King’s Speech (4th Day)

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

My Lords, I enthusiastically welcome my noble friend Lord Vallance of Balham to this House and to the Government Front Bench and congratulate him on his inspiring maiden speech. I have high hopes and confidence in the ability of him and my other noble friends on the Front Bench—not least my noble friend Lord Livermore—and their colleagues in the House of Commons, to deliver on the excellent measures set out in the gracious Speech and those that will follow in subsequent Sessions of this Parliament. I should also, as a fellow but less distinguished recovering banker, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Petitgas, on his admirable French philosophical maiden speech.

In its editorial last week on the King’s Speech, the Financial Times said:

“While the previous conservative administration generally believed in a small government, centred on correcting market failures, Starmer envisages the state as more of a force for good”.


If the Financial Times, which I generally revere, was trying, like some noble Lords opposite, to present the bogeyman of big government, I believe that it was drawing a false distinction. The new Government’s programme is based on impeccable social market principles, being centred on the market and intervening directly or indirectly through regulation only where there are market failures. The difference between this Government and the last is in the recognition of the sheer scale of market failure that needs to be addressed, and urgently, as well as in the competence and determination that will be brought to bear on these challenges.

Partnership with the private sector and private funding is, as my noble friend Lord Wood said, at the heart of the Labour Government’s approach, whether in housing, renewable energy, infrastructure or innovation. I will speak briefly about two aspects of this.

First, I welcome the national wealth fund and its sensible approach of continuity, which builds on the UK Infrastructure Bank and the British Business Bank. I was amused by the semantic grumbles of noble Lords opposite about it not being a sovereign wealth fund—not that many of the wider population would, quite sensibly, be alert to the finer points of this definition. I was amused by the irony that, if ever there was a period in which a sovereign wealth fund should have been established in the UK, it was during the Conservative Administration from 1979 to 1997, which coincided with the peak surplus from North Sea oil production. Instead, the revenues were frittered away and the exchange rate pushed to eye-watering levels, with unnecessary damage to UK industrial competitiveness. Economic mismanagement was not confined to only the most recent Conservative Governments.

I welcome too the proposed pensions Bill and the important reforms to the pension fund industry. These are vital, as my noble friend Lady Drake much more expertly spelled out, but if ever there was an area in which the devil is in the detail it is this.

The noble Lord, Lord Morse, struck a note of caution, with which I agree, about the difficulty of balancing the obligations of trustees and managers to deliver the best possible risk-adjusted returns through asset class and geographical diversification with the desire to encourage investment in UK companies and innovation. Although returns from private investment funds—from infrastructure to buyouts, from expansion to venture capital—can be superior to those from public market funds, the disbursement of those returns between different managers and funds is, according to authoritative Cambridge Associates data, much more extreme. It is hard enough to invest in these asset classes as successfully as, say, Wellcome Trust or the Yale University endowment, without any geographical or sectoral bias. We must be careful not to harm the overriding interests of pension fund members through well-intentioned but ill-judged private investments.

I therefore look forward to the Bill being brought forward for consideration by your Lordships’ House in due course, along with the other legislation to deliver this excellent programme for government.

Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill [HL]

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

My Lords, there can have been few Private Members’ Bills that have set out to address such towering issues as this Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. He has been an important voice on the opportunities and challenges arising from generative AI in this House and outside it. This Bill and his powerful introduction to it are only the latest contributions to the vital issue of regulating AI to ensure that the social and financial interests and security of consumers are protected as a first priority.

The noble Lord also contributed to a wide-ranging discussion on the regulation of AI in relation to misinformation and disinformation convened by the Thomson Foundation, of which, as recorded in the register, I am chair. Disinformation in news has existed and grown as a problem since long before the emergence of generative AI, but each iteration of AI makes the disinformation that human bad actors promote even harder to detect and counteract.

This year a record number of people in the world will go to the polls in general elections, as the noble Lord said. The Thomson Foundation has commissioned research into the incidence of AI-fuelled disinformation in the Taiwanese presidential elections in mid-January, conducted by Professor Chen-Ling Hung of National Taiwan University. Your Lordships may not be surprised that the preliminary conclusions of the work, which will be continued in relation to other elections, confirms the concerns that the noble Lord voiced in his introduction. Generative AI’s role in exacerbating misinformation and disinformation in news and the impact that can have on the democratic process are hugely important, but this is only one of a large number of areas where generative AI is at the same time an opportunity and a threat.

I strongly support this well-judged and balanced Bill, which recognises the fast-changing, dynamic nature of this technology—Moore’s law on steroids, as I have previously suggested—and sets out a logical and coherent role for the proposed AI authority, bringing a transparency and clarity to the regulation of AI for its developers and users that is currently lacking.

I look forward to the Minister’s winding up, but with my expectations firmly under control. The Prime Minister’s position seems incoherent. On the one hand he says that generative AI poses an existential threat and on the other that no new regulatory body is needed and the technology is too fast-moving for a comprehensive regulatory framework to be established. That is a guarantee that we will be heaving to close a creaking stable door as the thoroughbred horse disappears over the horizon. I will not be surprised to hear the Minister extol the steps taken in recent months, such as the establishment of the AI unit, as a demonstration that everything is under control. Even if these small initiatives are welcome, they fall well short of establishing the transparency and clarity of regulation needed to engender confidence in all parties—consumers, employers, workers and civil society.

If evidence is needed to make the case for a transparent, well-defined regulatory regime rather than ad hoc, fragmented departmental action, the Industry and Regulators Committee, of which I am privileged to be a member, today published a letter to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up about the regulation of property agents. Five years ago, a working group chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Best, recommended that the sector should be regulated, yet despite positive initial noises from the Government, nothing has happened. Even making allowance for the impact of the pandemic during this time, this does not engender confidence in their willingness and ability to grasp regulatory nettles in a low-tech industry, let alone in a high-tech one.

It is hard not to suspect that this reflects an ideological suspicion within the Conservative Party that regulation is the enemy of innovation and economic success rather than a necessary condition, which I believe it is. Evidence to the Industry and Regulators Committee from a representative of Merck confirmed that the life sciences industry thrives in countries where there is strong regulation.

I urge the Government to give parliamentary time to this Bill to allow it to go forward. I look forward to addressing its detailed issues then.

King’s Speech

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle and the noble Baroness, Lady Owen of Alderley Edge, on their truly excellent maiden speeches. Like the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I was almost exactly the same age as the noble Baroness when I made my maiden speech and I can assure her, like the noble Lord, Lord Addington, did, that her speech was very much more articulate than mine. I look forward to the maiden speech following mine of the noble Lord, Lord Ranger of Northwood, and will try not to prolong my contribution in order to minimise any final pre-match nerves he may be feeling.

I will speak briefly on each of today’s specialist subjects: science and technology, media, and culture. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my interests in the register; in particular, as chair of the Thomson Foundation and chair of the Theseus Agency. Not disclosed in the register is that my son is a television and film screenwriter.

Currently, AI, particularly generative AI, dominates the focus of and debate about science and technology, and I will address this area. But the contribution of technology to economic growth and broader prosperity encompasses a much wider range of disciplines than AI alone, even if AI is being deployed alongside them in almost all cases. Our positions in life sciences, green technology and nuclear power, for instance, are all dependent on the base of pure and applied science that this country enjoys.

Two weeks ago, the major US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz—which in the 15 years since its founding has set new ground rules for how venture capital firms provide broad support for technology companies beyond just money—held a reception to mark the opening of its London office, the first outside the US. Co-founder Ben Horowitz singled out the excellence of the UK’s higher education sector as one of the three factors leading to this step.

We on these Benches, and others, recognise this but those of us on the Industry and Regulators Committee particularly fear for the sustainability of this sector, as spelled out in our recent report. The belated decision by the Government to rejoin Horizon Europe is welcome, even if irreparable damage has been done by the delay in rejoining. But the wider financial pressures on the higher education sector and on students themselves put at risk that vital science base, not just in the Russell group universities but throughout the sector. Does the Minister who will be winding up agree that there is a systemic risk to the HE sector’s financial viability and hence to our prospects for long-term economic growth?

Generative AI represents a classic balance of opportunity and threat, which the Government have at least partially recognised. From my perspective, the Bletchley Park summit on AI safety was at best a score draw. I draw on football analogies without having the time, much less the expertise, to comment on the football governance Bill. I welcome the participation of China—as more than half of all published academic papers on AI have at least one Chinese co-author—and the signing of the declaration by China and the 27 countries in the EU but I deplore the exclusion of workers’ representation, which my noble friend Lady O’Grady highlighted so authoritatively in yesterday’s debate.

PAI—the influential non-profit US-based partnership, founded by big tech but now with over 100 members from academic, civil society and media organisations, including the Thomson Foundation—has the impact of AI on employment as one of its four priority areas of focus. Previous speakers, and participants in my noble friend Lord Bassam’s Oral Question earlier, have regretted the absence of any proposed legislation to provide overarching regulation of AI in line with, notably, the US and the EU. I join them. Of course, it is particularly hard to regulate such a fast-moving sector but I was struck this morning hearing a representative of a big pharma company make the point, in giving evidence to the Industry and Regulators Committee, that there is no successful life sciences industry in a country that does not have a world-class pharmaceutical regulator.

I am short of time. Like other noble Lords I welcome the Media Bill, although after such a long wait it may be hard for it to meet expectations. I will raise two specific points. The independent television production industry has grown and changed hugely in the 40 years since Channel 4’s start. Many production companies and groups are now well capitalised and resourced with customers throughout the world. Channel 4’s pioneering role accounts significantly for this, but its work is not done. It remains a vital catalyst in nurturing younger and smaller programme makers, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, noted, and it is essential that any change to Channel 4’s remit preserves, if not strengthens, this.

The Government’s briefing on the King’s Speech stated that the Bill will support Channel 4’s sustainability

“by strengthening the broadcaster’s governance arrangements”.

All organisations are capable of improving their governance, but will the Minister say in what specific ways he believes Channel 4’s governance needs improving?

A couple of years ago, a candidate for the Channel 4 board with impeccable professional qualifications and political independence was unanimously recommended by the Channel 4 board, Ofcom and DCMS. No. 10 rejected the recommendation without reason but presumably in the hope of appointing a more biddable fellow traveller. Would the envisaged changes to governance prevent this or at least ensure that there would be complete transparency over the process for board appointments?

Advanced Artificial Intelligence

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

Monday 24th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

My Lords, I found it hard to know where to start in trying to address the subject of this debate. Professor Geoffrey Hinton, whom other noble Lords have already invoked, has said that

“it's quite conceivable that humanity is just a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence”.

From the existential risk to humanity—not, in my view, to be lightly dismissed as scaremongering—through to the danger of bad actors using AI for bad things, to the opportunity to re-energise productivity growth by responsibly harnessing generative AI, a mind-boggling range of issues are raised by today’s Motion.

The introduction from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, could not have been bettered as a summary and agenda—an encouragement, perhaps, that humanity has not yet been displaced in the hierarchy of intelligence. The AI entrepreneur Jakob Uszkoreit is quoted in today’s Financial Times:

“In deep learning, nothing is ever just about the equations … it’s a giant bag of black magic tricks that only very few people have truly mastered”.


This echoes the question from the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. Who among us, in or out of government, really understands this?

Not only is it a black box but, from what we lay people know, it is one that is changing breathtakingly fast, as my noble friend Lady Primarolo has said. Moore’s law, which observed that the number of transistors on a semiconductor doubles every two years, is nothing compared with the pace of AI development. As a foundation model or platform, GPT saw the number of parameters between GPT 1 and GPT 2 increase by 1.3 billion in less than two years. The increase in parameters in a single year between GPT 2 and GPT 3 was over 100 times greater, at 173 billion—as my noble friend Lord Watson said, it is exponential, not linear. As a simplified representation of the speed of AI’s development, this simultaneously indicates the opportunities to harness it for good on the one hand and demonstrates the formidable challenge for regulation on the other.

I am temperamentally an optimist and therefore excited by the positive contribution that advanced AI can make to our world. However, in the time available, I want to focus on two of the challenges: the macro issue of regulation and the more specific question of fake news. In that context, I highlight two of my interests declared in the register. I am a trustee of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, which has an endowment with investments in US and other VC funds with holdings in advanced AI companies. I am chair of the Thomson Foundation, which trains journalists, principally in low-income and/or low press freedom countries.

Regulation of advanced AI is inevitably complex. It may be right to focus in the short term on ensuring existing regulators adequately consider the impact of AI. However, in the longer term, there has to be specific overarching regulation, as I think is implied by the Government’s declared aspiration for the UK to be the geographical centre of global AI regulation. Could the Minister say what the Government’s objectives are for the global AI summit being convened for later this year? What arguments have they used for the UK to be the global centre of regulation? When, six years ago, the founder of a Silicon Valley software company described GDPR to me as the de facto global standard for data protection, that reflected the sheer size of the EU market to which it applied. That is not a factor which applies now to the UK’s negotiating position.

Finally, the media, both mainstream and social, are a vital source of information for us all; the integrity of that information lies at the heart of democracy. Your Lordships may have seen the amusing faked photograph of Pope Francis in a fashionable puffer jacket. Other future faked images could be deeply dangerous to stability and security, both globally and, in particular, in low-income countries. Regulation cannot be the only answer to this; education and training are also essential. Can the Minister urge his colleagues in the FCDO to protect and increase funding for media development and journalist training in low-income countries, with a central focus on countering AI-generated fake news, from whatever source?