Essential Services: Large-scale Technology

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the training challenge and broader apprenticeship challenge is ongoing, immense and growing, and I agree with the importance which the noble Baroness attaches to it. The Government are helping to promote cyber skills among young people to fill the shortages in that capacity.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD) [V]]

My Lords, controversial algorithms are increasingly being used by central and local government to make decisions. Does the Minister agree that to build and retain public trust we need strong oversight and governance of public sector use of algorithms? What response are the Government giving to the recommendations in the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation’s recent review of bias in algorithmic decision-making, and what plans for regulation do they have?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, again, that is a very broad question, but the issues that the noble Lord addresses are extremely important and I take the sense in which he has offered it. Human judgment is, in the end, irreplaceable—your Lordships’ House could never be replaced by an algorithm.