Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to increase awareness among local and regional authorities of the economic and social benefits of hosting data centre infrastructure.
Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
This government has engaged with local authorities to increase awareness of the local benefits of data centres. Through the AI Growth Zones programme, we are ensuring the selected sites deliver for working people, by providing £5 million in support for each AI Growth Zone for local AI adoption and skills. To deliver even broader local benefits to communities, local authorities in England will retain 100% of business rate growth in AI Growth Zones for the next twenty-five years. A central AI planning team backed by £4.5 million will also support local councils across the UK with expert planning advice.
The designation of the sector as Critical National Infrastructure last year was a recognition that the sector occupied a similar level of national importance as water, energy, and emergency services. We are actively looking into how we secure the best deal possible for local communities, ensuring they benefit from ongoing direct employment and this Government encourages operators to seek opportunities for the reuse of waste heat, to invest in local technical skills, improvements to local broadband and other beneficial initiatives.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what action they are taking to strengthen sovereign capacity in cloud services and cyber resilience.
Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
DSIT is supporting industry in building more data centres in the UK (including via AI Growth Zones), which helps enable cloud providers in the UK to expand. We are working with other government departments to speed up planning permission and grid connection timings to support this.
The Government believes complex issues such as the security of data and digital governance are best addressed through transparent, inclusive multistakeholder engagement. We remain committed to working with international partners within recognised global mechanisms to promote shared understanding and responsible international behaviours, while ensuring support for UK-based data-driven businesses to innovate and grow.
Cyber security is a key part of the Industrial Strategy. DSIT supports the development of sovereign capability in the £13.2 billion UK cyber security sector through its accelerator programmes, including CyberASAP, which commercialises cyber security research, and Cyber Runway, which supports entrepreneurs and companies. Our £187 million TechFirst programme will improve digital skills across the country, including cyber security skills. We are investing significantly in the National Cyber Security Centre, the Government’s technical authority on cyber security, which continues to work to strengthen UK cyber resilience. The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill will further strengthen UK cyber defences and boost protections for our essential and digital services, including cloud computing.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the resilience of the UK's digital infrastructure following recent outages of online systems and communication services.
Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Government recognises the importance of ensuring the resilience of digital infrastructure. The Department reviews the most significant risks to the security and resilience of UK digital infrastructure and assesses their likelihood and impact through the National Security Risk Assessment. A summary of these risks is published in the National Risk Register.
Operators of UK digital infrastructure are legally required to take appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure their networks are secure and resilient. Ofcom monitors compliance and enforces standards under the Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021 and the Network and Information Systems Regulations 2018.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government why His Majesty's Revenue and Customs has not published the business case and data protection impact assessments relating to projects 341 and 476 under the debt and fraud information sharing provisions of the Digital Economy Act 2017.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC has met the Digital Economy Act (2017) Statutory Code of Practice transparency requirement by recording information on data sharing between the two departments (Home Office and HMRC) on the Register of Information sharing agreements under Part 5 of the Digital Economy Act 2017.
HMRC’s Privacy Notice makes clear that it collects information from other Government Departments to fulfil its functions, which include administration of the Child Benefit system.
Publication of the Business Case and Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) for the data sharing are not requirements under the statutory code of practice. HMRC’s general policy is not to publish Business Cases or DPIAs because details they contain may jeopardise the outcomes sought when tackling fraud.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to publish the applications reviewed by the Debt and Fraud Information Sharing Review Board for projects 341 and 476, and to publish any end-of-pilot report for project 341.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Digital Economy Act (DEA) 2017 Secretariat has no plans to publish application documents (e.g. pilot business cases, data protection impact assessments or memorandums of understanding) in relation to projects 341 and 476.
It is the voluntary responsibility of participating pilot organisations to publish any documentation in relation to applications. This is set out in paragraph 146 in the Code of Practice (CoP) for public authorities disclosing information under Chapters 1, 3 and 4 (Public Service Delivery, Debt and Fraud) of Part 5 of the DEA 2017.
On the publication of an end-of-pilot report on project 341, the DEA Secretariat publishes summary minutes from each Review Board meeting, which references organisational-led end-of-pilot reports. The decision to publish these reports are the responsibility of the relevant organisation.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they were aware that Anthropic downloaded over 7 million pirated books between 2021 and 2023 to train its Claude AI model when selecting Anthropic as the supplier for the GOV.UK chat service; and whether they conducted a risk assessment for the use of a model developed using unlawfully accessed copyright-protected works.
Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Government Digital Service recognises the importance of ethical, legal, and data protection considerations in the use of large language models.
A range of large language models from multiple suppliers have been considered in developing GOV.UK Chat. GOV.UK Chat is a product in active development that currently accesses Anthropic models through an existing agreement with Amazon Web Services, enabling the Government Digital Service to test a range of models from different suppliers. Risk assessments have been undertaken in accordance with government standards, including consideration of ethical, legal, and data protection risks relevant to the models tested.
GOV.UK Chat is being developed entirely within the Government Digital Service by a multidisciplinary team of civil servants. The Government continues to engage with UK-based AI developers and remains open to collaboration where this supports innovation and the delivery of public services.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, in the light of the Annual statistics of scientific procedures on living animals, Great Britain 2024, published on 23 October, what steps they are taking to end procedures which cause severe suffering to animals.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government is committed to the development of non-animal alternatives and will publish a strategy by the end of this year to support the development, validation and uptake of alternatives to animal testing. Where animal procedures are required to deliver benefits to people, animals or the environment because there is no non-animal alternative, these are subject to strict, robust regulation.
All applications to test on animals must conform with all legal requirements set out in the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. This includes applying the principles of the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction and Refinement): the replacement of animals with alternatives; the reduction of the number of animals used to the minimum possible; and the refinement of any techniques to reduce the harm suffered by the animals to the minimum. The Home Office only allows the use of animals if it can be demonstrated that the 3Rs have been fully applied. All licence holders have a responsibility to fully implement the 3Rs and demonstrate this requirement at audit.
Licence holders are also required to complete retrospective assessments for licences if the protocols in the studies are severe. Retrospective assessments must consider whether any lessons can be learned from the programme of work which may contribute to the further implementation of the principles of the 3Rs.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government, in the light of the Annual statistics of scientific procedures on living animals, Great Britain 2024, published on 23 October, what steps they are taking to meet their manifesto commitment to phase out animal experimentation.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Labour Manifesto commits to “partner with scientists, industry, and civil society as we work towards the phasing out of animal testing”, which is a long-term goal.
The government will publish a strategy to support the development, validation and uptake of alternative methods later this year which will outline the steps we will take to meet this manifesto commitment.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the environmental and sustainability impact, including energy demands, of the Anthropic Claude AI model used for the Gov.uk chat service.
Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Government Digital Service recognises the importance of environmental considerations in the use of AI and we are committed to using this technology responsibly. We are working in line with the AI Playbook for the UK Government, which highlights the importance of understanding and managing the environmental impact of AI systems.
Environmental considerations have been reviewed under the Environmental Principles Policy Statement (EPPS), with negligible anticipated impact. EPPS principles have been considered, including resource efficiency and sustainability of digital infrastructure.
Model selection decisions are based on performance, security, data protection, cost, and alignment with government standards. Where possible, we use smaller and more efficient models to improve sustainability, including in our use of the Claude models within GOV.UK Chat.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of ethical and legal considerations regarding Anthropic's use of copyright-protected works in training its Claude AI model before awarding the contract for the GOV.UK chat service to the company.
Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Government Digital Service recognises the importance of ethical and legal considerations relating to the use of copyright-protected material in the training of large language models.
A range of large language models from multiple suppliers have been considered in developing GOV.UK Chat. Earlier iterations tested OpenAI’s ChatGPT models, while the current phase is evaluating Anthropic’s Claude models. Model selection decisions are based on performance, security, data protection, cost, and alignment with government standards.
GOV.UK Chat is being developed entirely within the Government Digital Service by a multidisciplinary team of civil servants. The Government continues to engage with UK-based AI developers and remains open to collaboration where this supports innovation and the delivery of public services.