Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Debate between Viscount Camrose and Baroness Harding of Winscombe

Report stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly, given the hour, just to reinforce three things that I have said as the wingman to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, many times, sadly, in this Chamber in child safety debates. The age-appropriate design code that we worked on together and which she championed a decade ago has driven real change. So we have evidence that setting in place codes of conduct that require technology companies to think in advance about the potential harms of their technologies genuinely drives change. That is point one.

Point two is that we all know that AI is a foundational technology which is already transforming the services that our children use. So we should be applying that same principle that was so hard fought 10 years ago for non-AI digital to this foundational technology. We know that, however well meaning, technology companies’ development stacks are always contended. They always have more good things that they think they can do to improve their products for their consumers, that will make them money, than they have the resources to do. However much money they have, they just are contended. That is the nature of technology businesses. This means that they never get to the safety-by-design issues unless they are required to. It was no different 150 or 200 years ago as electricity was rolling through the factories of the mill towns in the north of England. It required health and safety legislation. AI requires health and safety legislation. You start with codes of conduct and then you move forward, and I really do not think that we can wait.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 41 aims to establish a code of practice for the use of children’s data in the development of AI technologies. In the face of rapidly advancing AI, it is, of course, crucial that we ensure children’s data is handled with the utmost care, prioritising their best interests and fundamental rights. We agree that AI systems that are likely to impact children should be designed to be safe and ethical by default. This code of practice will be instrumental in guiding data controllers to ensure that AI development and deployment reflect the specific needs and vulnerabilities of children.

However, although we support the intent behind the amendment, we have concerns, which echo concerns on amendments in a previous group, about the explicit reference to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and general comment 25. I will not rehearse my comments from earlier groups, except to say that it is so important that we do not have these explicit links to international frameworks, important as they are, in UK legislation.

In the light of this, although we firmly support the overall aim of safeguarding children’s data in AI, we believe this can be achieved more effectively by focusing on UK legal principles and ensuring that the code of practice is rooted in our domestic context.