King’s Speech

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, it is a privilege, as ever, to take part in the debate on the most gracious Speech. I thank the Minister for his clear introduction and pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich for their gracious and eloquent maiden speeches. It is particularly good to welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich to this House with his considerable expertise, as he has demonstrated, on the environment and climate change.

I warmly welcome the Prime Minister’s ambition to build a better future for our children and grandchildren and to deliver the change the country needs. It seems to me, as to so many, that so great are the challenges we face that this or any Government will need deeper humility combined with greater practical wisdom to lead the nation forward.

I shall speak on my two areas of focus in this House: the climate and artificial intelligence. Both are areas of existential risk in this and future decades. On climate, I welcome the Government’s restated determination to lead action on tackling climate change and diversity loss. As a member of your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Environment and Climate Change, I recognise the complexity of a fair transition of our whole economy to net zero, but I do not yet see this determination translated into effective leadership of granular policy, whether that is in the transition to electric vehicles, decarbonising home heating or encouraging behaviour change.

The tone of the Speech is that the world is more or less succeeding in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The opposite is, of course, the case. The years when we can avert future disasters are slipping away, as the noble Lord, Lord Stern, argued. I say, with respect, to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, that much of the world is currently experiencing the catastrophic effects of climate change, as is well documented by the United Nations and others. We need greater leadership and co-ordination across every government department and an increased sense of urgency in this legislative programme.

In particular, I want to highlight the risks and dangers of politicising the climate change agenda, which has been a feature of recent government announcements. Reaching net zero fairly demands the patient building of cross-party and cross-societal consensus, which has been damaged by the recent changes in electric vehicle targets and the decision to licence yet more future oil and gas fields, which are unlikely to come into production in time to support the essential and urgent transition we need.

Turning to artificial intelligence, I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Government on the recent AI summit and all that has emerged from the discussions there. The summit served to raise the profile of the questions raised by AI, the ways in which the benefits of new technology can be realised and the mitigation of its potential harms. I welcome, therefore, the promise of new legal frameworks for self-driving vehicles, new competition rules for digital markets and the encouragement of innovation in machine learning. However, I encourage the Government to invest more deeply in dialogue with civil society about the impact of these new technologies. The recent summit claimed to be a conversation with civil society, but I have seen no evidence of this third key voice in the room. The Government have entered a dialogue with the tech companies, which is welcome, but this dialogue must be further informed by trade unions, academia, community groups and faith communities to build trust and confidence about the kind of society we are building. In her response, will the Minister indicate the ways in which the Government will strengthen this third arm of the conversation in the coming months and years?