Public Authority Algorithmic and Automated Decision-Making Systems Bill [HL]

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend, who throws himself into these issues to the benefit of all of us. He was very supportive of the work three or so years ago of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, which I was lucky enough to chair, on advanced technology in the justice system. We recognised the value of ADM, but also the risks to transparency and of inbuilt bias. Then there is the risk of surrendering one’s critical faculties—predictive policing, for instance.

One witness said to the committee:

“We are not building criminal risk assessment tools to identify insider trading or who is going to commit the next kind of corporate fraud … We are looking at high-volume data that is mostly about poor people”.


I wondered then how it would feel to be arrested, charged and maybe more on the basis of technology which could not be explained. I wonder now about how bias can affect immigration and border security. My noble friend gave some examples.

The Bill is important. It is about our relationship with the state, which I believe is more important than our relationship with commercial organisations—even Amazon, although some might disagree. It takes confidence to counter the notion: “The computer says”. Two Home Secretaries in the last Government assured the committee that the human would always be in the loop of decision-making. We worried that this could mean simply a click at the end of the process. For myself, I would prefer that machines were in the loop of human decision-making. Of course, today’s stellar cast of speakers would not fall foul of the culture of deference.

I am troubled that suppliers are in a very strong position. Even without the dubious sales practices that we heard about, mainly from the US, it is very difficult for a purchaser to challenge a seller’s untested claims, and commercial confidentiality is often prayed in aid against transparency. I very much support the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, about procurement. In any event, we need the assurance that the principles that apply—or should apply—to all public authority decisions, such as rationality, proportionality and so on, apply to ADM systems.

I do not want to be negative about AI, just cautious, so I welcome the reference in the Bill to innovation. In the previous debate, my noble friend Lady Grender referred to the time lag in legislation in the face of the development of AI, and that is relevant here as well. I do not think that my noble friend needs the support of a distinctly analogue dinosaur, but he has it.