Covid-19: Artificial Intelligence

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right, although I am sure he would acknowledge that the quality, size and integration of those datasets vary considerably, as the recent report highlights, between different sectors of the economy. Again, the National Data Strategy and the consultation on it will be important mechanisms for addressing the issues that the noble Lord raised, as well as the open data initiatives and pilots that we are already running.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) (V)]

My Lords, the National Data Strategy has been published for consultation. Can the Minister assure us that the House of Lords will be included in that consultation? Perhaps the Minister would like to organise a webinar for interested Peers and guarantee that we can have a debate on the issues. The CDEI report notes that social care has been much less able to cope with providing data than the healthcare system because the level of training, funding and data collection in social care is so much lower. What plans do the Government have to help to improve that?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My understanding is that the consultation on the data strategy is open to everyone, but I am very happy to go back to the department and explore whether we can have a webinar for those Members of this House who are interested in taking part. Obviously, your Lordships’ Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence has been very influential already in our thinking. In relation to social care, the noble Lord referred to training and funding; it is also fair to say that the fragmentation of that sector is also a barrier to the adoption of AI, but we are also focusing on this.