AI Safety

Ben Lake Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion Preseli) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. I thank the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) for securing this very important debate, and for outlining so impressively both the real benefits that have already been realised by narrow AI systems and the potential benefits, but also, perhaps most importantly, the real risks to human safety and security that more advanced systems pose.

I should like to make one very simple point in my remarks: while we need to recognise the benefits of AI and the development of various models, we should adopt a safety-first approach, especially when it comes to the development of more advanced AI systems. I am very concerned that the apparent arms race we are witnessing—with various big AI and tech companies heading towards superintelligence and other advanced AI models—means that we do not have that democratic control, as the hon. Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) so eloquently put it, over things that could have real impact on the lives of our constituents, our society, and indeed civilisation more broadly.

As the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley outlined in his speech, we have already found some advanced models deploying techniques to try to avoid human control. Apollo Research found examples of one of OpenAI’s models trying to deceive users to accomplish its goals and, perhaps most worryingly, to disable monitoring mechanisms and guardrails. Those are real risks to the development of AI and things that we should take seriously. It is no wonder that leading AI experts Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio have called for a prohibition on research and development of superintelligence until there is a broad scientific consensus that it can be done safely and with some degree of human and democratic control. To be effective, however, such a prohibition must be global. We must have the buy-in of the big AI powers: not just the EU, but the United States and China.

In that regard, I wish to lay a challenge before the Minister. The UK Government can lead in those efforts by using their unique convening power—as was demonstrated in 2023—to bring those AI superpowers together for an AI safety summit. I appreciate that following the 2023 Bletchley Park summit there have been subsequent summits, including one in Paris, and that there is one coming up in Delhi. I would urge caution, though, that those summits seem to prioritise the potential economic benefits of AI and prioritise growth. I think we have the growth side of things sorted, but we need to focus again on the safety. A global consensus and a prohibition on superintelligence until we can understand and control it would be a great benefit to society.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Lake Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I commend my hon. Friend for her campaigning work on this issue. I have met some of those affected and know their strength of feeling; I have heard their deeply personal testimony of their experiences. Especially during Armed Forces Week, I pay tribute to all nuclear veterans and their enduring contribution to our nation’s security. We are looking into unresolved questions regarding medical records as a matter of priority.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion Preseli) (PC)]

Q2. I join the Deputy Prime Minister in thanking members of the armed forces community for their service. I have had the privilege in recent months of meeting many veterans in my constituency, some of whom still carry the trauma of war. Some, including amputees, have told me how repeat disability assessments are too often required of them in order to access financial support. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that veterans with life-changing service-related injuries should be exempted from repeat disability assessments?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Part of our reforms are to ensure that those who can never work are properly supported and not put through endless assessment, and I thank the hon. Member for raising this case. We are committed to renewing the nation’s contract with those who have served, and a range of support is in place for veterans, including dedicated medical and physical healthcare pathways in the NHS, employment, and housing. The new support system, VALOUR, backed by £50 million of funding, will provide a network of support centres to connect veterans with local and national services.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Lake Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is right: that work has to be a priority for businesses, families and everybody engaged in her constituency, and for the public sector. We want the Ministry of Defence in her constituency, for instance, to have the highest-quality data access possible, so that we can deliver more effective and productive government across the whole United Kingdom. The work will indeed be a priority for us.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion Preseli) (PC)]

There have been great improvements in connectivity across Ceredigion Preseli, but there remain total mobile notspots such as Porthgain, and a growing body of evidence collected locally that the connectivity reported by Ofcom does not quite stack up against the lived experience of those on the ground. Will the Minister meet me so that I can present some of the evidence collected by local authorities in Ceredigion Preseli and he can address the problem?

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman has just said what I said a few minutes ago. It is great that Plaid Cymru is signing up to the Labour party’s agenda these days, but it is upsetting that he forgot to mention the seven high-quality masts extending better coverage of 4G in Wales that have been installed in the last couple of months alone. Of course I will happily meet him, and place in the Library a copy of the letter that I received from Ofcom that makes the precise point that we need to do much better in recognising the real experience of people’s mobile connectivity rather than a theoretical, ethereal version of it.

Data Protection and Digital Information (No. 2) Bill

Ben Lake Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

We have been very cognisant of that risk in developing our proposals. As I said in my opening remarks, we do not wish to upset the apple cart and create a compliance headache for businesses, which would be entirely contrary to the aims of the Bill. A small business that is currently compliant with the GDPR will continue to be compliant under the new regime. However, we want to give businesses flexibility in regard to how they deliver that compliance, so that, for instance, they do not have to employ a data protection officer.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

I am grateful to the Minister for being so generous with her time. May I ask whether the Government intend to maintain data adequacy with the EU? I only ask because I have been contacted by some business owners who are concerned about the possible loss of EU data adequacy and the cost that might be levied on them as a result.

[Julia Lopez]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for pressing me on that important point. I know that many businesses are seeking to maintain adequacy. If we want a business-friendly regime, we do not want to create regulatory disruption for businesses, particularly those that trade with Europe and want to ensure that there is a free flow of data. I can reassure him that we have been in constant contact with the European Commission about our proposals. We want to make sure that there are no surprises. We are currently adequate, and we believe that we will maintain adequacy following the enactment of the Bill.