Data Ethics Commission

Baroness Grender Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

We are going to liaise with civil society groups, as I have said, and academia. The Nuffield Foundation, for example, is going to develop plans in partnership with the Royal Society, the British Academy, the Royal Statistical Society and the Alan Turing Institute to establish an independent convention on data ethics. This is something we support and will contribute to, and I think the public will be able to learn from such conventions. As I say, we will update our thinking later in the year.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, will this commission cover not only ethics but the use and application of data, for example through machine learning and development of algorithms? Can the Minister also explain how this commission will interrelate with the new data protection regulations starting in 2018 and the digital charter announced in the Queen’s Speech?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The data protection Bill, which will come before Parliament in the autumn, is to give effect to the general data protection regulations and the law enforcement directive. It will obviously include things to do with privacy, but data ethics covers many other things, such as artificial intelligence, which the noble Baroness mentioned. So it is not specifically a regulatory thing, although regulation may come out of it. It is to consider the new issues that come with this new technology.