AI Safety

Luke Charters Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler, especially given your distinguished background in tech and AI advocacy.

May I share something that hon. Members will be pleased to hear? I am, in fact, the youngest parent in Parliament, and I am constantly thinking about the place that my young boys are set to grow up in. We expect that AI will form a core part of their lives, even in primary school, which is hard to imagine. The more I think about AI, however, the more I think that we should introduce it in the key stage 2 curriculum, alongside vital safeguards. After all, I was learning to use Google Search at around that age. What is different about using Gemini today?

There are potential harms, such as the deeply tragic story of a young boy in the US who sadly took his own life, but AI can be a force for good. The more that children learn about AI, and about using it for activities such as homework and coursework, the more I believe we should not be punishing them for using it. Instead, in the future, we should allow students to use AI in some exams to test how they use their AI skills. I met students at Fulford school and York college in my constituency and their message was, “Don’t punish us for using AI when it’s going to become a key part of our employment in the future. Teach us to use it responsibly. Teach us to use it when we come to our employment.” If we do not make that shift now, we will face a productivity puzzle in the future.

I will move on to the issue of physical illness. We have all been poorly; we have all picked up an iPhone. As hon. Members can tell, my greatest treasure is my kids, but when parents put their children’s symptoms into AI, they are putting a lot of trust in AI models. I urge the Government to work with the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS to make sure that AI chatbots and tools cite the NHS as a single source of truth, not health advice from outside this country.

I will touch on mental health as well, because around a quarter of children now use AI chatbots for their mental health. We cannot pretend that people will not use AI as a tool for mental health support, and in particular, blokes out there might well use AI as a first port of call to unpack what they are going through. That should be welcome, but it comes with a great responsibility for the AI tools—Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity and so on—to get things right. I urge the companies that make those tools to work with the Government and the charitable sector, including great charities such as Samaritans, to do that.

We have to embrace AI. There are great opportunities, but there need to be safeguards and support. With that in mind, Britain can be a world leader in AI safety.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) for securing this timely debate.

In August, I created the first AI prototype of a British MP. It was made by my constituent, Jeremy Smith, who ran an AI start-up in my constituency. I will go to almost any lengths to support a local business in Leeds South West and Morley. This was an online MP that anyone could talk to at any time. Jeremy said my constituents would benefit from two versions of me, including one that never sleeps—although, with children aged four and one, I am not sure that is a useful distinction.

Questions were converted into text and an answer generated quickly, and then it was turned into my voice for the users. The replica was impressive, although I did sound a bit too posh and angry when I did not know the answer. AI Mark not only had my voice—we also fed it my policy stances and typical casework answers. I saw it as a clever voicemail system designed to handle common casework queries when my office was closed; it was never going to be a replacement for me or for my excellent casework team. However, how does it relate to safety? We have all seen AI models that break, say outrageous things or hallucinate.

We created what I called the “guardrails”, and these were the limits on what AI Mark could say. That created a problem: when the guardrails were lower, AI Mark was very interesting to talk to. He would create Tinder dating profiles on demand; he did write incorrect haikus about the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage); and he did give the population of Vietnam—and try to predict the weather there, too.

[Mr Charters]

Does my hon. Friend think the Whips would prefer the real Mark, or the AI Mark?

[Mark Sewards]

My hon. Friend tempts me to say something I am not allowed to in this place, so I will say that they absolutely would prefer me—of course they would.

AI Mark could also be exploited to say things that just were not true. So I lifted the guardrails to reduce the risk before I released him to the public, but this made him significantly less useful. He only responded to key phrases and he stuck to the content that I had fed him, but that made it so much harder to distinguish him from a normal chatbot.

Usefulness and safety will clearly be a balancing act as this technology develops. We know AI can be dangerous—we have heard the arguments today—but we have also seen its potential. I have seen its potential. If we want systems that are both safe and useful, businesses need the space to experiment, and I ask the Minister in his summing-up to confirm the Government’s current approach to this.

Now, I am not arguing for a free-for-all; to be clear, we need proportionate regulation and effective oversight. That much is obvious. I will just say that AI Mark did not actually save me any time. I read the thousands of transcripts that came through—I read them all myself; I did not delegate that to anyone else, and it created far more work for me. I could have refined this model to operate well within the guardrails I had set for him, but I was not willing to ask my team to put aside time to refine it when we had real casework to deal with immediately. That is why I took the decision this month to shut AI Mark down.

There is space for a business to take up the baton and take this forward, because the technology is incredible and the potential is real, but that is all it is for now—potential. I will just finish with this: one person from Ukraine, or at least a Ukrainian IP address, tried to get AI Mark to declare support for repressive regimes. Because of the guardrails that we put in place, he did hold firm in his love for democracy, just as I am sure that everyone else here would.

Pride Month

Luke Charters Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Burton-Sampson (Southend West and Leigh) (Lab)]

I draw Members to my declarations of interest.

As many of us know, the Pride movement started with the Stonewall riots in 1969, but some people now see Pride as a party. It certainly did not start that way, and for many of us it is still a protest and will continue to be so until we genuinely do not need Pride anymore. My Pride journey started as a bystander, until I became a councillor in 2018, when somebody decided to post literature all around the town of Basildon, telling the LGBT community to repent. Instead of getting angry, we organised Basildon mini-Pride within two weeks and showed that we were here to stay. It turned into a full-on Pride that is still going strong, with a programme of events throughout the year as part of the Basildon Pride Everyday programme. I am proud to still be chair of trustees for that Pride, and thank all its members and the volunteers who contribute to its work.

[Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)]

May I celebrate my wonderful hon. Friend for his role in founding Basildon Pride? Will he join me in commending York Pride and its 17,000 visitors for celebrating the wonderful LGBTQ+ community that we have in York? Will he also join me in condemning any abuse, harassment or intimidation—at any Pride event—that is driven by who someone is, who they love or what they believe?

[David Burton-Sampson]

Absolutely. I celebrate York Pride, and I thank its organisers for what they contribute. We stand up against discrimination at Pride events and outside; it is unacceptable.

I have to mention my team at Southend Pride, which came into being the year before Basildon Pride. They, too, put on an annual festival and events throughout the year, including a winter Pride. I try to work closely with Southend Pride, and today I recommit my dedication to supporting it and the LGBTQ+ community in Southend and Leigh-on-Sea. I thank the whole team for their dedication: Cath, Sam, Louis, Yvonne, Amber and everyone else involved.

We have to face some uncomfortable truths. Prides around the country are folding and cancelling this year, and many are struggling to get the funding that they usually have, from big events like Liverpool Pride to those in Southampton and Plymouth. The challenges around diversity, equity and inclusion, and the changing attitudes of companies—especially those with American parents—do not help. The attitude that “Prides are no longer needed, because it’s all sorted” also does not help. I can tell the House that Prides are needed now more than ever. Personally, I know that I am not equal: I cannot comfortably walk along the street holding my partner’s hand or giving my partner a kiss. In the best case, I will get stares; in the worst case, I will get verbal or physical abuse. That is a fact—it is how it is today—so I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) has brought forward measures to make LGBT hate crime an aggravated offence.

We have heard all about the impact that the Supreme Court ruling has had on trans people, who need our allyship more than ever. They need guidance issued that truly supports the fact that they, too, are covered by the protections in the Equality Act 2010. In recent years I have been working closely with an organisation called TransLucent, whose chief executive officer, Steph, is in the Gallery today. It is a great organisation that positively advocates for the trans community, and it is trying to take the heat out of the debate and make sure that trans people are looked after and respected.

I will continue to stand as a trans ally, and I know many of my Labour colleagues will, too. I encourage Prides across the movement to keep engaging with us and challenging us, but do not shut us out. Challenge us, and we are here to help. They have our commitment that we will make sure that trans people and the LGBTQ+ community are going to be treated as equals in this country.

Project Gigabit

Luke Charters Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)]

While it is a pleasure to speak in the debate today, I am hoping it is one that we do not need to keep having. Like many of us, I represent a rural community, and if there is one thing I am desperate to fix, it is sorting out t’internet for my constituents. I make no apologies for my local dialect because up north, we all joke about the rubbish internet signal in rural Yorkshire. It is a huge barrier for many.

There are unique perplexities in the geography of my constituency of York Outer; anyone who has seen it on a map will know that. Some call it a doughnut and some call it a Polo mint. Effectively, it is sweeping Yorkshire countryside with vibrant villages and closely knit communities. However, we see one challenge, and that is the focus of today’s debate: broadband.

Those unique perplexities do not just extend to the constituency’s map; there are cases within it. Take Haxby and Huntington. Forgive me the pun: because of the way my constituency is wired, quite literally, there are roads where a house on one side has fantastic connectivity, but on the other side the internet is terribly slow, and the last time that side got an update, Teletext was on the TV.

A quick roll-out of good internet really matters for our mission of economic growth, so I welcome the more than £500 million in the Budget, committed for 2025-26, to deliver Project Gigabit and the shared rural network. It will play a pivotal role in delivering full gigabit broadband coverage by 2030. However, the focus of my remarks is to feed back on an important experience for one of my constituents, and on why an important upgrade in York Outer is needed.

I start on a specific issue that I would like to pick up with the Minister separately, if he would be so kind as to meet me. I have a Ministry of Defence site in my constituency, in the area of Strensall, that recently missed out on a roll-out of hyperfast connectivity. There are nearly 100 military houses on that site that need an upgrade, and they need it badly. For context, some of the people there are suffering with speeds of less than 10 megabytes per second on copper cables, compared with some residential houses opposite that now have speeds of up to 1,200 megabits per second, and—colleagues, wait for this—at the same cost! Serving families deserve so much better. I am not sure whether it is the Defence Infrastructure Organisation or Openreach that is responsible for the project, but I would love to get it fixed, if possible, with the Minister’s help. If I could meet him, that would be brilliant.

I will draw on another case study. I have heard from residents in Haxby about Project Lightning, a 2019 initiative to bring full-fibre to the village. Although the work was completed, unfortunately some houses were missed out. The cost of that is felt by one couple who recently told me that they work from home, but are now struggling to join calls with clients. They cannot both go on calls with clients at the same time, and that is affecting their fantastic small business.

I have also had constituents write to me about the need for upgrades in Hopgrove, just four miles from York city centre. I am hopeful that Project Gigabit and the Government’s work on the internet roll-out more broadly can help my constituents, something I would like to discuss in detail another time. I am supportive of the Government’s work to roll out Project Gigabit, and my case studies hopefully illustrate a glimpse of why it is so important.

Finally, I thank the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) for securing this debate, allowing me to raise those important constituency cases.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Thank you for your forbearance. Please try to keep to three minutes. I call Tim Farron.