Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan

Debate between Jim Shannon and Peter Kyle

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s very pertinent question. Investment is going into new sources of energy from investors around the world. I am really pleased that we have Rolls-Royce, which I visited just before the election, up in Coventry. I saw some of Rolls-Royce’s capabilities and heard some of its ambitions. I assure her that the AI Energy Council, which I chair jointly with the Energy Secretary, will take into consideration these sorts of issues, and ensure that the Government engage with those innovations. We want to ensure that we are at the forefront of not just data infrastructure but all the related industries from which our country can benefit.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Given that AI capability will seemingly be used positively, can the Secretary of State explain how the plan will advance areas such as healthcare? Does he see it as a way of reducing backlogs in the NHS, including in waiting lists and booking systems, and can he confirm that all regions of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will play their part and benefit from AI?

[Peter Kyle]

I am always grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his contributions, and have enjoyed working with him in opposition and now in government. AI has enormous potential for the health service; it could improve productivity, bring about innovation, and advance treatments and medicine. I assure him that we are striving for that. The Health Secretary and I are making many visits together to try to understand how we can work together to ensure that technology is developed and implemented throughout the NHS. I have been in touch with the Northern Ireland Assembly on the way forward, and on how the Administration in Westminster can partner with the Northern Ireland Government and ensure that Northern Ireland benefits. I know that there are challenges with the waiting lists there.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Shannon and Peter Kyle

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful for that question and for the work that my hon. Friend’s Committee is doing to highlight the incredibly important challenge that we face as a Government and a country. For the first time, the Health Secretary has adopted the spreading of innovation through the NHS as a personal mission as part of the role of the Secretary of State, and we co-chair the Office for Life Sciences. Together, our two Departments are not only seeking to harness the power of technology, but working together, under the leadership of the Health Secretary, to drive that innovation. Such innovation cannot be locked up in one innovative health trust; it must be put to use across the NHS for every patient from every part of the United Kingdom.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

What progress has been made on using AI algorithms to analyse medical images of things such as tumours, fractures or other medical conditions? That was a pithy question, I think, Mr Speaker.

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s question. I have visited Huddersfield hospital, which is one of the first hospitals to fully integrate AI in its radiotherapy and scanning work. Having stood there and seen its power for early diagnosis through its ability to detect patterns at an incredibly early stage, I am left in no doubt that, had my mother been scanned at that hospital, she would still be alive today. She was scanned three times, but the progress of her lung cancer was missed and she died several weeks after collapsing, with it not having been detected. This is the power of technology. AI is a human power that will transform lives and we are determined to ensure—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Shannon and Peter Kyle

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

I am extremely grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee for choosing this as her first inquiry. It is an incredibly important area. This Government are committed to the algorithmic transparency recording standard. The previous Government reneged on their commitment to having individual Departments releasing their standard statement each year. This Government are committing to doing so again and will remain committed to reinforcing the fact that algorithms are there to serve people and not the other way round.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

There are many firms in Northern Ireland that have the capability and the experience to offer some advice on getting scientific research on AI safety. I know that the Minister is very interested in Northern Ireland, so has he had an opportunity to speak to companies in Northern Ireland so that we can play our part in how we take this matter forward?

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for acknowledging my interest in Northern Ireland, which I have already visited since being appointed in order to meet some of the pioneering tech companies there. I will stay committed to ensuring that the Government recognise the talent across Northern Ireland, harnessing it for not just the domestic good but the global good.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jim Shannon and Peter Kyle

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for her question, and I congratulate her, on behalf the whole House, on her election as Chair of the Select Committee—I look forward to appearing before it soon and regularly thereafter. She raises an incredibly important point. I can say that this Government are committed to working with local and regional mayors to ensure that local growth plans and the partnerships with UKRI will benefit all regions. These include a £100 million innovation accelerator pilot and £80 million in launchpad programmes, all of which will meet the needs that she outlines.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The Secretary of State has an interest in Northern Ireland, so can I ask him whether he holds statistics on how much research and development tax relief support has been issued to Northern Ireland in the last 12 months to help support science and technology? If he does not have the figures today, I would be happy for him to send them to me.

[Peter Kyle]

As always, I am grateful to hear from the hon. Gentleman. I will be in touch with any specifics that I can follow up with, but we are a Government committed to Northern Ireland, which I believe he will have seen from day one of this Labour Government back in July. I can also show that there have been great advancements in investment in Northern Ireland, which is why Northern Ireland has the highest coverage rates for fast fibre-optic broadband of any part of the United Kingdom. I want to be a champion for Northern Ireland, and I visited recently to ensure that everybody in the science and technology community there realises that this is a Government who are on their side.

Technology in Public Services

Debate between Jim Shannon and Peter Kyle

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

The hon. Gentleman, who I welcome to his place, spent quite a bit of time on his intervention, but I realise that there is simply so much to talk about in his constituency. I pay tribute to the organisations he referenced, including GCHQ and CyNam. The work that they do often goes unthanked, but it is absolutely essential to the security, wellbeing and economic welfare of our country. I certainly intend to visit as soon as I can, and it would be great to meet any of his representatives at any point; I am sure that my ministerial team will be willing to do so as well.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

One of the things that comes up all the time in my constituency is the great difficulties that elderly pensioners have with online commitments. They do not understand them, not because they are silly or anything, but because the processes are too technical for them. Will the Secretary of State assure me that when it comes to ensuring that pensioners are looked after, nothing will disadvantage them in any way when it comes to getting their moneys?

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s intervention, which was his first on me in this Parliament; I doubt that it will be the last. I will come to digital exclusion a bit later in my speech, which I hope will answer his question. If not, I am happy to return to the point. I will also return to cyber-security—I do hope that the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) learns his parliamentary sign-in codes as quickly as possible, as that would be a good start to a secure and safe parliamentary career.

I realise that every one of these log-in details is easy to forget. Engaging with the state has become a bureaucratic burden on working people—one that they can scarcely afford. Unbelievably, UK adults spend 3 billion hours each year dealing with Government-related admin; for the average citizen, that is 1.5 working weeks every single year. That is less time to spend with their kids when they get home after a long day’s work and less time to get outside or see friends to stay healthy and be happy—put simply, it is less time to do the things they like and to be with the people they love.

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[Peter Kyle]

I think the right hon. Gentleman pits productivity-enhancing tools against the interests of workers. I do not believe that is the case. If we take my example of Huddersfield hospital, which I had the pleasure of visiting, people have been retrained because AI is very good at giving all-clears—20% of people were given all-clears. Therefore, the radiologists are retrained and come back on a higher pay scale for doing so, and productivity has gone from 700 scans a week to 1,000 scans a week. It is not only cost-neutral but cost-beneficial for the Department. Those are the kinds of productivity gains that enhance work and the satisfaction of workers in the workplace.

We are the Government. We have some agency in how this technology is used and rolled out and how it supports people in the workplace. We will ensure that we deliver value for money for the taxpayer and services that are cost-effective for the taxpayer, but we will also aspire to ensure that workers’ rights and satisfaction in the workplace increases. We are a Government who respect the work of the civil service and the value it provides to our country. We want to ensure that these tools sit alongside that ambition to deliver greater outcomes for the country, while ensuring that the civil servants who work so hard for our country take a bit more pleasure from their work, by being assisted by some of this technology that we will introduce to the work of Government.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Peter Kyle]

It will be a pleasure to give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I do not want to cut into the time for the maiden speeches that are coming up, so I will not take too many more interventions after this.

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[Jim Shannon]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way, and I look forward to hearing the rest of his contribution. As someone who does not have much of a grasp of technology, I understand that many people have a fear. The Post Office Horizon scandal is an example of where the system should have said no but instead said yes—a real problem. When people were travelling with British Airways, the system conked out for 24 hours. Those are examples of things going wrong. What can the Secretary of State do to give us confidence that the system will work?

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. As I will say in a moment, all of this is contingent on one key principle: building trust with the public. We need to do so through actions, not just words. We have to take the public with us every step of the way, because otherwise we will not have the permission to deliver the transformation that, ultimately, will be profoundly beneficial for them. I have striven throughout this speech and since I have had the pleasure of this role, in opposition and in government—