Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 28, 29, 33, 34 and 36. I give notice that I will only speak formally to Amendment 33. For some reason, it seems to have escaped this group and jumped into the next one.

As we discussed in Committee, and indeed on its previous versions, the Bill removes the general prohibition on solely automated decisions and places the responsibility on individuals to enforce their rights rather than on companies to demonstrate why automation is permissible. The Bill also amends Article 22 of the GDPR so that protection against solely automated decision-making applies only to decisions made using sensitive data such as race, religion and health data. This means that decisions based on other personal data, such as postcode, nationality, sex or gender, would be subject to weaker safeguards, increasing the risk of unfair or discriminatory outcomes. This will allow more decisions with potentially significant impacts to be made without human oversight, even if they do not involve sensitive data. This represents a significant weakening of existing protection against unsafe automated decision-making. That is why I tabled Amendment 33 to leave out the whole clause.

However, the Bill replaces the existing Article 22 with Articles 22A to 22D, which redefine automated decisions and allow for solely automated decision-making in a broader range of circumstances. This change raises concerns about transparency and the ability of individuals to challenge automated decisions. Individuals may not be notified about the use of ADM, making it difficult to exercise their rights. Moreover, the Bill’s safeguards for automated decisions, particularly in the context of law enforcement, are weaker compared with the protections offered by the existing Article 22. This raises serious concerns about the potential for infringement of people’s rights and liberties in areas such as policing, where the use of sensitive data in ADM could become more prevalent. Additionally, the lack of clear requirements for personalised explanations about how ADM systems reach decisions further limits individuals’ understanding of and ability to challenge outcomes.

In the view of these Benches, the Bill significantly weakens safeguards around ADM, creates legal uncertainty due to vague definitions, increases the risk of discrimination, and limits transparency and redress for individuals—ultimately undermining public trust in the use of these technologies. I retabled Amendments 28, 29, 33 and 34 from Committee to address continuing concerns regarding these systems. The Bill lacks clear definitions of crucial terms such as “meaningful human involvement” and, similarly, “significant effect”, which are essential for determining the scope of protection. That lack of clarity could lead to varying interpretations and inconsistencies in application, creating legal uncertainty for individuals and organisations.

In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, emphasised the Government’s commitment to responsible ADM and argued against defining meaningful human involvement in the Bill, but instead for allowing the Secretary of State to define those terms through delegated legislation. However, that raises concerns about transparency and parliamentary oversight, as these are significant policy decisions. Predominantly automated decision-making should be included in Clause 80, as in Amendment 28, as a decision may lack meaningful human involvement and significantly impact individuals’ rights. The assertion by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that predominantly automated decisions inherently involve meaningful human oversight can be contested, particularly given the lack of a clear definition of such involvement in the Bill.

There are concerns that changes in the Bill will increase the risk of discrimination, especially for marginalised groups. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asserted in Committee that the data protection framework already requires adherence to the Equality Act. However, that is not enough to prevent algorithmic bias and discrimination in ADM systems. There is a need for mandatory bias assessments of all ADM systems, particularly those used in the public sector, as well as for greater transparency in how those systems are developed and deployed.

We have not returned to the fray on the ATRS, but it is clear that a statutory framework for the ATRS is necessary to ensure its effectiveness and build trust in public sector AI. Despite the assurance by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that the ATRS is mandatory for government departments, its implementation relies on a cross-government policy mandate that lacks statutory backing and may prove insufficient to ensure the consistent and transparent use of algorithmic tools.

My Amendment 34 seeks to establish requirements for public sector organisations using ADM systems. Its aim is to ensure transparency and accountability in the use of these systems by requiring public authorities to publish details of the systems they use, including the purpose of the system, the data used and any mitigating measures to address risks. I very much welcome Amendment 35 from the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, which would improve it considerably and which I have also signed. Will the ATRS do as good a job as that amendment?

Concerns persist about the accessibility and effectiveness of this mechanism for individuals seeking redress against potentially harmful automated decisions. A more streamlined and user-friendly process for challenging automated decisions is needed in the in the age of increasing ADM. The lack of clarity and specific provisions in the Bill raises concerns about its effectiveness in mitigating the risks posed by automated systems, particularly in safeguarding vulnerable groups such as children.

My Amendment 36 would require the Secretary of State to produce a definition of “meaningful human involvement” in ADM in collaboration with the Information Commissioner’s Office, or to clearly set out their reasoning as to why that is not required within six months of the Act passing. The amendment is aimed at addressing the ambiguity surrounding “meaningful human involvement” and ensuring that there is a clear understanding of what constitutes appropriate human oversight in ADM processes.

I am pleased that the Minister has promised a code of practice, but what assurance can he give regarding the forthcoming ICO code of practice about automated decision-making? How will it provide clear guidance on how to implement and interpret the safeguards for ADM, and will it address the definition of meaningful human involvement? What forms of redress will it require to be established? What level of transparency will be required? A code of conduct offered by the Minister would be acceptable, provided that the Secretary of State did not have the sole right to determine the definition of meaningful human involvement. I therefore hope that my Amendment 29 will be accepted alongside Amendment 36, because it is important that the definition of such a crucial term should be developed independently, and with the appropriate expertise, to ensure that ADM systems are used fairly and responsibly, and that individual rights are adequately protected.

Amendments 31 and 32 from the Opposition Front Bench seem to me to have considerable merit, particularly Amendment 32, in terms of the nature of the human intervention. However, I confess to some bafflement as to the reasons for Amendment 26, which seeks to insert the OECD principles set out in the AI White Paper. Indeed, they were the G20 principles as well and are fully supportable in the context of an AI Bill, for instance, and I very much hope that will form Clause 1 of a new AI Bill going forward. I am not going to go into great detail, but I wonder whether those principles are already effectively addressed in data protection legislation. If we are not careful, we are going to find a very confused regulator in these circumstances. So, although there is much to commend the principles as such, whether they are a practical proposition in a Bill of this nature is rather moot.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

Before the Minister sits down, he said that there will be evaluations of the efficacy of these systems but he did not mention whether those will have to be made public. Can he give me any assurance on that?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

There is a requirement. Going back to the issue of principles, which was discussed earlier on, one of the existing principles—which I am now trying to locate and cannot—is transparency. I expect that we would make as much of the information public as we can in order to ensure good decision-making and assure people as to how the decisions have been reached.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a composer and a copyright holder. I salute the speech of my noble friend Lady Kidron for its strength and accuracy. I too feel that there should be an impact assessment on such important matters.

If noble Lords will spare me one minute, it might be worth mentioning a little bit of background. The record industry more or less ceased to exist when the internet and streaming came along. Of course, they brought enormous advantages, as I am sure AI will, but there was a huge cost. One reason why many great big pop groups have gone on tour in the last few years is that they are not earning money from records. Although there is an interest for the public to gain and disseminate more information, there is a cost for the basic product. Those records brought in money that paid for performers to be employed in studios to make new records. It is a vicious circle: once you stop that income coming in, you stop creativity in its tracks.

We heard Sir Paul McCartney mentioned, and in one sense I am representing the more contemporary classical side. But I too have worked on the pop side, and I can I tell you that a record that we made for medics in Ukraine, with the help of no lesser figures than Neil Tennant and David Gilmour, has had 400,000 downloads so far, yet will produce only about £200 to go to Ukraine. That gives you some idea of how the shift in finance has changed in respect of what records bring in. Of course we cannot go backwards—this is progress—but we do have to be careful. We should think about the example that that sets.

As I said, Paul McCartney was mentioned and, over the weekend, Sir Elton John summed up the feelings of many composers. I am sure he would not mind my representing his words to you here. He said:

“Without thorough and robust copyright protection that allows artists to earn hard-fought earnings from their music, the UK’s future place on the world stage as a leader in arts and popular culture is under serious jeopardy. It is the absolute bedrock of artistic prosperity, and the country’s future success in the creative industries depends upon it”.


I think those words would be reiterated by every composer and creator in this country.

I will make one final point. In some ways, this is not a party-political issue but a cross-party one. It is our creativity that is at stake here. I have spoken in the past about music: the problems with touring and all the things that have hemmed in creativity. We have heard about the £126 billion that the creative industries bring in. There is support on both sides of the House. The Front Bench of the Conservative Party always used to say to me, “We salute the creative industries. We admire what they do and what they bring in to the economy”. The new Front Bench is saying much the same.

But listen to Elton John and listen to Paul McCartney and, if you value the creative industries as much as you say you do, for God’s sake protect their copyright.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support these important clauses. I declare my interests as I hold copyright as a filmmaker and writer.

Copyright and IP exist to assert ownership over creative works and protect the interests of creators. This is fundamental to supporting people whose job it is to have ideas, be creative and innovate in a range of different ways. Undermining this and allowing major breaches of that protection risks undermining the whole basis of innovation and creativity within a society, and that cannot be done lightly.

Creators of generative AI models claim that they “need” more and more materials to train their models on, including materials that are the creative works of others—just as, until last week, they had claimed that they needed more and more of the latest chips. We should ask ourselves very seriously why they need these copyright-protected works. What use-cases are there for models that have been trained on copyrighted works that would not be possible with models trained on public-domain materials and works for which the rights have been properly obtained?

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

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

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

I too support the noble Baroness.

As I said at the previous stage of this Bill, it surely goes without saying that our United Kingdom copyright law has to counter the increasing theft of intellectual property by artificial intelligence companies.

As the noble Baroness’s present amendment illustrates, we should provide transparency criteria that would allow copyright holders to identify when and from where their work has been taken. I am sure that all your Lordships will agree with that aim, as well as being well aware of the strong human rights back-up support to us from the 46 states’ affiliation of the Council of Europe, of which the United Kingdom remains a prominent member and of whose education committee I am a recent chairman.

As many of your Lordships know, first and foremost, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to privacy, including of personal data. Article 1 of its initial protocol protects property rights, including intellectual property rights and copyright.

Secondly, Article 5 of the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime prohibits system interference by, for example, the transmission of computer data, while its Article 10 stipulates

“Offences related to infringements of copyright and related rights”.

Thirdly, Article 11 of the 2024 Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law safeguards privacy and personal data.

Regarding copyright protection in recent centuries, and as emphasised at an earlier stage of our discussions on this Bill, we can be justly proud of our own United Kingdom record, beginning, as is well known, with the Statute of Anne 1710, which granted legal protection to publishers of books.

In the interests of those both here and abroad, we must now uphold the high standards of that tradition. The United Kingdom should guide the good practice. Here, today, supporting the noble Baroness’s amendment is a clear example of our ability so to do.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I will be brief partly because it is such a simple amendment: it would just put the principle of the transparency of these models in the Bill. We need to know what goes into these models for two reasons. The first is so that any form of copyright can be prosecuted. At the moment, how can we know that even our current copyright rules have been broken if we do not know what goes into these models? It does not matter whether the Government are thinking about changing the copyright rules. Whatever copyright rules we have, we need to know what is being used in the models.

The second reason is the outputs of these models. We need to know on what they were trained in order to know their strengths and weaknesses. The noble Lord, Lord Vallance, himself said this in answer to a question from my noble friend Lady Coussins during Oral Questions on Tuesday: if the data that has gone into the model is not transparent, we cannot ascertain its strengths and weaknesses without extensive proxy measurements and probing.

On these two principles, it is vital that this simple amendment goes through today. That it has some added benefits from being able to legislate separately for small and medium-sized enterprises, micro-businesses and UK businesses just adds to the fact that this amendment has been carefully crafted to give us exactly what we need in the Bill today.

[Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, posed an appropriate question: what would Shakespeare make of AI? The answer is rather like the proverbial million monkeys on their typewriter: so far they have failed to produce a credible version of Shakespeare, but they have produced several improved versions of The Art of the Deal, as far as I can ascertain.

I too will speak to the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the government amendments that came back from the House of Commons. I thank the Minister for her engagement on this and the briefing that she gave earlier today to noble friends, other colleagues and noble Peers across the House, and my very good personal friend Minister Chris Bryant, whose charismatic presence I felt around us earlier—almost as if he was observing our proceedings.

I also thank the Secretary of State for having confirmed, via a third party in last weekend’s press, that the Government have changed their position on having the opt-out in the consultation as their preferred position. It would be helpful if the Minister could confirm that on the Floor of the House today, because I believe that is an accurate position and an accurate assessment, even though it was delivered via a spokesperson rather than directly by the Secretary of State. It is a very helpful change, and I welcome the movement the Government have made in the amendments they put forward. I note that it is part of Motion 49A that we accept the government amendments to produce the reports that were mentioned.

I declare that I am a member of the Ivors Academy and the Musicians’ Union, and draw attention to my entry in the register. Creative remuneration was one of the central issues that I worked on as a parliamentarian for the 23 years I was in the House of Commons, certainly while I was on the Front Bench in opposition, as a member of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, as it was then, and as the sponsor of a Private Member’s Bill in the Commons. Although it did not get into law, the Copyright (Rights and Remuneration of Musicians, Etc.) Bill had a significant influence and led, for example, to the creation of the remuneration committee, which is currently sitting within the offices of the Intellectual Property Office. Strong efforts are being made, with very strong engagement from Minister Chris Bryant, to hold to account everyone concerned in the music industry to improve remuneration for creators, and particularly for musicians, which is my interest.

This is not just about rights holders. I have never understood why anybody in the creative industries could, for example, start off with a love of music and creativity but become an executive in the creative industries and think that they are worthy of being paid more than the people who actually create the wonderful content that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, was speaking about earlier. How can a music industry executive reward themselves with a greater remuneration than the entire remuneration of every songwriter in this country? There is only one explanation: by the personal attrition of their soul—but that is another matter altogether.

The Bill is an opportunity. The key point is that obviously the elected House should have its way—I strongly believe that, as a former Member—but it is important that this House has its say along the way and that transparency is key. We cannot enforce copyright and rights holders cannot enforce their rights unless there is transparency. This Bill, this bus, is an opportunity that the Government should be getting on rather than waiting for another bus several years down the road, in the form of some future primary legislation. I hope that there is an opportunity for a compromise and that, should we send these amendments back to the other place, the Government look for a way to give a commitment towards ensuring that, through the Bill, they can take powers to regulate on transparency in the near future.

I was fortunate enough last week to accompany—this is an absolutely blatant name-drop—Björn Ulvaeus of Abba.