Artificial Intelligence in Weapon Systems Committee Report

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Friday 19th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, this has been a very useful report, because it gets us thinking properly about these things.

I declare an interest in the whole world of generative AI and LLMs, with Kaimai and FIDO, which is looking at curated databases to extract information. It is very useful for that sort of thing. With that, as mentioned in the report, comes the whole issue of training materials. The results you get depend on what the AI is looking at. If you fire it off against a huge amount of uncurated stuff, you might, and you can, get all sorts of rubbish back. Certain tests have found AI returning things that were 70% to 80% inaccurate. On the other hand, if put against something carefully targeted, such as medical research, where everything that has gone into the dataset has been studied and put together by someone, it will find stuff that no one has had time to read and put together, and realise that it is relevant.

In the same way, AI will be very useful in confusing scenarios facing a military commander, or in military decisions, to help them weed out what is right and what is wrong and what is true and what is not. I seem to remember, though I cannot remember when it was, that there was nearly a nuclear war because, at one point, various sensors had gone wrong and they thought there was a military attack on the United States. They nearly triggered all the defences, but someone suddenly said, “Hang on, this doesn’t look quite right”. It may well be that an artificial intelligence system, which may not be confused by some of the fluff, might have spotted that more easily or accurately, and reported it and said, “Don’t believe everything you’re looking at; there is another problem in the system”. On the other hand, it might have done the opposite. This is the trouble, which is why the human intervention point is very important.

We also have to remember that, although AI started being developed in the 1980s, with neural networks and things like that, it is only really getting into its stride now. We do not know quite where things will end up, and so it is very difficult to regulate it.

My interest in this stems from the fact that I served with the TA for 15 years, and so I am interested in this country’s ability to defend itself. I worry about what would happen if we start trying to shackle ourselves to a whole lot of things that reduce that capability—I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. We should worry about that, because many countries may well pay lip service to international humanitarian law but an awful lot of them will use it to try to shackle us, who tend to obey it, while they themselves will not feel constricted by it. Take, for instance, the international Convention on Cluster Munitions. We are signed up to that, and so are many good countries, but there are one or two very serious countries, including one of our allies, that did not sign up to it. I personally agree with it, absolutely—it is a most appalling munition, because of the huge problems with the aftermath and the tidy-up.

I was also amused by conclusion 8 in the report, which mentioned testing AI “against all possible scenarios”. I seem to remember that there was a famous German general who said, “When anybody has only two possible courses of action, he will always adopt the third”. That is the trouble. I think the British are quite good at finding the third way in these things; that is possibly how we run, because of the unlikelihood of what we do.

The other thing I worry about with autonomous weapons systems is collateral damage. If you start programming a thing with facial recognition—you program in a face and ask it to take out a particular person or group of people, and off shoots the drone to make a decision on it—how do you tell it how much collateral damage to allow, if any? That is a problem. Particularly recently, we have seen that with other things, where people have decided that the target is so important that it is all right killing a few others. But it is not really—at least, I do not feel so. When you create a lot of collateral damage, particularly if it is not in a war but an insurgent situation, you reinforce the insurgents’ desire to be difficult, and that of their family and friends and all the other people. People forget that.

The other thing is that parliamentary scrutiny will be too slow. We are no good at scrutinising at high speed, and things will be changing quite rapidly in this area. We need scrutiny, we need human control at the end, and we need to use AI when it is useful for making that decision, but we must be very careful about trying to slow everything down with overbearing scrutiny.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 6th February 2019 Grand Committee

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendments 80A to 80D in this group. If the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, had not tabled his Amendment 79 concerning .50 calibre rifles, he would have been best described as asleep at the wheel. I think the Committee will be grateful for the opportunity to discuss this matter and, hopefully, identify a solution. Other noble Lords have discussed the genesis of this matter. A .50 calibre rifle is clearly in a class of its own. However, I have some concerns about the quality of briefings given to Ministers and to Members of the House of Commons. It is therefore not surprising that the Government had to drop their provisions on .50 calibre rifles in the House of Commons.

While .50 calibre target rifles have some extraordinary characteristics, they are entirely dependent on the skill of the user. It is tempting to believe that all one has to do to hit the V-bull centre of the target is to line up the cross-hairs of a telescopic sight and squeeze the trigger. The reality is rather more complex. It is a great sport simply because it is so difficult, and therefore not surprising that target shooting is an Olympic sport. First, the rifle has to be held correctly and in exactly the same way for every shot. The shooter’s breathing has to be controlled perfectly. If I was trying to shoot at 1,000 yards I doubt that I could keep the cross-hairs on the target, let alone the bull. Trigger action is also all-important. For instance, snatching the trigger is the cause of a lot of inaccuracy. Frankly, due to the recoil, if I tried to fire a .50 calibre target rifle I would be terrified—a 7.62 target rifle is bad enough. For all these reasons, an applicant for a firearms certificate for a .50 calibre target rifle will not be successful unless considerable skill can be demonstrated with lighter but full-bore target rifles.

It is of course exceptionally unlikely that a terrorist would have the necessary skill to use a .50 calibre rifle in the way feared by some. My noble friend Lord Lucas said that these rifles had never been used in crime.

I do not have a philosophical objection to private ownership of a .50 calibre target rifle. However, two mischiefs remain. The first is that if one was stolen it could for a while give rise to major security concerns. This might result in certain events being cancelled. The second is this. I do not have the skill to use a .50 calibre rifle effectively. However, I have the skill to incorporate one into a remote-controlled weapon system and it would have none of the marksmanship weaknesses that I have. The good news is that it is very unusual for someone with this level of engineering skill to use it for such evil and illegal purposes. It is even less likely in the case of today’s radicalised terrorists, who usually have very limited skills.

In the UK, we suffer mercifully few disasters with legally held firearms. This is because we get the balance right. Ministers generally make the right decisions, taking into account advice from Home Office officials. There is one particular official who has done sterling work over many years and has briefed or worked with many of us in this Committee. I am sure that noble Lords know who I am talking about and we should be grateful for his efforts.

My Amendment 80A would build on my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 74 and provide that special storage and transport conditions on a firearms certificate were mandatory in the case of a high muzzle energy rifle; that is, one with more than 13,600 joules of energy.

My Amendment 80B would give the Secretary of State an order-making power to specify the special storage and transport conditions to be included on the certificate. Of course, we could go for guidance rather than an order. I have made no provision for parliamentary scrutiny because I do not believe it to be sensible to make the security details public.

So far as I can see, the current standard gun cabinets are designed to prevent unauthorised access or opportunistic theft and they appear to do so. However, they are not designed to resist a determined attack using specialist equipment. My noble friend Lord Lucas proposes a much higher level of security and I support this. While my noble friend’s amendment is clear on what is proposed, I think that there are drafting issues and I suspect that the same applies to my amendment.

I understand that some owners of .50 calibre target rifles already have the requisite secure facilities. However, some might not be so lucky and there is also a vulnerability when these guns are in transit. Currently, it is illegal to possess any of the key components of a firearm without a certificate and this includes the bolt. My Amendment 80C would allow another person to be in possession of a bolt if this was in connection with a special storage and transport condition. I would expect there to be documentary conditions involved. This provision could be useful in allowing club officials to hold the bolts for the owners of a .50 calibre rifle. It could also allow the rifle to be transported without the bolt being present with the rifle. Therefore, if a rifle is stolen but the bolt can still be accounted for, there is no security problem and no risk.

I have made no special provision about the ammunition because I do not believe that it is necessary or beneficial. This is because dealing with the rifle solves the problem and it is not particularly difficult to acquire or reload a few rounds of .50 calibre ammunition for some terrible purpose.

I am not fixed on whether we solve this problem by storage conditions or by disassembling the rifle, thus rendering it harmless except when in use on a range, or a combination of the two. It may be best to have a range of options available to suit the circumstances, and this could be provided for in the proposed order or guidance. If we want to have a disassembly option available, we need my Amendment 80C, or something similar on the face of the Bill.

If the sense of the Grand Committee is that something along the lines of my suggestion is acceptable, the Minister may be more tempted to take the opportunity to come up with a properly drafted government amendment. The consultation could then go forward as planned and, with benefit of the consultation, the Government could implement the necessary changes by whatever means is provided in the Bill.

My final amendment in this group is Amendment 80D. The Firearms Act 1968 does not define a rifle, other than to say that the term includes a carbine. This is because there was no need. I was concerned that the prohibition of high muzzle energy rifles might catch preserved artillery and tank guns, which are currently licensed by an ordinary firearms certificate if they have not already been deactivated. I have been assured by officials that the term “rifle” would exclude artillery pieces, and this makes sense. However, if we do make the changes regarding HME rifles, an individual police officer might want to make a name for himself by claiming that an artillery piece is caught by any legislation we eventually pass. He could claim that the term “rifle” means a firearm that has been rifled. Indeed, one noble and gallant Lord has asked me to look at and raise this point. I have previously been involved with a problem arising in this way, concerning the Vehicle Excise Act, concrete pumping machines and mobile cranes— don’t ask.

It would be best to define a rifle in the 1968 Act, but I would be happy if the Minister gave a categorical “Pepper v Hart” assurance that the term “rifle” does not include larger pieces of ordnance.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make a couple of general comments about these amendments. I never think it is worth passing legislation just because it looks good. Is it going to be effective, or not? Sometimes, where there is a problem, one hits something that looks like an easy target; it sounds good, and will keep the papers and the public happy. It may not change anything in the real world, which is about trying to protect people.

Some of this legislation could be held to be against the Disability Discrimination Act, in that some people who have problems can shoot with modified rifles, take part in international competition and get a huge sense of pride and success from doing well in it. However, the rifles do need to be modified and without these amendments, it looks as if they will be excluded from competition. It would be very sad if people who cannot run, jump or do other things have the one thing they are good at taken away from them. We should think quite hard about that.

Purely defining something by its muzzle size catches a lot of things that are not dangerous at all—muzzle loaders, for example. We have not really dealt with .50 calibre properly. Although a .50 has a good range, it is not going to pierce armour and cause huge destruction unless you have a military-grade armour-piercing round for it. You are not going to get one of those very easily, and you certainly are not going to load it yourself.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I have some bad news for the noble Earl. Even a .50 calibre ball round has very high destructive power.

[The Earl of Erroll]

I suppose it is destructive, but it was penetrative power I was thinking of.

[Earl Attlee]

Penetrative power as well.

[The Earl of Erroll]

I stand corrected, but there are many other things that do too. I do wonder whether we are just homing in on one particular device, when you can make yourself a mortar that can blow up a lot of people. Why would you want to choose that particular weapon? I am very sad when I see us unable to take part in international competitions on a global stage, because we are worrying about something that has not been a problem yet.

[Baroness Barran]

I do not want to stifle the debate but there is concern about the number of groups of amendments we have to get through. If noble Lords could keep their comments reasonably brief, that would be much appreciated.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strasburger]

My Lords, I would like to put three questions to the Government, which arise from Mr Anderson’s latest report. There are not many surprises in the report but one of them—certainly to me and most other people who follow these matters—was the revelation that bulk personal datasets are used by agencies beyond the intelligence agencies. Perhaps the Minister could give us some information about which other bodies use bulk personal datasets.

I also ask the Minister to put on the record the difference between bulk equipment interference and thematic targeted equipment interference. I got the impression from Mr Anderson’s report that he was struggling to spot the dividing line, apart from that bulk equipment interference is likely to be required where,

“the Secretary of State and the Judicial Commissioner is not ... able to assess the necessity and proportionality to a sufficient degree at the time of issuing the warrant”.

Necessity and proportionality are the golden rules throughout the Bill and their apparent demise in respect of bulk equipment interference seems to alter the relationship between the citizen and the state. My third question is to ask the Minister to comment on this apparent relinquishing of the golden rules of proportionality and necessity in the case of bulk equipment interference.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, although I acknowledge that this power may be necessary to try to track down and deal with certain terrorist threats at certain points, the huge danger is that although we may regard the people currently in control of the state as being benign, we do not know that they will always be so. The real problem is privacy and that is why this amendment is particularly important. The moment no threat is urgent, we must get back to a state where privacy is the most important issue, because this power can also be used by organs of the state to protect themselves when they may have done something wrong or there may be someone not so benign within them.

This is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, the data collected may be very useful and may prevent some incidents, although some people challenge that; on the other, this could also mean a great weakness in the system whereby someone could get inside the system and then protect themselves. I would be very careful about assuming that it is always good and the state will always behave in a benign way. Just because I am paranoid, that does not mean they are not out to get me—that is the great saying. I do not think I am being paranoid but at some point in the future we will need to get back to a position where the state does not have the same ability to acquire data about its citizens as totalitarian states did in the recent past.

Armed Forces: Army Basing Plan

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, we are of course well aware of the covenant and do everything we possibly can to stick by it. When I was in opposition, I went with the noble Baroness to visit quite a lot of accommodation. In the last two years we have done a lot of work on accommodation, as did the previous Government at the end, and it is hugely different now to three years ago. The level of Army accommodation is catching up with the Navy’s and the Air Force’s and, on the whole, is really good. I am very much looking forward to going down to Salisbury Plain, I hope next month, to see what has been done there recently and what the plans are. We are in discussion with Wiltshire Council about the very issues that the noble Baroness raises—hospitals, schools and all the others. These are issues that we have to deal with, but all the local authorities and the devolved Governments that we have been in touch with very much welcome the Army moving into their area.

[The Earl of Erroll]

Perhaps I might ask the Minister, in a slightly light-hearted way: if Scotland becomes independent will those troops stationed north of the border become part of the “Scottish Army”? If it does not, what does that do to his pronouncements about long-term stability and how they will not all get moved around?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the noble Earl asks a very good question. The creation of independent Scottish armed forces would not be as simple as transferring existing Scottish-recruited or Scotland-based units. The UK Armed Forces are a totally integrated, pan-UK organisation and parts cannot simply be broken off like bits of a chocolate bar. Individual members of the UK Armed Forces could not simply be co-opted. They would have to be given a choice and it is far from clear that Scots in the UK Armed Forces, or members of units recruited or based in Scotland, would automatically choose to join the armed forces of an independent Scotland. The prospect of being part of smaller, less globally active armed forces might be seen as less rewarding for some.

Future Reserves 2020

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his support and I will pass on his words too to the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nicholas Houghton, and Julian Brazier, the Member of Parliament for Canterbury, who both work very hard. I attended a number of meetings and they were very grateful for the noble Lord’s support. He asked if reservists would be put at greater risk. For reservists doing specialised roles for which they will be trained, pre-deployment training will bring them up to the required levels. The training for reservists will obviously be much greater and they will go into any mobilised operation as well trained as regulars—they will have the same kit, the same uniform—and we will do our very best to ensure that that does not happen.

The noble Lord’s last question, I think, was whether there will be any change to legislation. The integration of reserves within the whole force means that reservists will routinely be part of military deployments at home and abroad. In order to enable this we propose changes to the current legislative power to use and call out reservists. Following the consultation in spring 2013 a White Paper will set out in detail our proposals on, among other things, any legislation necessary to underpin our vision for the reserves.

[The Earl of Erroll]

Will the Minister please have some sort of exemption for small and micro-businesses about the recruitment of people? When an employer hires someone it is because there is a job to be done. If the employer suddenly loses that person for several months, it can bust them. It is very difficult to backfill or infill quickly enough. I had a small business go bust a few years ago because someone was called up unexpectedly, she had not told us properly in advance and she disappeared. We need to have it upfront at the time of recruitment and a small business should be allowed to state that it cannot handle it and have an exemption from it, otherwise there is this terrible thing of not knowing and the penalties on the small business are too great. Small businesses are where the innovation and growth of the future come from. I was a Territorial for 15 years so I thoroughly approve of it all, but please exempt those who cannot afford to do it.

[Lord Astor of Hever]

The noble Earl makes a very good point. One point we make loud and clear in the Green Paper is that we want to be very much more open with employers and bring them into a confidence from a much earlier stage. As for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, we aim to tailor our approach, adjusting our working practices to reflect the different opportunities and impacts of reserve service for different employers, public and private, large, medium and small as well as by sector.