendments.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, this is the first time that I have spoken on the Bill. Given the excellence of the contributions to date, I have barely felt the need to. We are indebted to the tireless work, rhetorical skill and legislative expertise of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lords, Lord Freyberg, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Stevenson. I thank them all.

I wholly support the premise of and intentions behind these amendments, although they would not strictly be necessary if we could just be patient and let the law of copyright work as it should and as it has done for over 300 years. Given the Government’s consultation on AI and copyright, and the intense pressure that they have put upon themselves to convert the UK into an engine of economic growth at all costs—sustainable or not—this is an issue of paramount and urgent importance to our creative future and to intellectual property. I offer a short contribution from my experience; after such a debate, I hope it will be additive and not repetitive.

First and foremost, I am an art historian—a cack-handed artist long astounded by the creative genius of our island nation and particularly its flourishing globalisation in the 18th and 19th centuries. Much of that soft power came through the deployment of copyright —first legislated by this Parliament in the Statute of Anne 1709. We invented copyright; it is our duty to preserve and enhance it, not to let it be sacrificed on the altar of economic growth in an unsustainable race against China and America to machine-learned dominance at the expense of human creativity.

Copyright was the child of the booksellers, the purveyors of the printed word through which knowledge spread around the world. Its first skirmishes were jurisdictional, with Scottish booksellers seeking to flood the English market, in breach of copyright, during the 1720s and 1730s. They argued that the law did not apply to them, as their processes—their printing presses—were outside the jurisdiction. Does that sound familiar? The same arguments are deployed today by the foreign generative-AI companies training their LLMs offshore to be deployed onshore. We have seen it all before: copyright succeeded then and will succeed now.

From its printed beginnings, copyright expanded to cover all new media. William Hogarth famously lobbied Parliament to apply copyright to engravings, allowing him to control distribution of his remorseless satire. He was followed soon by Gillray, Punch and our proud heritage of ridicule. Copyright then absorbed the daguerreotype and photography, the phonograph and recorded sound, the computer and, of course, the internet—when avaricious news aggregators such as Google were brought to heel and properly licensed. The suggestion that copyright is not fit for purpose and is unable to address novel technologies—not that much is new in AI—is itself ridiculous. Copyright can and will regulate AI; we just need to give it and our common-law system of justice the time to make the right decisions.

Secondly, I am an IP litigator qualified in both England and California. In that capacity, I am a member of the IP APPG that successfully lobbied the previous Government against the introduction of text- and data-mining exceptions that the AI developers so desperately seek. It is thus disappointing that the Labour Government now seek to revisit exactly the same ground and fight exactly the same battle. I am extremely grateful to the support of briefings provided by the Creative Rights in AI Coalition, and to the multitude of creative talent—both household names and those less celebrated—who have spoken out over many months in support of copyright. Their voices must be heard and it is for them that we fight.

However, it is not just the creative industries that rely upon copyright, as we have heard; it is an essential tool in support of the digital revolutions of recent decades. When in California and ever since, I was privileged to represent a number of the world’s leading technology and digital content companies. All were very happy with the fitness for purpose of copyright to protect their source code, algorithms, graphic user interfaces and digital content, as licensed by the end-user licence agreements to which we are all party. Somehow that copyright is fit for purpose and is readily enforceable in other jurisdictions. The means of enforcing it are fully sufficient and we should not believe protestations to the contrary.

In both the US and UK, major AI copyright disputes are making their way through the courts. We will have an authoritative decision by the summer. We should not rush to legislate in a judicial vacuum before really understanding how the existing law will be applied. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, confirmed to me in Oral Questions in November,

“the Government are clear that copyright law must be respected when content is used to train AI models. If copies are made of protected work, licences must be required from the copyright owner unless a specific copyright exception applies”.—[Official Report, 11/11/24; col. 1570.]

If the courts recognise the protection of copyright and the lack of applicable exceptions, injunctive and monetary relief will follow and the market will function. Insurance policies will not cover corporates that deploy AI that is not transparent in its training processes, and such tools will no longer be offered to customers.

I am also confident that market regulators will be interested in investigating how technology giants did not unduly leverage their dominance in search and social media markets to compete unfairly with the creative industries and the human beings upon whose unlicensed endeavours their soaring profits were built; in other words, the market and its existing controls will function, licences will be issued and human creative endeavour will be recognised and rewarded. To the extent that these amendments make that more likely, they have my full support.

Finally, I note my interest as proprietor of a live music, events and heritage venue. I finish by recognising the one silver lining of this existential saga. It is to remind us, in case we have forgotten, that the best way to enjoy creative human endeavour is in person, not through a digital device: listening live to an artist, sitting in a theatre or visiting an art gallery. Artists from William Blake to Neil Young would agree that the “dark Satanic Mills” of digitally generated and digitally accessed art should never replace human experience. Likewise, machine learning should never replace human creativity.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

I too support this group of amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others.

It surely goes without saying that our United Kingdom copyright law has to counter the increasing theft of intellectual property by artificial intelligence companies.

As here advocated, we should provide transparency criteria that would allow copyright holders to identify when and from where their work has been taken. I am sure that the Minister agrees with that aim and is well aware of the strong human rights back-up support available to us from the 46 states affiliation of the Council of Europe, of which the United Kingdom remains a prominent member. I am a recent chairman of its education committee.

As many of your Lordships know, first and foremost, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to privacy, including of personal data. Article 1 of its initial protocol protects property rights, including intellectual property rights and copyright.

Secondly, Article 5 of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime prohibits system interference by, for example, the transmission of computer data; while its Article 10 stipulates:

“Offences related to infringements of copyright and related rights”.


Thirdly, Article 11 of the 2024 Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law safe- guards privacy and personal data.

Regarding copyright protection in recent centuries, we can be justly proud of our own United Kingdom record, beginning, as has already been said, with the Statute of Anne 1710, which granted legal protection to publishers of books.

In the interests of those both here and abroad, we must uphold the high standards of that tradition. The United Kingdom should guide this good practice. Adopting these amendments is a clear example of so doing.

Satellites: Adverse Effects on Astronomy

Earl of Devon Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

There is a series of international collaborations in place. We are a member of the European Space Agency. A large proportion of the £1.9 billion of the UK Space Agency money goes to the European Space Agency and our collaborators there. We also spend through the MoD and through UKRI. We are members of the UN bodies that deal with the question of a sustainable space sector and space environment. The space environment is increasingly important and needs attention. We will continue to raise this question at the UN bodies.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that we retain access to independent satellite launch capacity in the light of SpaceX’s close relationship with the next US Administration and the recent challenges at the Cornwall spaceport?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The next UK launches are planned from Scotland, and several operators, including Orbex, Skyrora, and RFA are targeting orbital launches in 2025-26. The launch date depends on a range of factors, including technical readiness of launch operations, but we believe that we have a particularly important launch site which leads directly to polar orbit, which is of particular importance.