Low-Income Families: Energy Cost Support

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I agree with the noble Baroness. She listed one particularly vulnerable group but there are others, as well as many small businesses, who will suffer because of the high energy prices at the moment. We are all aware of that and we all know the problem. Of course, coming up with solutions is difficult and potentially expensive, but we are working on it.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, it is very good to hear that a plan is in place to address this catastrophe, which is concerning so many people, and to bring help to households. What steps will the Government take to address this fundamental failure of the market, such that huge, almost unimaginable profits are accruing to energy companies, while the poorest in the country face the dreadful choice between heating and eating?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate is not correct about that. It depends on which energy companies he is talking about: many of the energy suppliers have gone bankrupt over the last year or are making very marginal profits. Some producers, often in other parts of the world, are making very large profits. There are issues to do with some of the early renewable power obligation companies, which are also doing well. Under the latest contracts for difference schemes, that money is being recouped from the taxpayer. In all of these things, it is easy to make these observations but of course, it is an overly complicated situation.

Costs of Living

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a very good point. This is caused by the fact that council tax bands have not been revalued for a considerable time. That is why the Government are providing £144 million of discretionary funding for local authorities to support households that need support, regardless of the council tax band they are in—precisely the kind of people to whom the noble Baroness refers.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, the Minister and other noble Lords will be aware of the paradox that it is often the very poorest people in society who pay a higher tariff for their electricity through pre-payment meters and the like. They may not have bank accounts or the ability to pay on any kind of credit. Are the Government proposing to do anything to help and support those who are locked into these higher energy prices when they can least afford then?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I understand the point that the right reverend Prelate is making, but, of course, those households are also subject to a price cap. The slightly higher price for prepayment meters reflects the fact that they cost energy suppliers more to serve.

Employment Bill

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Of course all EU employment directives were transposed into UK law, but they are a minimum standard in many circumstances. As the noble Lord will know, we go far beyond EU minimum standards and we should be proud of that.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, technology has intruded further into the world of work over the last five years. Many developments are helpful, but some are not. Almost 60% of workers now report some form of technological surveillance at work, often through so-called bossware, often introduced without consultation with unions and workers. How will the employment Bill eventually keep pace with this development, and will it introduce a statutory requirement on employers to consult and disclose the use of algorithmic and AI surveillance on employees, and protect workers from excessive surveillance by technology?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am afraid that I cannot commit to any specific measures that might be in any future legislation that the right reverend Prelate will be aware of. I recognise the concerns he addressed; it is very important for employers to consult their workforce fully before introducing measures such as this.

Climate Change

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I totally understand the noble Baroness’s point, but of course we have already legislated for the greenhouse-gas emissions, as covered by the Climate Change Act. It is therefore our position that we do not need to cover any further measures within the Environment Bill, as it is at the moment. Before COP, we will publish our net-zero strategy to set out our plans to meet these ambitious targets, and we have also engaged regularly with devolved Administrations.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, we all agree, I am sure, that the climate emergency is an immensely complex subject with many different facets. There is an urgent need and responsibility to educate and engage the public in responsible ways on the urgent priority of public and private action. Does the Minister agree that investment and a serious programme of public engagement are needed to combat climate change deniers, climate change delayers and those who say that there is no hope and nothing can be done? What are the Government’s plans for this?

Artificial Intelligence (Select Committee Report)

Lord Bishop of Oxford Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

My Lords, it was a pleasure to serve as part of your Lordships’ Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, and an education. I join others in paying tribute to the expertise and skill of our chair, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and our excellent staff and advisers.

At the beginning of my engagement with AI, what kept me awake at night was the prospect of what AI might mean for the distant future: the advent of conscious machines, killer robots and artificial general intelligence. We are probably more than a generation away from those risks. But what kept me awake as the inquiry got under way—it really did—were the possibilities and risks of AI in the present. AI is already reshaping political life, employment, education, healthcare, the economy, entertainment, the professions and commerce. AI is now routinely used to drive microadvertising in political debate, referenda and elections across the world, reshaping political discourse and perceptions of truth. The disruption in the job market described by the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, will fall disproportion- ately across the country. In my former diocese of Sheffield, as you drive across the Dearne Valley, you see clearly that the new industries in the former coalfield areas are warehousing and call centres, where there will be immense disruption in the next decade.

The use of this technology has already outstripped public awareness and debate by a considerable margin. My stock image for the use of artificial intelligence has shifted from the Terminator robot beloved of headline writers to the supermarket loyalty card in virtual form silently collecting data from most of our interactions with technology, which is collected, sold and reused, often in covert ways. The benefits of AI are significant. The risks are very real. They are both a present, not a future, reality. The dangers of a disruption of public trust impeding the benefits of technology are significant.

The experts from every sector from whom we took evidence were unmistakably clear on the need for a stronger ethical strand to the UK’s development and deployment of AI. In proposing our AI code, the committee was responding to multiple requests from across the sector for a much stronger role for government and civil society in these debates—not necessarily to regulate but to benchmark and encourage good practice and give a stronger voice to citizens and consumers. Stephen Cave, director of the Leverhulme Centre in the University of Cambridge, said in response to our report at the launch:

“The tech entrepreneur mantra of the last decade was move fast and break things. But some things are too important to be broken: like democracy, or equality, or social cohesion”,


and they are in danger.

Our report puts forward five overarching principles for an AI code which it would be good to see the Government affirm this afternoon. The first principle is that AI should be for the common good and benefit of humanity, not the profit of the few. Let us see the power of AI directed to the great problems of the age for the common good. There should also be intelligibility and fairness in the deployment of AI. We always need to know when we are interacting with machines and the principles on which they make decisions. The protection of data rights and privacy are vital to human flourishing and mental health. We need the right to the best education for all to flourish in the machine age—the only antidote we discovered to the uneven and disruptive effects of AI in the workplace— along with the need to ensure that machines are not given the autonomous power to hurt, destroy or deceive human beings.

I fully support the Government’s aim to see the UK as a global leader in the ethics of artificial intelligence, as I do the steps which have already been taken, especially in establishing the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation. But we need a vigorous public debate on what it means to be human in the age of artificial intelligence and a vigorous debate on what it means to live well with emerging technology. We need to amplify the voice of civil society and its influence in that debate. After the challenge of climate change, the question of how we live well with technology is one of the most urgent of the age. Can the Minister tell the House that the motto of Her Majesty’s Government for the future remains to move fast and mend things?