Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 34 from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and will speak to my own Amendment 35, which amends it. When an algorithm is being used to make important decisions about our lives, it is vital that everyone is aware of what it is doing and what data it is based on. On Amendment 34, I know from having had responsibility for algorithmic decision support tools that users are very interested in how recent the data it is based on is, and how relevant it is to them. Was the algorithm derived from a population that included people who share their characteristics? Subsection (1)(c)(ii) of the new clause proposed in Amendment 34 refers to regular assessment of the data used by the system. I would hope that this would be part of the meaningful explanation to individuals to be prescribed by the Secretary of State in subsection (1)(b).

Amendment 35 would add to this that it is vital that all users and procurers of such a system understand its real-world efficacy. I use the word “efficacy” rather than “accuracy” because it might be difficult to define accuracy with regard to some of these systems. The procurer of any ADM system should want to know how accurate it is using realistic testing, and users should also be aware of those findings. Does the system give the same outcome as a human assessor 95% or 60% of the time? Is that the same for all kinds of queries, or is it more accurate for some groups of people than others? The efficacy is really one of the most important aspects and should be public. I have added an extra line that ensures that this declaration of efficacy would be kept updated. One would hope that the performance of any such system would be monitored anyway, but this ensures that the outcomes of such monitoring are in the public domain.

In Committee, the Minister advised us to wait for publication of the algorithmic transparency records that were released in December. Looking at them, I think they make clear the much greater need for guidance and stringency in what should be mandated. I will give two short examples from those records. For the DBT: Find Exporters algorithm, under “Model performance” it merely says that it uses Brier scoring and other methods, without giving any actual results of that testing to indicate how well it performs. It suggests looking at the GitHub pages. I followed that link, and it did not allow me in. The public have no access to those pages. This is why these performance declarations need to be mandated and forced to be in the public domain.

In the second example, the Cambridgeshire trial of an externally supplied object detection system just cites the company’s test data, claiming average precision in a “testing environment” of 43.5%. This does not give the user a lot of information. Again, it links to GitHub pages produced by the supplier. Admittedly, this is a trial, so perhaps the Cambridgeshire Partnership will update it with its real-world trial data. But that is why we need to ensure annual updates of performance data and ensure that that data is not just a report of the supplier’s claims in a test environment.

The current model of algorithmic transparency records is demonstrably not fit for purpose, and these provisions would help put them on a much firmer footing. These systems, after all, are making life-changing decisions for all of us and we all need to be sure how well they are doing and put appropriate levels of trust in them accordingly.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 36 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. I also support Amendments 26, 27, 28, 31, 32 and 35. The Government, in their AI Statement last week, said that ADM will be rolled out across the public sector in the coming months and years. It will increase productivity and provide better public services to the people of this country.

However, there are many people who are fearful of their details being taken by an advanced computer, and a decision which could affect their lives being made by that computer. Surely the days of “computer says no” must be over. People need to know that there is a possibility of a human being involved in the process, particularly when dealing with the public sector. I am afraid that my own interactions with public sector software in various government departments have not always been happy ones, and I have been grateful to be able to appeal to a human.