Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 30 September 2020 to Question 96062 on Twitter: Racial Discrimination, what steps the Government is taking to tackle racial bias in algorithms.

As set out in the National Data Strategy, we can harness data in efforts to tackle bias and exclusion. The use of algorithms has the potential to improve the quality and speed of decision-making, but there are also risks of human-introduced bias, discriminatory outcomes or unsafe applications, which must be mitigated if we are to harness their benefits. We have commissioned the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation to review the potential for bias in algorithms and we will review the Centre's recommendations once their report is published.