Technology in Public Services

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Women in business could add £200 billion to the economy if they were invested in at the same rate as men in business. The female founders community has been in uproar since it was announced that Innovate UK would award only half of the 50 £75,000 grants from its women in innovation fund, even though almost 1,500 women applied for them. Innovate UK has since reversed that decision. Would the Secretary of State meet those from the community to understand their experiences, find out what went wrong and ensure that Innovate UK better supports the Government’s growth mission by better supporting female founders?

[Peter Kyle]

I am extremely grateful for that intervention; my hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. First, on the broad themes of under-represented communities in the tech sector, the issue is multifaceted. It is not just about some people being excluded from the products that are emerging from the tech sector; it is also about access to the great jobs that are being created in the tech sector itself. It is clear that there is regional and socioeconomic imbalance, and that there are other equality issues. I remember very well in the 1990s trying to get into university, and the system back then diverting people like me away from it. I had to apply four times and go back to secondary school at the age of 25 to get into university. Now I see a tech sector that is not dissimilar—sometimes it diverts people from certain backgrounds away from it or fails to attract into the sector those people with great potential.

We need to do better than that. We need to lead from Government. When I saw Innovate UK’s decision, I was unsettled, but I was very pleased that it then came out so rapidly—not only reversing the decision and going back to the full 50 grants but issuing a forthright apology for the mistake that led to the problem in the first place. Such issues should not emerge. I know that Innovate UK will learn those lessons, but we need to ensure that the Government are at the forefront of delivering support for the sector and creating the jobs and technology of the future, and making sure that it does so in an equitable way. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to put that on the record, and I look forward to meeting the community she mentioned.

A missions-led approach to reforming our public services will harness the power of technology to make them more productive. Let us take artificial intelligence. It is not just doctors and teachers who are using AI to change the lives of the public they serve. In Greater Manchester, citizens advice centres are using Caddy, an AI-powered co-pilot tool developed with my officials to help staff and volunteers provide more helpful advice to the people who need it. Digital experts in my Department are thinking about how we can use AI to connect clean energy projects to the grid more quickly. Stories such as these are just the starting point, but they remain all too rare. Why should any citizen be denied cutting-edge healthcare, clean energy or a world-class education? Why should a vulnerable person struggling with eviction or debt struggle to get the help they need?

Adopting AI across health, education and policing could boost productivity by almost £24 billion a year. If we fail to do so, the benefits of AI could become the preserve of the privileged few. The urgency of our task demands decisive action, because people should not have to wait for better public services. Rightly, they expect that we will fix the public finances fast. That is why we will publish the AI action plan, led by Matt Clifford. The action plan will work out how we can make the very best use of AI to grow the economy and deliver the Government’s national missions. Then we will set up the AI opportunities unit to help make the action plan’s recommendations a reality.

My Department will transform public services for the people who use them, by working with Departments across Whitehall to pioneer safe, new and innovative applications for AI. Every one of those applications will depend on two things: digital infrastructure and data. These will be the driving force behind Britain’s digital transformation, better hospitals and schools, safer streets and transport that works for working people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to speak in this debate on technology in public services. Many new Members are waiting to give their maiden speech, so I shall try to be brief on this subject, which is dear to my heart, and on which I am very passionate.

The Labour Government understand the importance of technology and its potential to transform our lives. In a speech just last week, the Prime Minister promised to harness the full potential of artificial intelligence for the public good. As the Secretary of State laid out, we are already making progress. A few days ago, the Government released a bank of example lesson plans and curricula to help train generative AI tools—not to undermine teachers or try to replace them with large language models, but to free them up to spend more time teaching the next generation. Only two months in, that is not bad.

It is really important that we have good news stories to tell about technology in public services; indeed, I want to start by praising technology generally. I consider myself a tech evangelist, and I know that many of the new intake consider themselves tech evangelists, too. We cannot count how many lives have been saved by remote medicine; how many businesses have been started, enabled or grown through technology; how many marriages have been saved by couples not arguing about how to get directions; and how much joy has been shared through cat memes.

Technology can and should be a force for good, which is why I went into engineering—to make the world work better for everyone. As the Secretary of State laid out, the opportunity that technology offers public services is huge. In opposition, I shadowed digital, technology and science briefs. Given the dire mess that 14 years of Tory government has made of our country and our finances, praise for anything that happened under the Tories’ multiple and ever-changing regimes is rare, but I want to give credit where credit is due. The creation of the Government Digital Service back in 2011 was world-leading. It was a Labour idea, and it delivered real benefits to both the public and the civil service. From online tax returns to driving licences, the GDS model of user-centred, agile service development reaped some big wins, which saved the Government money and saved people time. The report I commissioned in 2014, “Technology for Everyone: The Prize of Digital Government”, highlighted the opportunities, as did the “Our Digital Future” report, published in 2020.

But the Conservative Government did not follow through. They did not succeed in driving change through every Whitehall Department, or outside of Whitehall into local government, so they squandered the promise of GDS. Digital government lost its way between departmental silos, Conservative factionalism, a lack of investment, and a focus on woke lanyards, rather than technology adoption, so we have not made the progress that we should have. My constituents spend too much time trying to interact with public services in ways that are repetitive, time-consuming or plain hostile, and I have had constituents in tears in my surgeries because they cannot make a benefits claim or are put on hold by some service for hours on end.

[Mr Holden]

Technology is the subject of this discussion, but there is also the issue of connectivity to that technology. Is it not the case that in parts of the country, connectivity could be a major issue, as well as the technology itself?

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and for highlighting the lack of progress by the last Conservative Government—and indeed their failure to roll out acceptable digital infrastructure across our country.

Good news stories about technology have been replaced by tech horror stories—about workers imprisoned unfairly because of Post Office software failures, and about students being treated unfairly by exam algorithms. This entrenches opposition to technology. Too many of my constituents feel that they are being tracked, monitored, surveilled and analysed. They do not want to go online without feeling safe and secure.

Work by the Collective Intelligence Project highlights that safety, participation and progress must go hand in hand, because only public confidence in AI will enable us to drive adoption in public services and improve productivity. That is why the Government are so right to emphasise safe deployment. Pre-deployment evaluation of foundation models by our world-leading AI Safety Institute will boost public confidence, and provide transparency about when AI is used in the public sector, and how it will help to maintain trust.

I have worked in technology deployment for many years, and bitter experience has led me to the conclusion that whatever the problem might be, technology is not the answer on its own. You cannot force technology on people. Co-creation is an overused term but an underused reality, so engagement, participation and partnership working need to be part of the plans for adoption. The group Connected by Data has great examples of this type of participatory decision making. Camden Council, which was led until recently by the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale (Georgia Gould), has done excellent work in this regard.

I am sure that I do not need to tell the House that AI is the subject of hype as well as hope. In partnership with the What Works centres, we need to evaluate different uses of AI in our hospitals and schools, for example, so that we can scale up the most cost-effective solutions while avoiding expensive failures. The private sector has driven the adoption of so many of the technologies that have transformed our lives, but we must build state capacity in tech by recruiting more diverse science and technology experts to the civil service, so that Government can innovate. We need fair, open and transparent procurement processes that will enable British start-ups as well as big tech companies to bid for Government contracts.

Given the previous Government’s responses to my parliamentary questions, I am concerned that our digital infrastructure may be too dependent on single or dual suppliers, or on proprietary systems. I hope that the Secretary of State will consider that, and the role of start-ups and open source in ensuring resilience. Digital inclusion was neglected by the previous Government. Age UK estimates that around a third of over-75s—that is 1.7 million people—do not use the internet. We must tackle the barriers, which include infrastructure availability, cost and the skills gap, but we also need to recognise that some people may never be comfortable with digital access to Government services.

Finally, we should remember that we too are a public service. I have raised the adoption of technology in this place many times. Indeed, I worked closely with the House authorities during covid to deliver a remote Parliament by introducing Zoom into the Commons. We must lead by example when it comes to adopting technology to improve our performance. I am standing to be Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee because this is so important to all our constituents, but they often feel that technology is something that is done to them, rather than with them and for them. The benefits of technology have not been shared fairly. Under a Labour Government, this will change, and public services will lead the way.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, Layla Moran.