Digital Safety: Children

Lord Markham Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Lords Chamber

We recognise that companies have already developed and implemented nudity detection on devices, and we want to work collaboratively with industry to build solutions and call on companies to take action within three months. We have been clear that if industry does not meet our high expectations, we will not hesitate to legislate. Furthermore, the Government’s Growing Up in the Online World consultation closed on 26 May. The Government are reviewing the responses and will provide an update in the coming weeks”.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, there is total agreement across the House that children must be protected from harms online. Noble Lords will recall that amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Nash on the impact of social media on children’s well-being were repeatedly resisted by the Government. We therefore welcome the Government’s recognition that further action is needed.

The Government have said that industry has three months to act and that legislation will follow if companies fail to do so. If Ministers are satisfied that these protections are so necessary, why have they chosen to rely on expectations from tech companies rather than legislating directly now? The proposals also appear to involve age assurance, device-level protections and enforcement obligations. What assessment has been made of the risk that younger users will simply remain on old operating systems, and of the practical challenges of implementing these measures across different manufacturers? The Government have also suggested that some educational platforms may be treated differently. What criteria will be used to determine any such exemptions?

Finally, can the Minister assure the House that, if the industry fails to meet the Government’s expectations within the three-month period, the necessary legislation will be ready to proceed without further delay?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Lloyd of Effra) (Lab)]

I agree with the noble Lord that there is unanimity on the importance of tackling child sexual abuse online and taking measures to further restrict that and make it harder. As my noble friend Lord Hanson made clear during the passage of the Act, device-level nudity detection can play an important role in preventing children taking, sharing or viewing nude imagery.

This measure really looks at how to prevent those images getting online. That is a very important part of the strategy; it stops harm before it happens, in addition to the law enforcement activity that must happen in parallel. It applies to both old and new smartphones and tablets, and we expect tech companies to set up controls so that, if a parent hands down a phone, for example, all they have to do is reset it to enact this operating-level facility.

In respect of making sure that legislation is ready, as the Minister for Online Safety said in the other place yesterday, he is working carefully and closely in parallel with the Home Office to draw up legislation should that be needed, should the protections not be put in place at scale as expected.

AI Regulation Bill

Lord Markham Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Holmes for bringing this debate forward today. It is a complex area, and we would all agree that it is difficult to do it justice with such limited time. I think we also all agree that there are some areas where we definitely need controls on AI: safeguarding against suicidal ideation, imparting dangerous knowledge on biological and other weaponry, and nudification of people, to name just a few areas.

However, we also see that there are dangers to overregulation and tying our hands behind our back. Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, AI is a winner-takes-all world. In the area of defence, as the noble Baroness, Lady Antrobus, mentioned, we need only to see a small technologically advanced Spanish army defeating a much larger Aztec army to learn some of the lessons—we do not want to be in that position as we go forward. Unless we can get every country in the world—and every terrorist group—to sign up to the same set of regulatory rules, we are danger of being on the wrong side of history. I would much rather make sure that we are at the forefront of AI development, rather than at the mercy of others, by tying our hands behind our back with regulatory restrictions.

It is with this knowledge that the Conservative Government took the approach they did, setting up the AI Security Institute to try to safeguard and test models for the reputable producers of AI, so we can make sure they are working in the way we want them to. In combining that with an agile regulatory framework, as my noble friend Lord Camrose previously noted, the priority was to ensure coherence across existing regulations while having a period of non-statutory implementation. AI will touch every aspect of our lives: business, social, health, education, defence and media. I believe it is impossible for one AI regulator to act across all those fields, but much more manageable to make every regulator responsible for their part of AI in that area.

I am afraid, however, that I do not know what this Government’s approach is. Do they intend to continue with the current framework or a more cross-sectoral model? It is vital to get this right to ensure that the UK is at the forefront of AI, so I look forward to hearing from the Minister the Government’s approach.

Sovereign AI Fund

Lord Markham Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

I welcome the noble Lord’s welcome, as it were, for the developments happening here in the UK. It is true that the UK has a lot to offer. On cloud discussions and the provision of data, the National Data Library is advancing and we have gone through our period of discovery, with five areas of kick-starters, so we can provide UK public data to those who can benefit from it. Separately, we are using the sovereign AI fund to develop the domestic technology sector, so that it can provide one of the options for government procurement in the future.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, the Competition and Markets Authority has expressed concerns that AI may entrench the market power of a small number of cloud providers. If the sovereign AI fund is not designed to increase the UK’s strategic authority in the cloud space, what are the Government’s plans to do so?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right to refer to the independent Competition and Markets Authority. It has conducted a major, 22-month investigation into the cloud market and is now acting. It has announced a package of actions to strengthen competition in business software and cloud services. It will be launching a strategic market status designation investigation into Microsoft’s business software system in May that will allow the CMA to examine cloud licensing and actions from Microsoft and Amazon on improving cloud interoperability and reducing egress fees. In terms of the role the AI sovereign fund might play, it is at a relatively early stage of development. Infrastructure is one of its priority areas, and we will see what opportunities come in the near future.

AI Growth Lab

Lord Markham Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

In our AI opportunities action plan we have indeed set out a plethora. That is because this is a technology that provides great potential benefits, and adoption is absolutely key. We need all areas of the economy to be thinking about the implications. We are a heavily service-based economy and it is very much in our future interests to adopt this technology and harness its benefits, whether that is in healthcare, energy efficiency or many other areas. So we will continue to focus on all areas of the development of AI, from data centres to regulation.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, my experience as Health Minister in this space is that we have fantastic innovation and fantastic pilots: the joke in the NHS is that the NHS has more pilots than British Airways. But the challenge is always the scale-up funding and, because that scale-up funding is not there, we then lose the best to America. The problem is that the AI budgets are all fragmented across hundreds of different hospitals. What are we doing to centralise those budgets so that we have the firepower to truly scale them and not lose our best British innovation to America?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

Building on both noble Lords’ recent questions, we need to look across the whole of the economy. There will be a great amount of private investment going in, as well as investment from our public financial institutions. We are also thinking about how we can harness the benefit of sovereign AI here in the UK, and we are making a particular effort to think about where our sovereign AI fund is going to invest, so that the UK can benefit British frontier AI companies, not seeking total self-reliance but to build and defend comparative advantage.

Superintelligent AI

Lord Markham Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for bringing this serious issue in front of us today. Like others, I wish we had more time, but I think this shows the Lords at its best. We have had technology know-how, regulatory expertise, philosophy, religious wisdom—we have even learned that it is a good time to be old. So that is definitely something to look forward to.

Of course, we all know AI is a massive force for good. I have seen it first-hand in the health space. But we also know the risks of superintelligent AI. Examples have been mentioned where AI has taken to blackmail in the case of self-preservation. So I think we all understand the dangers of non-alignment and AI pursuing different objectives from our own. We are all aware that some very serious and knowledgeable people in this space talk about risks of 10% or so, which we would all agree is pretty significant.

For me, though, the real question is: how do we go about regulating? As we know, it works only if everyone in the world follows. Nuclear weapons, for example, are pretty hard to build: you need massive infrastructure, you need to enrich uranium, you need state-like resources, and it can be observed worldwide. But despite all of that, we have still had proliferation. We have still had the likes of North Korea getting nuclear weapons. Building superintelligent AI requires much more limited resource; it is much easier to hide, and so much easier for rogue states such as North Kore—or, dare I say it, an al-Qaeda—to develop it without detection, without us being able to do anything about it. If we really believe in the power of superintelligence, we have to accept that it is probably a winner-takes-all world, and whoever gets there first is likely to be the winner who takes all.

For me, while I worry about some of the dangers of us in the west developing it, I have to say that I worry even more about North Korea or al-Qaeda getting there first if we go ahead and tie one of our hands, or both our hands, behind our backs through a one-sided moratorium. There are things that we should be and are working on, and the AI Safety Institute is a very good example of that. A heavy investment in monitoring the programming, opening up the models, checking that they really are aligned—there probably is no limit to the resources we should be putting into that, and into investigations into whether we can put kill switches into these things. If we do find a way to do it, then let us offer that to the world, because it has to be in our interests that everyone who is developing this has access to a kill switch. That definitely makes sense, but for me, a one-sided moratorium which ties our hands behind our backs while the likes of North Korea and the al-Qaedas of the world crack on: no, I am afraid that that worries me even more.

Children: Age Verification and Virtual Private Networks

Lord Markham Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

We have ensured that Ofcom is resourced to implement its online safety duties and have increased the amount available to it year on year; its budget is, I think, £92 million to support all its Online Safety Act responsibilities. We believe that it has the resources it needs to effectively implement and supervise the Online Safety Act.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Following on from noble Lords’ comments, to me it is quite clear that Ofcom has a lot of the powers necessary to restrict underage usage but seems to lack the will. That was abundantly clear from the Radio 4 interview this morning. My experience in such matters is that the Ofcom leadership really needs to understand the strength of feeling in this House and Parliament as a whole—that they need to be more robust in enforcement. Will the Minister agree to arrange a meeting with the Ofcom CEO and key Lords here today so that we can fully hold Ofcom to account on this?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes an important point about the strength of feeling here, which was replicated in the discussions yesterday in the Select Committee. I am very happy to take forward his request to set up a meeting with Ofcom.

Data Adequacy Status: EU Data Protection Standards

Lord Markham Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The noble Earl asks a very interesting question but one which I am afraid, again, I am unable to give him any deep answer on. I shall have to revert to him on IP in particular.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, in view of the high stakes for UK services in digital trade with the 27 December deadline fast approaching, will the Government publish the adequacy risk assessment and correspondence that they have shared with the Commission, redacted where necessary, so that Parliament and stakeholders can see how they have satisfied themselves that the Data (Use and Access) Act is not put at risk?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

My understanding is that there is a lot of to and fro, and many requests between the EU and UK of a very technical nature to allow the European Commission to make its judgment. Quite a lot of those have been published already, in the European Commission report and in the European Data Protection Board’s opinion. The process by which this is set out is already transparent and clear.

Online Abuse: Protection for Children

Lord Markham Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, this is already a priority. The Department for Education is making sure that teachers have the training support to tackle these issues. Teachers have been asking for this, and we have responded, because sometimes they feel that they do not have the tools to raise these issues appropriately. It is something that the department is anxious to deal with, and it is building it into future training programmes to give teachers more confidence to tackle these issues.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Given that children are among the most vulnerable users online and are often disproportionately affected by online harms, it is notable that none of the eligibility criteria of the super-complaints mechanism recognise or require expertise on online safety relating to children. Are the Government prepared to address this oversight?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an issue that we of course take seriously. We want to make sure that we have the right spread of expertise reflected in the super-complaints process. We are still working that through with Ofcom, and we will be able to spell it out in more detail very soon. However, I take the noble Lord’s point, which is a good one. I will go back and check that that is indeed being addressed.

Ofcom: Protection of Children Codes

Lord Markham Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The New Zealand Education Minister says that its school smartphone ban has led to more engagement and less cyberbullying. With Ofcom warning that harmful content often reaches children through algorithmic feeds on smartphones, can the Minister give one positive reason why we should allow smartphones to continue to be used in the classroom?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, as I think I have said here before, we are carrying out research to look at the implications of the use of smartphones for children. The Department for Education’s mobile phones in schools guidance is clear that schools should prohibit the use of devices with smart technology throughout the school day, including during lessons, transitions and breaks. The Government expect all schools to take steps in line with this guidance to ensure that mobile phones do not disrupt pupil learning, but we still need to learn the absolute lessons. The noble Lord raises important points about algorithms, and we hope to come back to noble Lords and Parliament with further details of how we are going to take this work forward.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Markham Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 12th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, first, I declare my interest as a commissioner at the EHRC, and I have also been a lifelong campaigner for and defender of free speech, so I do not approach this subject lightly at all. I have some sympathy with the Government’s position that a reasonable excuse is required to be compatible with Article 10. However, I think the definition being as broad as it is reinforces the worries of my noble friend Lady Owen and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.

I was not really clear, and am concerned to know, as noble colleagues have already alluded to, on why the defence is drafted so widely. I was not sure whether this was coming from EU law and, if that were the case, I wanted to draw the House’s attention to the most recent EU directive on preventing violence against women and girls. If we look at that directive, in section 19, it has unequivocally decided that deepfakes should be criminalised and:

“Such production, manipulation or altering should include the fabrication of ‘deepfakes’, where the material appreciably resembles an existing person, objects, places”


and so on. I appreciate, of course, that we are no longer bound by EU law, but given that it will be applied by the ECHR, under which we still operate, it is interesting to note that in section 20 it has acknowledged the Article 10 obligation but has narrowly defined it.

I draw attention to this and ask the Government to take it into account and reassure this House that they will urge guidance to be issued, if this defence has to go forward as it is currently drafted, so that any reasonable excuse defence maintained in this clause is clearly confined by guidance issued as soon as possible by the CPS.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to the Motion standing in the name of my noble friend Lady Owen of Alderley Edge. Her amendments fall into two categories, and we support her in all of them. I start by joining the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and others in paying tribute to her tenacity in pursuing this issue by standing up for women who should not have to live in the fear of becoming victims of sexually explicitly deepfakes. As mentioned, she has won the deep respect of this House and, at the same time won many, many friends from her action. The cross-party support that she has managed to gain from this shows this House at its best—a House of which I am proud to be a Member.

First, my noble friend has tabled reviews to ensure that the offence that is being created as a result of her tireless campaigning is effective. We support her in her Motion and agree with her that we must do everything we can to ensure that the law is robust and effective in protecting women. Secondly, like many others, I have been puzzled by the ECHR reasonable excuse approach being used by the Government. It was very helpful, as ever, to have experts on hand in this matter and my noble friend Lady Cash to bring her expertise and agree with the basic position that, while we understand it, it is very widely drawn as it is currently set up.

I think it is very sensible what my noble friend is trying to do in seeking to tighten those definitions of reasonable excuse and remove reasonable excuse in the case of requesting sexually explicit deepfakes in her Motion 55A and Amendment 56A. I completely understand why she has brought them, and, while they would appear to be instead of the reviews, which we also support, we feel that my noble friend is right to challenge the inclusion of reasonable excuse as a defence to these offences. On that, she has our complete support.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the arguments, particularly those in favour of the noble Baroness’s Amendment 55, the creating offence, which seeks to replace the “reasonable excuse” defence with the creating offence, with a targeted defence for red-team software testing and reasonable political satire. We share the noble Baroness’s desire to ensure that any defence to the creating offence functions tightly and share her belief that only in narrow and limited circumstances would a person have a reasonable excuse for the creation of such images without consent. That is how our reasonable excuse defence will apply in practice, which is why the Government believe that the defence is the right way forward.

However, we are unable to agree to these targeted defences that the noble Baroness proposes to the creating offence in place of a reasonable excuse defence. This is a novel offence, tackling behaviour that is changing rapidly along with the technology itself. We cannot anticipate all the ways in which people will use technology as it develops. A defence of reasonable excuse which, as I have said, we believe will be interpreted very carefully by the courts, will ensure that the offence can be used effectively to target culpable perpetrators, even as technology and its uses change. The targeted defences proposed by the noble Baroness would also, crucially, not eliminate the risk of successful legal challenge, which I explained in my opening speech. Even with such targeted defences, the creating offence risks successful challenge in the courts, leading to uncertainty and reduced protection for victims.

I turn briefly to Amendment 56A on the requesting offence. As I have set out, the reasonable excuse defence to the requesting offence will only apply in an extremely narrow set of circumstances, such as covert law enforcement operations. The legal issue which applies to the creating offence does not apply to the requesting offence. However, we always aim for consistency and parity across similar offences and so urge this House not to pass Amendment 56A to the requesting offence. Also, without the defence that the Commons included for the requesting offence, law enforcement and intelligence officials may be unable to effectively carry out their functions.

We made a manifesto commitment to ban the creation of sexually explicit deepfakes. This legislation, as amended in the Commons, does just that. For the first time, there will be protection for victims and punishment for the perpetrators who create, or ask other people to create, intimate deepfakes of adults without consent or a reasonable belief of consent. These provisions represent an important and necessary response to intimate image deepfakes. The Government are clear that these offenses are comprehensive and robust. While a defence of reasonable excuse to both offences is necessary, it does not provide a get-out clause for the many perpetrators creating intimate deepfakes, especially sexual deepfakes, without consent. We remain firmly of a view that this is the most effective way to protect victims from this appalling abuse. It is our duty to act decisively. For those reasons, I urge your Lordships to support, with confidence, Motion 55C, containing as amendments in lieu Amendments 55D and 55E, and Amendment 56B. I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, to withdraw her Motion 55A and Amendment 56A.

The noble Baroness asked about deprivation orders. We share her frustration with this. The ability for courts to apply deprivation orders has been in place but these have not been used as extensively as they could be, so the judges are looking at sentencing guidelines to see how that lack of implementation of deprivation orders can be remedied. My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti asked whether offenders of the requesting offence would also be deprived of images by the court. Yes, they would be. We want to ensure parity across the creating and the requesting offence, so that includes their computers and any images that are stored anywhere.

A number of noble Lords have expressed scepticism about whether the courts would adequately apply the reasonable excuse defence, which really is the nub of the issue which we are debating now. I have had this discussion many times with the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, in private. I must say, as a magistrate for nearly 20 years, that we often hear completely ridiculous defences. It is certainly not unusual in magistrates’ court—or, I am sure, in Crown Court—and magistrates and judges are well able to deal with those types of defences. I know that the noble Baroness is sceptical of that, which is one of the prime reasons why we have put the review in the Bill. She will know it is very unusual for Governments to commit in a Bill to have a review, but it is because we understand that this is a new area of law and that the way we are defining “reasonable excuse” is a politically contentious area. I urge her to continue to work with us, which I am sure she will do in any event, and I urge her not to move her amendments to a vote. I beg to move.