Watchdogs (Industry and Regulators Committee Report)
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and a particular pleasure to follow so closely the comprehensive introduction by our excellent former chair, the noble Lord, Lord Hollick.
As the noble Lord alluded to, the Grenfell report and today’s Statement have been an extremely sobering reminder of the importance of effective regulation and the effective oversight of regulators. The principal job of regulation is to ensure societal safety and benefit—in essence, mitigating risk. In that context, the performance of the UK regulators, as well as the nature of regulation, is crucial.
In the early part of this year, the spotlight was on regulation and the effectiveness of our regulators. Our report was followed by a major contribution to the debate from the Institute for Government. We then had the Government’s own White Paper, Smarter Regulation, which seemed designed principally to take the growth duty established in 2015 even further with a more permissive approach to risk and a “service mindset”, and risked creating less clarity with yet another set of regulatory principles going beyond those in the Better Regulation Framework and the Regulators’ Code.
Our report was, however, described as excellent by the Minister for Investment and Regulatory Reform in the Department for Business and Trade under the previous Government, the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Lainston, whom I am pleased to see taking part in the debate today. I hope that the new Government will agree with that assessment and take our recommendations further forward.
Both we and the Institute for Government identified a worrying lack of scrutiny of our regulators—indeed, a worrying lack of even identifying who our regulators are. The NAO puts the number of regulators at around 90 and the Institute for Government at 116, but some believe that there are as many as 200 that we need to take account of. So it is welcome that the previous Government’s response said that a register of regulators, detailing all UK regulators, their roles, duties and sponsor departments, was in the offing. Is this ready to be launched?
The crux of our report was to address performance, strategic independence and oversight of UK regulators. In exploring existing oversight, accountability measures and the effectiveness of parliamentary oversight, it was clear that we needed to improve self-reporting by regulators. However, a growth duty performance framework, as proposed in the White Paper, does not fit the bill.
Regulators should also be subject to regular performance evaluations, as we recommended; these reviews should be made public to ensure transparency and accountability. To ensure that these are effective, we recommended, as the noble Lord, Lord Hollick mentioned, establishing a new office for regulatory performance—an independent statutory body analogous to the National Audit Office—to undertake regular performance reviews of regulators and to report to Parliament. It was good to see that, similar to our proposal, the Institute for Government called for a regulatory oversight support unit in its subsequent report, Parliament and Regulators.
As regards independence, we had concerns about the potential politicisation of regulatory appointments. Appointment processes for regulators should be transparent and merit-based, with greater parliamentary scrutiny to avoid politicisation. Although strategic guidance from the Government is necessary, it should not compromise the operational independence of regulators.
What is the new Government’s approach to this? Labour’s general election manifesto emphasised fostering innovation and improving regulation to support economic growth, with a key proposal to establish a regulatory innovation office in order to streamline regulatory processes for new technologies and set targets for tech regulators. I hope that that does not take us down the same trajectory as the previous Government. Regulation is not the enemy of innovation, or indeed growth, but can in fact, by providing certainty of standards, be the platform for it.
At the time of our report, the IfG rightly said:
“It would be a mistake for the committee to consider its work complete … new members can build on its agenda in their future work, including by fleshing out its proposals for how ‘Ofreg’ would work in practice”.
We should take that to heart. There is still a great deal of work to do to make sure that our regulators are clearly independent of government, are able to work effectively, and are properly resourced and scrutinised. I hope that the new Government will engage closely with the committee in their work.
AI Technology Regulations
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for those good wishes. Of course, he is raising a really important issue of great concern to all of us. During the last election, we felt that the Government were well prepared to ensure the democratic integrity of our UK elections. We did have robust systems in place to protect against interference, through the Defending Democracy Taskforce and the Joint Election and Security Preparedness unit. We continue to work with the Home Office and the security services to assess the impact of that work. Going forward, the Online Safety Act goes further by putting new requirements on social media platforms to swiftly remove illegal misinformation and disinformation, including where it is AI-generated, as soon as it becomes available. We are still assessing the need for further legislation in the light of the latest intelligence, but I assure my noble friend that we take this issue extremely seriously. It affects the future of our democratic process, which I know is vital to all of us.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the creation of an AI opportunities plan, announced by the Government, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, says, we must also tackle the risks. In other jurisdictions across the world, including the EU, AI-driven live facial recognition technology is considered to seriously infringe the right to privacy and have issues with accuracy and bias, and is being banned or restricted for both law enforcement and business use. Will the Government, in their planned AI legislation, provide equivalent safeguards for UK citizens and ensure their trust in new technology?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that question and for all the work he has done on the AI issue, including his new book, which I am sure is essential reading over the summer for everybody. I should say that several noble Lords in this Chamber have written books on AI, so noble Lords might want to consider that for their holiday reading.
The noble Lord will know that the use and regulation of live facial recognition is for each country to decide. We already have some regulations about it, but it is already governed by data protection, equality and human rights legislation, supplemented by specific police guidance. It is absolutely vital that its use is only when it is necessary, proportionate and fair. We will continue to look at the legislation and at whether privacy is being sufficiently protected. That is an issue that will come forward when the future legislation is being prepared.