Watchdogs (Industry and Regulators Committee Report)

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, it is an absolute pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, not just because I am going to speak thematically, alongside him, but because he speaks so wonderfully.

I thank the committee for its excellent report, and the excellent introduction by its chair, the noble Lord, Lord Hollick. I will restrict my remarks to two issues: the AI skills shortage across government and regulators, and the recommendation for a Joint Committee of both Houses to oversee digital regulation. I refer the House to my interests, in particular as adviser to the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford and as chair of the LSE’s Digital Futures research centre.

AI technology is not new, and nor is competition for digital expertise to support public policy. However, in recent years, we have seen a raft of digital regulation across data, competition, safety, consumer products and so on, as well as a step change in the scale at which AI is being deployed across business, public services and direct to citizens. Together, these have created an eye-watering competition for AI skills. The US and China dominate the charts of AI talent, together currently employing 75% of highly skilled workers; that is up from 58% in 2019. One sector analysis found that there are only 10,000 people in the world with the kinds of skills that new applications of AI need. I ask the House to do the maths: if the US and China have 7,500 of those people, that leaves very few for the rest of us.

What was once an issue concentrated in the tech sector, or in businesses with complex delivery or service functions, is now an issue for everyone, including the regulators. Increasingly, we hear government Ministers suggest that AI is the tool by which they will reform the NHS, justice and welfare, and that it is central to their growth agenda. This requires regulators and government itself to enter an intensely competitive market for skills in which they either pay eye-watering sums to attract talent or outsource to companies, most often headquartered outside the UK, with which they frequently make data sharing and processing arrangements that accrue long-term value disproportionately away from the UK.

There are a number of actions that government might consider, from funding graduate programmes to retraining professionals in associated fields or adding digital skills to those with domain expertise, compulsory training for civil servants and government lawyers, attractive packages for foreign nationals, and so on. But without a concerted and urgent effort, our hopes to be a centre of innovation, and for the transformation of public services and functions of government, such as drafting legislation or fulfilling oversight functions, will be blighted by a lack of access to adequate skills.

This leads neatly to my second point. The pre-legislative committee on the online harms Bill, on which I was privileged to serve, recommended a Joint Committee of both Houses to oversee digital regulation, setting out five primary functions for that committee: scrutinising digital regulators; scrutinising government drafting of legislation about digital technologies; reviewing relevant codes of practice; monitoring new developments such as the creation of emerging technologies; and publishing independent research or whistleblower testimonies. During the passage of the Online Safety Bill, the data Bill and the competition Bill, the creation of a Joint Committee was supported by Members of both Houses and from all parties, most notably championed by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, but including the Minister herself.

There is not time in this debate to go into detail about emerging gaps between the intentions of Parliament and digital regulators, the speed of regulatory codes versus the speed of technological development, the twin evils of hacking and scraping of intellectual property, commercial access to publicly held data, or the ferocious lobbying of government and regulator by the most powerful companies in the world. However, along with the issues raised by the report of conflicting objectives, inadequate expertise in government and regulator, and the habit of information overload instead of transparency, each of these things would be well served by Parliament having oversight and expertise from dedicated committee members and staff.

This is a time in which digital solutions, particularly those driven by AI, come before the House in ever greater numbers, with unprecedented impact on every area of public and private life. If we do not ourselves grasp the problem of skills, we will squander our sovereign resources and find ourselves renters of services and products that should be built in the UK. If we do not improve our oversight of digital regulation, we will squander our chance to be a rule-maker and not a rule-taker of the new world.