Science and Technology: Economy

Lord Leong Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I am lucky enough to be one of the Members of this House who is on the Science and Technology Committee. I very much welcome this debate and the excellent introduction that the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, gave it.

The excellent briefing that we received, among many others, from the Library, for which I thank it, rightly says that it is hard to measure the value of the contribution made by science and technology to the UK economy because of its all-pervasive nature and the fact that it is growing all the time. I also want to emphasise the general scene and the many problems we face, but one thing that is reassuring is the recognition across the Benches of this House, and indeed in Parliament generally, of the fundamental importance and quality of the scientific work and technological development that takes place in this country, and the opportunity we now have to make good on it to further benefit our own society and, more broadly, the population of the world.

I will make one point about something rather concerning that is connected to that. Science and technology, as a topic, is beginning to become a source of hostility and tension in international relations. One only has to think of the way in which the Chinese are exploiting it. Far from being a binder among nations, it can very easily become a source of real competition, hostility and seriously malign action. We should bear in mind that the liberal democracies do not have an agreed strategy on how to deal with this, but we need to develop one. We should not go on refraining from tackling the issue because it is difficult, even though that is the case. If we do not tackle it, we will find in due course that the extent to which science and technology can benefit society is greatly reduced by the potential problem of conflict.

Returning to the UK, something puzzling about our situation is that we are a society with a reputation for science and innovation, but we seem to lag behind in what we ought to be good at, which is greater productivity. How come we have this contradiction? Our universities are the bedrock of our capability; their graduates feed our independent laboratories and learned societies, and their geographical spread helps to keep our educational disparities under control. However, as has been rightly said, they are not going to survive the financial situation in which they now find themselves. I am very concerned that we are about to witness a drama if that situation is not gripped.

The public sector needs to intervene, but I do not believe that it can deal with the whole thing. What is notable is that private sector companies, which used to be great sources of R&D themselves, no longer—with some notable exceptions—play that role. It is very important that they begin to move closer to universities, so that they themselves become sources of innovation. Whacking up the tax on them does not help with the notion that they will engage in greater investment. The Chancellor said yesterday that the public spending outlined will crowd in private investment, but I worry that it might crowd it out.

The low skills base is another problem we need to tackle. As the noble Lord, Lord Mair, rightly said, it is a soluble problem, and other people have models that we ought to draw on. We are making heavy weather of that, and we ought to do better.

I will make just one last point. The difficulties British start-ups face when they want to scale up are well known. Our relatively small economy, openness and English language make us an attractive research destination, but they also make us vulnerable to poaching. We have to inculcate the habit of investing in our intellectual property and rewarding higher-risk, higher-reward propositions. If we do that, we will go a long way towards dealing with the issue of our lag in productivity.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, the advisory speaking time for this debate is four minutes. I gently urge all noble Lords to keep within this time limit so that the debate can finish at a reasonable time.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Lord Leong Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 14th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Motion E1 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. Like the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I thank him and my honourable friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West for their relentless campaigning and enduring diligence on this issue.

The current system is not working. It is not strong enough to stop a shadowy oligopoly of parasites on talent: unscrupulous people who are profiteering from genuine fans who want to see their heroes perform live. Tickets for many high-profile events, which by their very nature are extremely limited in supply, are being resold for many times their face value. Genuine sports supporters and music fans are being ripped off.

I will give just one example. The original price of the most expensive seated tickets for Taylor Swift in Edinburgh next month was £194 each. I went online to book mine last night, dedicated Swiftie fan that I am, and the cheapest seated tickets with unrestricted views were more than £500 each for two together. The most expensive pairs were £3,646 each—more than 19 times the original price. If I were to buy them, I would wonder to whom that additional money, almost £7,000, was going. It is obviously not going to Taylor Swift—or Tay Tay, as we fans call her.

Sports clubs and artists pitch their prices at a level which they think is fair and which enables them to make a profit: a price that allows their fans to enjoy their work—often a special occasion that will be remembered for a lifetime. When they see their fans charged excessive prices, they are right to believe that their hard work, talent and reputations are being exploited. These excess profits are not going to those who have worked hard to develop sporting prowess or exceptional skills as a performer; they are going to unscrupulous organisations which are often difficult to track and prosecute and which are prepared to exploit existing loopholes and take risks by breaking the law, knowing that they are unlikely to be caught. Such organisations employ sophisticated technology to distort a necessarily restricted market. In his response on day 2 of our debate, on 13 March, the Minister argued his case for not accepting amendments on this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, has, with characteristic persistence and diligence, convincingly rebutted those arguments and perhaps alerted the Minister, as he set out earlier, to just how easy it is to be misled, overcharged and ripped off by the various online sites which operate in the secondary market, perhaps even saving him from an expensive mistake the next time he chooses to see an international rugby or football match or even a pop concert.

The CMA made recommendations in relation to secondary ticketing that are covered by this amendment, as the noble Lord set out earlier. The first was to ensure that secondary tickets can be sold only with proof of purchase of the original ticket, to avoid speculative sales of tickets which may not have been bought and might not be provided—a recipe for rip-offs. The second was to limit the number of resales by a single reseller to the amount that can legally be purchased on the primary market. If a reseller is offering tickets in groups larger than this, that must indicate that the additional tickets have been misdescribed or misappropriated and potentially that the purchaser could unknowingly be receiving stolen goods. The amendment also requires that secondary sellers make the original face value of the ticket clearly visible to the purchaser. Subsection (3) of the new clause inserted by the amendment gives the Secretary of State powers to impose or amend conditions for resellers in response to further loopholes being found by resellers to get around these reasonable and legal restrictions, if any emerge in the future.

The second part of the amendment is equally important. It formalises the Government’s non-legislative commitment to undertake a review over the next nine months, as mentioned earlier by noble Lords. By the time that review finishes, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 will be 10 years old. It is already showing its age in the face of the rapid technological advances allowing unscrupulous companies to exploit fans and performers. The review will enable the Secretary of State to identify emerging risks—the unknown unknowns—and respond to rapidly changing technology as touts inevitably seek to exploit the loopholes of the future.

Every year, fans spend millions of pounds of their hard-earned money on these special occasions. It should not go to touts or resellers who exploit the system and play fast and loose with consumer law. The devil is in the detail here and it is also in delay. The time to act is now. The combined weight of the concerns and arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, the CMA, the entertainment and sports industries, consumer groups and ordinary fans is difficult to resist. I am impressed by the Minister’s resolve in the face of this tsunami, but I hope that he will now support this amendment. If the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, wishes to test the will of the House, we on this side will support him.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have debated the topic of secondary ticketing today. It has been an interesting and constructive discussion on a very important topic.

Turning to Motion E1, tabled by my noble friend Lord Moynihan and regarding secondary ticketing, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Leong, for their contributions. I also thank my noble friend for his thoughtful engagement on issues in the secondary ticketing market and his commitment to work with the Government on solutions. As he will know, following our meeting last week and engagement since then, we share many of these concerns—although we differ slightly in our judgment of the best means of addressing them.

This Government have already brought in extensive and successful legislative protections for consumers buying on the secondary ticketing market. These go above and beyond standard consumer rights and require both ticket resellers and platforms to provide ticket information to buyers.

It is appropriate to consider the amendment in Motion E1 in detail. Proposed new subsection (1)(a) requires that a platform seeks confirmation of proof of purchase or evidence of title before allowing a ticket to be listed. It does not set out what might satisfy such requirements, so this is likely to come down to a question of due diligence as a platform to be challenged.

Moreover, it is already a criminal offence, as unfair trading or fraud for traders, to offer for sale a product that cannot be legally sold. Recent prosecutions included breaches of the Fraud Act as part of their basis. Similarly, speculative selling is something that the CMA has sought to address through enforcement, because actions such as that mentioned in relation to the SRU—selling tickets not even issued yet—are not allowed under current law.

Proposed new subsection (1)(b) seeks to apply primary sale ticket limits to the secondary market but, having consulted primary agents, we feel that this is impractical. The number of tickets that a person can purchase depends on the event. It would be difficult for a platform to know what, if any, limits there were for each event, especially when tickets are sold through multiple primary agents.

Proposed new subsection (2) imposes requirements to make clearly visible information about the face value of the ticket, and the trader’s name and business address. Both these elements are already required by UK law; existing legislation requires this information to be “clear and comprehensible”. This is a clear general provision, its application in the circumstances being one for regulators and the courts. There is a greater risk of loopholes if certain practices are specifically provided for but others are not.

In his review, Professor Waterson recommended that enforcement action be taken to drive compliance. That has happened with CMA action, and we have seen successful prosecution of ticket touts, as evidenced by the case of R v Hunter and Smith, which resulted in prison sentences and financial confiscations. However, at that time, the CMA review did not look at the primary market.

During the passage of the Bill, we listened to arguments by noble Lords opposite about the merits of a review of the market as a whole, looking not just at what happens on the secondary market, but at how tickets flow from the primary market. We can better establish the practice and interventions that will deliver benefits and protections for consumers and support events going on in the UK.

I admire my noble friend Lord Moynihan’s dogged commitment to this issue. He wants to beef up the existing rules, but we already have extensive rules in this area. This issue will not be solved simply by adding more and more legislation; it will be solved by better implementation. We have started by radically boosting enforcement powers in Part 3; the next step is to understand how tickets move from primary sale to the secondary market, for different events, in different venues.

On that basis, I urge noble Lords to support the review that we have set out today, and to consider carefully the Motion put forward by the Government. I hope that all Members feel able to support our position.

Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill [HL]

Lord Leong Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 10th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my technology interests as adviser to Boston Ltd. I thank all the organisations and individuals that took the trouble to meet with me ahead of the Second Reading of my Bill, shared their expertise and insight, and added to the positive, almost unified, voice that we had at Second Reading in March. I thank colleagues around the House and in the other place for their support, and particularly thank the Labour and Liberal Democrat Front Benches for their support on all the principles set out in the Bill. I also thank my noble friend the Minister for the time he took to meet with me at all stages of the Bill.

It is clear that, when it comes to artificial intelligence, it is time to legislate—it is time to lead. We know what we need to do, and we know what we need to know, to legislate. We know the impact that AI is already having on our creatives, on our IP, on our copyright, across all that important part of our economy. We know the impact that having no labelling on IP products is having. Crucially, we know the areas where there is no competent legislation or regulator when it comes to AI decisions. Thus, there is no right of redress for consumers, individuals and citizens.

Similarly, it is also time to legislate to end the illogicality that grew out of the Bletchley summit—successful of itself, but strange to put only a voluntary code, rather than something statutory, in place as a result of that summit. It was strange also to have stood up such a successful summit and then not sought to legislate for all the other areas of artificial intelligence already impacting people’s lives—oftentimes without them even knowing that AI is involved.

It is time to bring forward good legislation and the positive powers of right-size regulation. What this always brings is clarity, certainty, consistency, security and safety. When it comes to artificial intelligence, we do not currently have that in the United Kingdom. Clarity and certainty, craved by consumers and businesses, is a driver of innovation, inward investment, pro-consumer protection and pro-citizen rights. If we do not legislate, the most likely, and certainly unintended, consequence is that businesses and organisations looking for a life raft will understandably, but unfortunately, align to the EU AI Act. That is not the optimal outcome that we can secure.

It is clear that when it comes to AI legislation and regulation things are moving internationally, across our Parliament and—dare I say—in No. 10. With sincere thanks again to all those who have helped so much to get the Bill to this stage, I say again that it is time to legislate—it is time to lead #OurAIFutures.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I regret that I was unable to speak at Second Reading of the Bill. I am grateful to the government Benches for allowing my noble friend Lady Twycross to speak on my behalf on that occasion. However, I am pleased to be able to return to your Lordships’ House with a clean bill of health, to speak at Third Reading of this important Bill. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, on the progress of his Private Member’s Bill.

Having read the whole debate in Hansard, I think it is clear that there is consensus about the need for some kind of AI regulation. The purpose, form and extent of this regulation will, of course, require further debate. AI has the potential to transform the world and deliver life-changing benefits for working people: whether delivering relief through earlier cancer diagnosis or relieving traffic congestion for more efficient deliveries, AI can be a force for good. However, the most powerful AI models could, if left unchecked, spread misinformation, undermine elections and help terrorists to build weapons.

A Labour Government would urgently introduce binding regulation and establish a new regulatory innovation office for AI. This would make Britain the best place in the world to innovate, by speeding up decisions and providing clear direction based on our modern industrial strategy. We believe this will enable us to harness the enormous power of AI, while limiting potential damage and malicious use, so that it can contribute to our plans to get the economy growing and give Britain its future back.

The Bill sends an important message about the Government’s responsibility to acknowledge and address how AI affects people’s jobs, lives, data and privacy, in the rapidly changing technological environment in which we live. Once again, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, for bringing it forward, and I urge His Majesty’s Government to give proper consideration to the issues raised. As ever, I am grateful to noble Lords across the House for their contributions. We support and welcome the principles behind the Bill, and we wish it well as it goes to the other place.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Viscount Camrose) (Con)]

My Lords, I too sincerely thank my noble friend Lord Holmes for bringing forward the Bill. Indeed, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in what has been, in my opinion, a brilliant debate.

I want to reassure noble Lords that, since Second Reading of the Bill in March, the Government have continued to make progress in their regulatory approach to artificial intelligence. I will take this opportunity to provide an update on just a few developments in this space, some of which speak to the measures proposed by the Bill.

First, the Government want to build public visibility of what regulators are doing to implement our pro-innovation approach to AI. Noble Lords may recall that we wrote to key regulators in February asking them for an update on this. Regulators have now published their updates, which include an analysis of AI-related opportunities and risks in the areas that they regulate, and the actions that they are taking to address these. On 1 May, we published a GOV.UK page where people can access each regulator’s update.

We have taken steps to establish a multidisciplinary risk-monitoring function within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, bringing together expertise in risk, regulation and AI. This expertise will provide continuous examination of cross-cutting AI risks, including evaluating the effectiveness of interventions by government and regulators.

Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Lord Leong Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th April 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, having been involved in and seen the campaigning of the bereaved families and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in particular in the Joint Committee on the Draft Online Safety Bill onwards, I associate myself entirely with the noble Baroness’s statement and with my noble friend Lord Allan’s remarks.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for setting out the amendment and all noble Lords who spoke. I am sure the Minister will be pleased to hear that we support his Amendment 236 and his Amendment 237, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has added her name.

Amendment 236 is a technical amendment. It seeks the straightforward deletion of words from a clause, accounting for the fact that investigations by a coroner, or procurator fiscal in Scotland, must start upon them being notified of the death of a child. The words

“or are due to conduct an investigation”

are indeed superfluous.

We also support Amendment 237. The deletion of this part of the clause would bring into effect a material change. It would empower Ofcom to issue a notice to an internet service provider to retain information in all cases of a child’s death, not just cases of suspected suicide. Sadly, as many of us have discovered in the course of our work on this Bill, there is an increasing number of ways in which communication online can be directly or indirectly linked to a child’s death. These include areas of material that is appropriate for adults only; the inability to filter harmful information, which may adversely affect mental health and decision-making; and, of course, the deliberate targeting of children by adults and, in some cases, by other children.

There are adults who use the internet with the intention of doing harm to children through coercion, grooming or abuse. What initially starts online can lead to contact in person. Often, this will lead to a criminal investigation, but, even if it does not, the changes proposed by this amendment could help prevent additional tragic deaths of children, not just those caused by suspected child suicides. If the investigating authorities have access to online communications that may have been a contributing factor in a child’s death, additional areas of concern can be identified by organisations and individuals with responsibility for children’s welfare and action taken to save many other young lives.

Before I sit down, I want to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and all those who have campaigned on this issue relentlessly and brought it to our attention.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Let me begin by reiterating my thanks to the noble Baroness, Peers, families and coroners for their help in developing these measures. My momentary pleasure in being supported on these amendments is, of course, tempered by the desperate sadness of the situations that they are designed to address.

I acknowledge the powerful advocacy that has taken place on this issue. I am glad that we have been able to address the concerns with the amendment to the Online Safety Act, which takes a zero-tolerance approach to protecting children by making sure that the buck stops with social media platforms for the content they host. I sincerely hope that this demonstrates our commitment to ensuring that coroners can fully access the online data needed to provide answers for grieving families.

On the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, guidance from the Chief Coroner is likely to be necessary to ensure both that this provision works effectively and that coroners feel supported in their decisions on whether to trigger the data preservation process. Decisions on how and when to issue guidance are a matter for the Chief Coroner, of course, but we understand that he is very likely to issue guidance to coroners on this matter. His office is working with my department and Ofcom to ensure that our processes are aligned. The Government will also work with the regulators and interested parties to see whether any guidance is required to support parents in understanding the data preservation process. Needless to say, I would be more than happy to arrange a meeting with the noble Baroness to discuss the development of the guidance; other Members may wish to join that as well.

Once again, I thank noble Lords for their support on this matter.

--- Later in debate ---

What are we waiting for? We may need some changes to prevent the overload that the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, mentioned, but it is not beyond our wit to come up with procedural changes that deliver future justice. This is urgent. In the meantime, as the noble Lord says, if we do not do something then it is going to impact on the Post Office cases. It is discredited, and will give rise to a huge amount of argumentation in court in any event. Sadly, we do not have an MoJ Minister here. We have had guest appearances by a number of Ministers from various departments, so it is a pity that we did not manage to inveigle the MoJ to come along. However, I hope the Minister will pass on a pretty solid message that we want to see action extremely urgently.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this probing amendment, Amendment 251. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. From this side of the Committee, I say how grateful we are to the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, for all that he has done and continues to do in his campaign to find justice for those sub-postmasters who have been wronged by the system.

This amendment seeks to reinstate the substantive provisions of Section 69 of PACE, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, revoking this dangerous assumption. I would like to imagine that legislators in 1984 were perhaps alert to the warning in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, written some 40 years earlier, about relying on an apparently infallible but ultimately corruptible technological system to define the truth. The Horizon scandal is, of course, the most glaring example of the dangers of assuming that computers are always right. Sadly, as hundreds of sub-postmasters have known for years, and as the wider public have more recently become aware, computer systems can be horribly inaccurate.

However, the Horizon system is very primitive compared to some of the programs which now process billions of pieces of our sensitive data every day. The AI revolution, which has already begun, will exponentially accelerate the risk of compounded errors being multiplied. To take just one example, some noble Lords may be aware of the concept of AI hallucinations. This is a term used to describe when computer models make inaccurate predictions based on seeing incorrect patterns in data, which may be caused by incomplete, biased or simply poor-quality inputs. In an earlier debate, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, said that account information notices will be decided. How will these decisions be made? Will they be made by individual human beings or by some AI-configured algorithms? Can the Minister share with us how such decisions will be taken?

Humans can look at clouds in the sky or outlines on the hillside and see patterns that look like faces, animals or symbols, but ultimately we know that we are looking at water vapour or rock formations. Computer systems do not necessarily have this innate common sense—this reality check. Increasingly, we will depend on computer systems talking to each other without any human intervention. This will deliver some great efficiencies, but it could lead to greater injustices on a scale which would terrify even the most dystopian science fiction writers. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has already shared with us some of the cases where a computer has made errors and people have been wronged.

Amendment 251 would reintroduce the opportunity for some healthy human scepticism by enabling the investigation of whether there are reasonable grounds for questioning information in documents produced by a computer. The digital world of 2024 depends more on computers than the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four in actual legislation or in an Orwellian fiction. Amendment 251 enables ordinary people to question whether our modern “Big Brother” artificial intelligence is telling the truth when he or it is watching us. I look forward to the Minister’s responses to all the various questions and on the current assumption in law that information provided by the computer is always accurate.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, I recognise the feeling of the Committee on this issue and, frankly, I recognise the feeling of the whole country with respect to Horizon. I thank all those who have spoken for a really enlightening debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for tabling the amendment and my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot for speaking to it and—if I may depart from the script—his heroic behaviour with respect to the sub-postmasters.

There can be no doubt that hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses have suffered an intolerable miscarriage of justice at the hands of the Post Office. I hope noble Lords will indulge me if I speak very briefly on that. On 13 March, the Government introduced the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill into Parliament, which is due to go before a Committee of the whole House in the House of Commons on 29 April. The Bill will quash relevant convictions of individuals who worked, including on a voluntary basis, in Post Office branches and who have suffered as a result of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal. It will quash, on a blanket basis, convictions for various theft, fraud and related offences during the period of the Horizon scandal in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is to be followed by swift financial redress delivered by the Department for Business and Trade.

On the amendment laid by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron—I thank her and the noble Lords who have supported it—I fully understand the intent behind this amendment, which aims to address issues with computer evidence such as those arising from the Post Office cases. The common law presumption, as has been said, is that the computer which has produced evidence in a case was operating effectively at the material time unless there is evidence to the contrary, in which case the party relying on the computer evidence will need to satisfy the court that the evidence is reliable and therefore admissible.

This amendment would require a party relying on computer evidence to provide proof up front that the computer was operating effectively at the time and that there is no evidence of improper use. I and my fellow Ministers, including those at the MoJ, understand the intent behind this amendment, and we are considering very carefully the issues raised by the Post Office cases in relation to computer evidence, including these wider concerns. So I would welcome the opportunity for further meetings with the noble Baroness, alongside MoJ colleagues. I was pleased to hear that she had met with my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor on this matter.

We are considering, for example, the way reliability of evidence from the Horizon system was presented, how failures of investigation and disclosure prevented that evidence from being effectively challenged, and the lack of corroborating evidence in many cases. These issues need to be considered carefully, with the full facts in front of us. Sir Wyn Williams is examining in detail the failings that led to the Post Office scandal. These issues are not straightforward. The prosecution of those cases relied on assertions that the Horizon system was accurate and reliable, which the Post Office knew to be wrong. This was supported by expert evidence, which it knew to be misleading. The issue was that the Post Office chose to withhold the fact that the computer evidence itself was wrong.

This amendment would also have a significant impact on the criminal justice system. Almost all criminal cases rely on computer evidence to some extent, so any change to the burden of proof would or could impede the work of the Crown Prosecution Service and other prosecutors.

Although I am not able to accept this amendment for these reasons, I share the desire to find an appropriate way forward along with my colleagues at the Ministry of Justice, who will bear the brunt of this work, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, alluded to. I look forward to meeting the noble Baroness to discuss this ahead of Report. Meanwhile, I hope she will withdraw her amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to all the amendments in this group, other than Amendment 295 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Without stealing her thunder, I very much support it, especially in an election year and in the light of the deepfakes we have already seen in the political arena—those of Sadiq Khan, those used in the Slovakian election and the audio deepfakes of the President of the US and Sir Keir Starmer. This is a real issue and I am delighted that she has put down this amendment, which I have signed.

In another part of the forest, the recent spread of deepfake photos purporting to show Taylor Swift engaged in explicit acts has brought new attention to the use, which has been growing in recent years, of deepfake images, video and audio to harass women and commit fraud. Women constitute 99% of the victims and the most visited deepfake site had 111 million users in October 2023. More recently, children have been found using “declothing” apps, which I think the noble Baroness mentioned, to create explicit deepfakes of other children.

Deepfakes also present a growing threat to elections and democracy, as I have mentioned, and the problems are increasingly rampant. Deepfake fraud rates rose by 3,000% globally in 2023, and it is hardly surprising that, in recent polling, 86% of the UK population supported a ban on deepfakes. I believe that the public are demanding an urgent solution to this problem. The only effective way to stop deepfakes, which is analogous to what the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has been so passionately advocating, is for the Government to ban them at every stage, from production to distribution. Legal liability must hold to account those who produce deepfake technology, create and enable deepfake content, and facilitate its spread.

Existing legislation seeks to limit the spread of images on social media, but this is not enough. The recent images of Taylor Swift were removed from X and Telegram, but not before one picture had been viewed more than 47 million times. Digital watermarks are not a solution, as shown by a paper by world-leading Al researchers released in 2023, which concluded that

“strong and robust watermarking is impossible to achieve”.

Without measures across the supply chain to prevent the creation of deepfakes, the law will forever be playing catch-up.

The Government now intend to ban the creation of sexual imagery deepfakes; I welcome this and have their announcement in my hand:

“Government cracks down on ‘deepfakes’ creation”.


This will send a clear message that the creation of these intimate images is not acceptable. However, this appears to cover only sexual image deepfakes. These are the most prevalent form of deepfakes, but other forms of deepfakes are also causing noticeable and rapidly growing harms, most obviously political deepfakes—as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, will illustrate—and deepfakes used for fraud. This also appears to cover only the endpoint of the creation of deepfakes, not the supply chain leading up to that point. There are whole apps and companies dedicated to the creation of deepfakes, and they should not exist. There are industries which provide legitimate services—generative Al and cloud computing—which fail to take adequate measures and end up enabling creation of deepfakes. They should take measures or face legal accountability.

The Government’s new measures are intended to be introduced through an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill, which is, I believe, currently between Committee and Report in the House of Commons. As I understand it, however, there is no date scheduled yet for Report, as the Bill seems to be caught in a battle over amendments.

The law will, however, be extremely difficult to enforce. Perpetrators are able to hide behind anonymity and are often difficult to identify, even when victims or authorities are aware that deepfakes have been created. The only reliable and effective countermeasure is to hold the whole supply chain responsible for deepfake creation and proliferation. All parties involved in the AI supply chain, from AI model developers and providers to cloud compute providers, must demonstrate that they have taken steps to preclude the creation of deepfakes. This approach is similar to how society combats—or, rather, analogous to the way that I hope the Minister will concede to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, society will combat—child abuse material and malware.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendments 293 and 294 from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, Amendment 295 proposed by my noble friend Lady Jones and Amendments 295A to 295F, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones.

Those noble Lords who are avid followers of my social media feeds will know that I am an advocate of technology. Advanced computing power and artificial intelligence offer enormous opportunities, which are not all that bad. However, the intentions of those who use them can be malign or criminal, and the speed of technological developments is outpacing legislators around the world. We are constantly in danger of creating laws that close the stable door long after the virtual horse has bolted.

The remarkable progress of visual and audio technology has its roots in the entertainment industry. It has been used to complete or reshoot scenes in films in the event of actors being unavailable, or in some cases, when actors died before filming was completed. It has also enabled filmmakers to introduce characters, or younger versions of iconic heroes for sequels or prequels in movie franchises. This enabled us to see a resurrected Sir Alec Guinness and a younger version of Luke Skywalker, or a de-aged Indiana Jones, on our screens.

The technology that can do this is only around 15 years old, and until about five years ago it required extremely powerful computers, expensive resources and advanced technical expertise. The first malicious use of deepfakes occurred when famous actors and celebrities, mainly and usually women, had their faces superimposed on to bodies of participants in pornographic videos. These were then marketed online as Hollywood stars’ sex tapes or similar, making money for the producers while causing enormous distress to the women targeted. More powerful computer processors inevitably mean that what was once very expensive rapidly becomes much cheaper very quickly. An additional factor has turbo-boosted this issue: generative AI. Computers can now learn to create images, sound and video movement almost independently of software specialists. It is no longer just famous women who are the targets of sexually explicit deepfakes; it could be anyone.

Amendment 293 directly addresses this horrendous practice, and I hope that there will be widespread support for it. In an increasingly digital world, we spend more time in front of our screens, getting information and entertainment on our phones, laptops, iPads and smart TVs. What was once an expensive technology, used to titillate, entertain or for comedic purposes, has developed an altogether darker presence, well beyond the reach of most legislation.

In additional to explicit sexual images, deepfakes are known to have been used to embarrass individuals, misrepresent public figures, enable fraud, manipulate public opinion and influence democratic political elections and referendums. This damages people individually: those whose images or voices are faked, and those who are taken in by the deepfakes. Trusted public figures, celebrities or spokespeople face reputational and financial damage when their voices or images are used to endorse fake products or for harvesting data. Those who are encouraged to click through are at risk of losing money to fraudsters, being targeted for scams, or having their personal and financial data leaked or sold on. There is growing evidence that information used under false pretences can be used for profiling in co-ordinated misinformation campaigns, for darker financial purposes or political exploitation.

In passing, it is worth remembering that deepfakes are not always images of people. Last year, crudely generated fake images of an explosion, purported to be at the Pentagon, caused the Dow Jones industrial average to drop 85 points within four minutes of the image being published, and triggered emergency response procedures from local law enforcement before it was debunked 20 minutes later. The power of a single image, carefully placed and virally spreading, shows the enormous and rapid economic damage that deepfakes can create.

Amendment 294 would make it an offence for a person to generate a deepfake for the purpose of committing fraud, and Amendment 295 would make it an offence to create deepfakes of political figures, particularly when they risk undermining electoral integrity. We support all the additional provisions in this group of amendments; Amendments 295A to 295F outline the requirements, duties and definitions necessary to ensure that those creating deepfakes can be prosecuted.

I bring to your Lordships’ attention the wording of Amendment 295, which, as well as making it an offence to create a deepfake, goes a little further. It also makes it an offence to send a communication which has been created by artificial intelligence and which is intended to create the impression that a political figure has said or done something that is not based in fact. This touches on what I believe to be a much more alarming aspect of deepfakes: the manner in which false information is distributed.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Lord Leong Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th January 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being at Second Reading; I was only recently co-opted to support my noble friends Lady Jones, Lord Bassam and Lord Stevenson in the Bill’s passage through its various stages.

I thank the Minister for introducing this group of government amendments, which we are not opposing. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, for speaking to his important Amendment 70 on collective proceedings, and all other noble Lords for their contributions. We have signed the noble and learned Lord’s amendment and support what he has argued.

I will be brief. I am not a lawyer, and I hesitate to stray into this issue to the depth that it clearly requires. After listening to the noble and learned Lord, however, and having read some background material, I am bound to say that this is an area that needs more attention. If there are not to be changes made in this Bill, for which there seems to be a case, at the very least there needs to be a review, as suggested in the amendment.

We are very grateful to the noble and learned Lord for introducing this amendment and we will listen very carefully to the Minister’s response. If he is not able to give a positive response today, I am sure that this is an issue that we will need to return to on Report.