Digital and Technology Policy: National Sovereignty
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(4 days, 22 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, it is time for the formal and ritual congratulations to the noble Baroness, Kidron, not merely on starting the debate but for recognising her enormous energy, concentration and focus on the real issues, which I am glad we are debating now at the end of this term. Of course, the key issue is who holds power and how on earth, in the new conditions in which power is shifting all the time, we will maintain some control—the noble Baroness who has just spoken rightly reminded us of this—over areas that we can realistically control, rather than pursuing hopes and slogans that would only raise hopes when nothing can be done.
I say, incidentally, that the slogan “Take back control” is one of the silliest, most immature and most useless slogans that has been thrown into the political debate over the last decade or so. That is not the question; it gives us no guidance as to how on earth we establish the new powers, how we can contribute to them, or how we retain the areas where sovereignty has obviously been completely changed and partly dissolved from what existed 20, 30 or 40 years ago. Where does it lie now? It lies increasingly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others know perfectly well, with the great platforms—I am not sure whether it is the four American ones, the two or three Chinese ones or other platforms that are emerging. We try our best in some areas, but it is with the platforms that the power exists. The question is how on earth we are to identify areas where we can retain maximum influence internationally as well as retaining our own systems much more efficiently than we do.
As an example, the whole of world trade has changed beyond recognition in the last five years. It is now a seething mass of supply chains covering almost every product and a whole range of countries, usually with computers—and computers containing Chinese parts, at that. That requires a completely different approach to bilateral trade control than anything we have had before.
On energy links, people talk about independent energy in this country. Frankly, that makes absolutely no sense when you look at the technology of energy. All the major sources, both traditional, fossil fuel and new and renewable ones, are heavily dependent on international networks of enormous complexity. Even on our nuclear side—where I think we all, or most people, favour development—people think that if we can build enough large nuclear power stations, we will be all right. That is complete nonsense. It only requires one difficulty in a Korean nuclear power station, or in any part of any system, for the entire world network to be badly affected. If we are talking about electricity and trying to move towards an all-electric economy, we know that we depend on endless interconnectors, linkages and supplies that come only from being heavily dependent on elaborate networks to which we must contribute rather than dance around and try to avoid.
Defence and security are intensely linked, as never before. We say that we must spend more on defence, and of course we must, but what is this defence? Does it really exist? Are we in fact more vulnerable than ever, with strategic threats from hypersonic missiles? Someone pointed out the other day that the V2 came at the end of the Second World War. It was wildly inaccurate, but no one had any conceivable means of stopping it. We were completely defenceless against it. The only defence in the end was for the allied troops to overrun the launching stations and the factories where slave labour was manufacturing these things. That was the only solution. We have not really solved the international missile situation now. We are, in fact, still defenceless.
On the climate, we can do our bit, but CO2 does not obey national frontiers and borders, nor do its effects. This is an area where we obviously have to work entirely new systems and make them operative internationally. Otherwise, we will merely see the continuation of the rise in emissions, which is happening just as fast as it ever was despite all our efforts.
Then there are all the areas that the noble Baroness quite rightly mentioned, as well as inflation, pensions and pandemics. All these are globalised issues. My conclusion is, for the moment, quite simple: we need new, strong, multilateral institutions, which we do not have. In 1945, our brilliant people in America, Britain and other countries came together and created an entirely new international order with strong institutions. Today, that does not exist. I listen in vain to hear that real efforts are being put into restoring the respect and trust that these institutions must have—the UN, the IMF, the World Trade Organization, formerly GATT, the International Maritime Organization and courts of justice. The whole rule of law is being internationally flouted. If I have one wish, it is to hear that new energies are going into that area to provide a shell for what we have to do ourselves as a law-abiding country. A shell is essential because otherwise, without that shell, we shall have the same fate as a snail who proceeds without one. We all know what that is: they get gobbled up.
Civil Service: Artificial Intelligence Productivity Gains
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
It was interesting to see the report from MIT last week on the use of AI across companies, which noted that 95% of companies got very little benefit and 5% got massively disproportionate benefit. One of the reasons why you get much greater benefit is training people properly and allowing there to be proper disruption of existing workflows—so I completely agree with the question. What the noble Lord is talking about is an important part of this, which is why there is a series of schemes across the Civil Service, including the senior Civil Service, both to recruit people with AI skills and to train staff.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a former Minister for the Civil Service—although it was an awfully long time ago. The record shows that the biggest increase in output and productivity in the Civil Service and the biggest fall in numbers in modern times occurred between about 1972 and 1982. Of course, the driving force for that was not so much energy efficiency, although there were attempts to improve that, as removing whole industrial functions from the public sector. The Civil Service numbers fell from about 815,000 down to about 510,000 in 1982. That was an enormous cost. The lesson of that is that, if one really wants to increase productivity and slim the Civil Service, as I believe the Government do, there should be the removal of whole functions from the Civil Service—in this case, the industrial Civil Service—into the private sector.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
The question is: what areas are the Government going to look at now to remove functions from the state sector, which will be the sure way to increase productivity and reduce numbers?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
It is an area where AI is important, because AI does just that. There are certain things AI does to improve the efficiency of what is already done, and certain areas in which it does things that cannot currently be done. Both of those areas will lead to disruption of current workflows. This goes back to my previous answer: the disruption of workflow around AI is the big change management challenge.
Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan
Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank my noble friend. There are two different aspects to his SME question—the SME use of AI, and the AI SMEs—and both are dealt with in the report, I think. Many of the recommendations indicate what would be done, but I will outline some of the points on SMEs for AI. There is an important join-up task to be undertaken, which is part of what this plan does: the things we fund at the beginning of the process, such as grants from Innovate UK to get companies off the ground, to supporting that funding through BBB and beyond, linking to regulation to make it as simple as we can to enable innovation, and linking in turn to procurement to ensure that there are procurement signals to allow these companies to get the investment to grow and to scale into the companies they could be.
On the adoption side, there is a specific group working on adoption of AI technologies across the UK and a report is due out by the Government Chief Scientific Adviser and the National Technology Adviser on adoption of technologies more broadly, which is about ensuring that we get uptake of new technologies in companies. We know that we have a long tail of companies that do not do that in the UK, and it will be an important part of making sure that the entire economy benefits.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, I am sure the Minister has noted that the Statement he has given us has a certain flavour of the 1960s about it, with the talk of harnessing the “white heat” of revolution, and all that, but from the point of view of those of us who went through that period, it might be helpful to know one or two of the things that went wrong, because it did not end terribly happily the last time we had this revolution of white heat. The problem then was that the Government’s PR people became a little too enthusiastic, and the Minister might discourage them today from phrases about seizing the future, embracing this, that and the other, and other generalities, of which there were plenty last time, but none of them led to the results that people wanted.
There is a repeat of the old fallacy that the Government deliver growth. It does not. We know that the Government can facilitate growth and can stop growth, and certainly that has happened in the past, but the idea that the Government alone are somehow going to lead, rather than develop entirely new relationships with the private sector as the digital age demands, is one that needs to be examined carefully before the Government rush into more mistakes.
There is another problem, which the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, reminded me of—it was not quite so intense then but it is intense now. This whole revolution and the data centres demand enormous amounts of electricity—far more than seems to be planned by the energy department. It talks about 200 gigawatts, moving up from 65 gigawatts, but data centres can drink whole communities’ electricity, just like that. The Statement mentioned 500 megawatts, but we are really talking about gigawatts of a kind for which no planning is in place at the moment. Can we be assured that the SMR side of the Government’s energy transition gets a push? Will the Minister talk to the energy people and tell them that, unless they bring forward the SMR revolution, which is going on in many other countries, and go slow on the white elephant technologies such as Sizewell C—
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
I will finish my sentence.
Unless that is done, we will not get the necessary electricity to drive through this revolution. Obviously one welcomes it, but there are many snags ahead.