Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Clearly, this is a UK-wide issue. I am pleased that Scotland has been at the forefront of data in health for many years and has done an extremely good job of getting that into the right place. As we develop the national data library, these questions of data collection, interoperability, curation—which is incredibly important—and systems to ensure privacy and protection will be discussed widely right across the UK. We need to make sure that everything is interoperable, otherwise we will undo the value that we are creating.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s focus on delivery, which is vital if we are to make an impact in AI. I say with the greatest respect to my noble friend Lord Holmes that legislation is the last thing we need. The coalition Government’s experience with the Government Digital Service was to find that we made rapid progress before powers were devolved down to individual departments, which then did everything in their power to make sure that nothing worked. While the Minister focuses on the delivery of the AI action plan, could he sort out the confusing quango landscape that now exists after 14 years of endless initiatives, and perhaps have a central function which relentlessly pushes through this excellent plan?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord very much. I will not add to his comments about the 14 years of endless initiatives, but it is crucial that when we do something such as this, we do it properly. Obviously, my experience was in setting up the Vaccine Taskforce to do just that, and this is the same sort of problem. We have to get everybody across government working on this; there is a big delivery task. Delivery should be our focus and we should keep holding ourselves to account for timelines and deliverables.