Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Impact on UK Internal Market

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Haskel

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, as we have failed to reach the end of the list on the previous two Questions, I implore noble Lords to keep their questions to half a minute, as recommended by the Procedure Committee. That will allow my noble friend to answer even more questions than he is already doing.

Political Influence: Artificial Intelligence

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Haskel

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the challenges posed by imitation speech and images generated by artificial intelligence to advance political agendas.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government recognise the problems that artificial intelligence and digitally manipulated content may pose. We are considering those issues carefully as part of cross-Whitehall efforts to tackle online manipulation and disinformation. We have seen no evidence that these or other techniques have been used to interfere successfully in the UK’s democratic processes, but we are actively engaging with international partners, industry and civil society to tackle the threat of disinformation and propaganda.

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

The Minister’s brief will have told him that this technology of breaking up speeches into tiny fragments and then refabricating them to say something completely different is now very well developed. Would he not agree that this technology could be of benefit to our creative industries but a threat to our public discourse? Bearing in mind that in recent years the Government have been behind the curve in the management of new technology, what steps are they taking now to ensure that this technology is used for public good and not for public abuse and misinformation?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I agree with the noble Lord that this has possibilities for ill as well as for good. He is absolutely right that artificial intelligence can be used to create these fake images. It creates not just the fake films and images; it also creates the problem that, when true films and images are made, the person concerned can deny them as fakes. It is a truism to say that we are always behind the curve—I do not accept that—but whether it is to do with crime, defence or political ideas and things like that, there is always a balance between new technology and the ways to tackle it. We are taking this very seriously and looking across Whitehall at what we can do to educate people and to do more research on this. There has been no evidence that it has interfered with UK democratic processes, but we are keeping a close eye on that and doing many things across government to look at it.

Brexit: Digital Single Market

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Haskel

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I can absolutely dispel the noble Viscount’s gloom: the tech industry is not in the doldrums; in fact, quite the reverse. The creative industries, including tech industries, are growing at twice the rate of the economy. I hope the noble Viscount is reassured by that.

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, digital is an important part of the Government’s industrial strategy. So when will they initiate their industrial strategy council, whose job it is to chivvy the Government and get them to take action on this sort of thing?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am not quite sure which council the noble Lord is talking about, but as part of the industrial strategy, as he knows, we are launching sector deals, and I am pleased to say that the artificial intelligence sector deal was launched a week or two ago to great acclaim.

Artificial Intelligence

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Haskel

Thursday 26th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My noble friend has the advantage of having been on the committee and probably knows more about this than I do. I do not think that one could ever say that one was satisfied that the laws were perfect in a fast-moving field such as AI and the new tech area. The Data Protection Bill, which is coming up for Report in the other place soon, is one way in which Europe and this country are bringing in data protection. In that context, I should mention the Information Commissioner, referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Clement-Jones. We are looking carefully at what the Information Commissioner has asked for, especially in terms of powers. We are working on the legislation and trying to make it as future-proof as possible. Whether the Data Protection Act will last the 20 years that the last one did, I am not so sure.

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

Much of the outcome of all the work, which I very much welcome, is intangible. Who is going to own this intangible property? It is all right when it is used for the public good, but what happens when it is used for private profit? Surely this is the basis of the dispute over the work of Cambridge Analytica, and has to be settled before we put a lot of money into developing all this intangible property.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

That is exactly why we are setting up the centre for data ethics and innovation. It will be a world-leading institution. Artificial intelligence is a force for good and potentially a force for evil. We absolutely acknowledge what the noble Lord says, but we are specifically addressing that. I was also asked about the timetable for the centre. The chair is being recruited now and we hope to have it up and running by the end of this year. It will have a statutory basis in due course, but will be up and running before then because, as the noble Lord rightly says, we have to address some of these problems. For example, the report talked about data trusts, to make sure that public and private data are available in a sustainable way and benefit SMEs as well as the enormous organisations.

Data Ethics Commission

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Haskel

Monday 10th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. One issue that the commission can consider is whether, as data increases exponentially and individuals give data which can be used by data-mining companies and others, what is considered private data, even if it is anonymised, can be used for the greater good. We have to consider exactly such things. The Royal Free Hospital, for example, was in trouble under the Data Protection Act for allowing data, although anonymised, to be used by another company. We have to consider such things because a tremendous amount of benefit can be obtained for the general public from that data.

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, much of this data is held outside the UK. In fact, we are not sure where quite a lot of it is held. How will we be able to regulate people when we do not know where they are?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The best way is to get international agreement. It was discussed—

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Haskel

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th November 2016 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)]

Does the Minister want to move that the Committee stands adjourned?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I move that the Committee adjourns.

Autumn Statement

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Haskel

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, that I have an American wife.

My noble friend Lord McFall spoke of a plethora of Chancellor’s Statements. He is absolutely right. In July, we were told to expect severe cuts in public spending; three months later, a small improvement in tax income is forecast, and this during an October which official figures show to be the worst for public finances in six years. The improvement is based not on healthy growth, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, pointed out, but, according to the OBR, on rising consumer credit—but never mind. Multiply this small expected rise over five years, and we are £27 billion better off. Wonderful.

The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, calls this luck. I call it creative accounting. It is the kind of accounting that I remember contributing to the collapse of industrial giants such as ICI and GEC. It is the kind of accounting which eventually led to the creation of the Investor Forum and the Financial Reporting Council to watch over it. It is wrong, it is dangerous and it is short termist. I suspect that the Chancellor and the Minister know this and have used it as an excuse to slow down austerity; to slow it down to Labour’s speed, if you like. However, universal credit will eventually do what the intended cuts in tax credits tried to do, but later. Even so, some low-income couples with three children will lose out now, so will single parents with one child working part time on the national minimum living wage, and women are again disproportionally adversely affected by the cuts. Is this balancing the books on the backs of the poor, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, suggested?

However, the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and the right reverend Prelate told us to aim for a high skill, high pay, high tech, low welfare economy. How are we going to get there? In July, this journey was outlined by the Minister in the Government’s paper Fixing the Foundations: Creating a More Prosperous Nation. Well, I failed to find any mention of that in this Statement four months later. There is a passing mention of productivity on page 6 saying that it is growing, but we still lag behind most of our competitors. What the Chancellor did not say is that the OBR has revised down the growth in productivity next year and the year after that. So is that productivity paper history? Is it another victim of short termism? We must not let that happen. The Minister laughs. I think it is a serious matter because otherwise the rising national minimum wage will lead to serious job losses if it is not matched by rising productivity. If the route to increasing prosperity is productivity, surely the Statement should have said so.

The various changes should be put in the context of raising the nation’s productivity over the long term in the sense of the modern tangible and intangible world of work instead of in the context of short-term politics. For instance, the Autumn Statement commits to protecting the £4.7 billion science budget in real terms up to the end of the Parliament, but this needs to be within the culture of productivity to show that the culture is alive and well and that the state is engaging with industry in a positive way to rebalance the economy. This kind of government expenditure crowds in private investment; it does not crowd it out, as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, suggested.

At the beginning of a five-year term, this Statement should have been forward looking. It should have been creative and pointed the way to a high wage, high skill, low welfare economy which unites us; it should have promoted productivity that in the long term is creative. Instead, the Government’s brand of austerity is short-term, divisive and destructive. What a lost opportunity.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, I gently remind the House that this is a time-limited debate. Every speaker so far has gone over time, so we will cut into the Minister’s reply.

Economy

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Haskel

Thursday 10th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel]

The Minister has asked Sir Charles Bean—Charlie Bean—to look into this whole question, so I will leave it to him to answer. It is called delegation.

At present, we have a growing system where public administration, business and trading, shopping and entertainment, travel and leisure, and running our offices, our homes and our health depend more and more on computers dealing with each other. Sometimes, we are the only human in the loop. This is what the age of productivity will eventually look like.

The danger lies in our ability to control this complexity and interdependence. The complexity defeated us in the financial sector and helped cause the crash in 2008. This is why we need management and leadership that will remember everything and learn from it.

There is also a need for government to understand that much of this investment is intangible—difficult to see, so hard to finance. It is confusing to accountants, statisticians and apparently to the Government, too—so they set up a committee to look into it. But it is crucial to the stronger policies needed to support innovation. This is why the age of productivity needs arm’s-length organisations such as Innovate UK and the alternative forms of funding which are arising.

So what are the implications for the age of productivity? Since productivity has become disconnected from pay, pay rates have hardly gone up in the past five years. The proceeds of this have accrued mainly to investors and managers. In an age of productivity, the benefits must balance out and both must prosper equally. If they do not, the age of productivity, pursued to its logical conclusion, will create an unequal society the like of which we have not seen for generations. Are we just going to allow this economic process to continue unopposed? Surely not.

The Government claim that austerity is necessary so as not to impose on future generations. I say that we have to move to an age of productivity so as not to penalise future generations. In this way, we will learn something as well as remember everything. I beg to move.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, that was perfect timing from the noble Lord, but I remind other noble Lords that we have a very tight timetable if we are going get through this debate in two-and-a-half hours. There is absolutely no spare time, so, when the clock turns to five minutes, it means that your time is up.

Low Pay: Resolution Foundation Report

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Haskel

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the report by the Resolution Foundation Low Pay Britain 2014.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, the Government note the report and conclusions, particularly the recognition of the economic recovery. The economy is on the road to recovery as a result of the Government’s long-term economic plan. There are now more people in work than ever before, more people able to support their families with the security of a regular wage, and we have seen the first above-inflation increase in the minimum wage since 2007.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Haskel]

Is he aware that in responding to this Question he has two audiences. He has this Chamber; and what he has said may satisfy noble Lords. However, does he agree that to his other audience—to the people in this report whose lives and jobs are on a downward trend, and whose lives are becoming much more difficult—his response is irrelevant? In fact, they may even say that his response is complacent. Does the Minister have any words to connect with them?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I thank the noble Lord for the first part of his remarks welcoming me. I am sorry that he already thinks I am going to seem complacent. The reason we address those people who we acknowledge are in the difficult position that the report has mentioned, is that we believe that the economy is the foundation for increasing personal wealth. In fact, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that real household disposable income will rise every year to the end of the forecast period 2018-19.