Lords Chamber

Thursday 23rd July 2026

(began 1 month, 2 weeks ago)

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None Portrait Oral questions: Implementation of the National Youth Strategy and associated funding programmes
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Second Oral Question Baroness Morgan of Drefelin. Morgan of Drefelin. >> I beg leave to ask the question. Standing on the Order Paper in my name.
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Baroness Twycross Portrait Baroness Twycross, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) (Labour)
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If I was being ungenerous, I'd refer to previous black holes that refer to previous black holes that have been a matter of debate from this this bench we have. We are investing a significant amount of funding in in the strategy and behind the strategy. So we have over 400 million to improve access to enriching activities and youth work, as well as refurbishing or building up to 250 youth facilities. We have £22.5 million for a new programme to create brilliant enrichment offers in up to 400 schools.

We have £15 million in investing. We're investing in youth workers, volunteers and other trusted adults. We're investing in rebuilding local youth services and establishing a network of 50 young future hubs. And we've got £5 million to improve the youth infrastructure at local and regional level. And that's even before you get to the funding coming through the Dormant Assets scheme, we are clear that we are funding this and that. Actually, when you look at how important some of these activities are, including the Sea Cadets and my own brothers with Sea Cadets in a landlocked county as well, you have to put the

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money behind it. We're doing that. The previous government didn't. My Lords, my Lords. Agree with me that one of the

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Agree with me that one of the most wide widening experiences for children is to experience other children is to experience other cultures and other countries, and therefore one of the most effective things that can be done to broaden the mind of youngsters is to do exchange visits with other countries, perhaps predominantly in Europe, because it's closer. But with any country. And can the Minister say what he's doing or what the government is doing to

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expand the exchange visit programme? Yeah, yeah.

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So as a as somebody who benefited from an exchange, although I hated my French exchange, although I hated my French exchange, I would admit that I think we've got a number of ways in which we're got a number of ways in which we're supporting this, both through Erasmus and also with exchange programmes. And one of the things we're doing with the Erasmus scheme is we're pushing it out beyond the university route, and I'm delighted that we're doing that. Unlike my French exchange, I did have a good experience when I was a student studying abroad, and I'm clear that it not only enriches people's studies, but it also gives young people the opportunity to understand the importance of speaking languages, which is one of the questions I answered last week the questions I answered last week about our sort of minority languages in this country.

 Yeah.
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Lord Katz Portrait Lord Katz (Labour)
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Well, I. I thank the noble Lord for his question, and indeed, I was remiss in not doing this earlier, remiss in not doing this earlier, but I would very much like to join him in paying tribute to my my colleague, my noble friend Baroness Levitt, and indeed, and indeed my. Levitt, and indeed, and indeed my. No, my noble friend, the Lord Timpson, for all the hard work that they've done, and particularly in the case of Lord Timpson on reforming not just the prison system, my Lords, but also the probation system, we are investing a record amount in in probation and reform for the probation service and technology that we use in the probation service, £700 million.

And that is just as important in terms of dealing with those that we deem that are that we deem are fit for, for, for release. I think it's important when we talk about really releasing people for who are on very short sentences, that one of the things I understood that the Sentencing Act sought to do is cut the cycle, that that really merely the cycle of crime where people went into prison for very short sentences. And all that did was teach them how to become better criminals, not better people.

We need to make sure that if people go to prison, they're in there for they're in there long enough. And it does appear a proper job of rehabilitation, making sure that they are if they're on drugs or if they are, if they have an alcohol problem and those those are sent to them and they're actually we actually do the main thing that prison should do, which is not only protect the public, but also cut reoffending rates.
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Lord Katz Portrait Lord Katz (Labour)
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Yeah. Yeah. course, correct. That is why we are. But I would, I would I would I would say that that is why I know my, my noble, my my noble friend Lord Timpson spent so much time focusing on probation as well as the prison estate. And that's why we are investing a record amount, £700 million in probation and associated activities. For instance, we are. We are having the biggest expansion of tagging in history already tagging in record levels, and we're going to invest £100 million to expand our ability to monitor even more individuals in the community.

And that isn't just a straight kind of location tag. It could be a GPS tag that addresses an exclusion, an exclusion measure. It could be one address addresses drug, a drug problem, a drug addiction, or an alcohol alcohol addiction. And we are we are very clear that offenders are going to be subject to strict conditions after their release, and indeed, probation service will be given tough new powers, including things like restriction zones to be used for the most serious offenders to ensure a problem.

We are we are trying to move at pace, but in a way that makes sure that we don't create more problems for ourselves,

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and that is why we are committed by probation. My Lords. Can I.

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Join the noble Lord, the Minister, in supporting everything he said in relation to the family he said in relation to the family of PC Andrew Harper? I note what the noble Lord the Minister has said in response to my noble friend, said in response to my noble friend, the Earl of Effingham, the noble Lords Minister is keen to relate
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Baroness Kidron Portrait Baroness Kidron (Crossbench)
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Pay. >> Particular tribute to the right Reverend Prelate, Bishop of Oxford for his leadership, advocating for digital systems to reflect our ethics and values. Who today makes his valedictory speech? My Lords, anyone who's heard me speak about technology over the past 15 years could be forgiven for thinking I don't much like it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love what technology makes possible. I rely on it for my health. I use artificial intelligence every day, and I still marvel that I can speak face to face with people on the other side of the world, as though they were in the room.

My criticism has never been of what technology can do, but rather the political and economic choices we have allowed to shape its development. Technology is not an independent force that arrives from nowhere. It reflects the interests, incentives and values of those who build it, finance IT and control it. Technology now underpins every area of public and private life, so digital policy is no longer simply about innovation, information or efficiency. It is a constitutional issue that raises serious questions about sovereignty, including whether governments retain the practical ability to govern in the interests of their own citizens.

That, my Lords, is why I secured this debate at heart. Sovereignty is the capacity to choose. Sovereignty means that Parliament makes the laws government governs, regulators regulate and courts enforce our law, and that Britain is free to pursue its national interest without coercion or dependence. Yet we have allowed that capacity to be eroded by the tech sector in four distinct ways. First, we have surrendered political leverage on copyright, where the government put its proposed UQs technology deal above our own copyright law, a deal that, incidentally, never materialised on child safety.

Whereas the former Minister, Jess Phillips, observed it took a year simply to persuade government to threaten legislation, not to legislate, just threaten and on data protection, competition policy, consumer protection and across government departments where public lobbying and private pressure has urged officials not to upset the Americans. That pressure is increasingly reinforced by an activist white House. We are threatened with sections for any policy that might impact on US tech. My Lords, the US tech sector is uniquely concentrated in a small number of companies, beholden to the views of a small number of powerful funders who possess dual class shares that give them total control.

They tell us Britain will be left behind. The innovation and growth depend on abandoning our own laws, or that complying with them is technically unfeasible. Very hard to take from companies that promise immortality and colonies on Mars. The very same companies that insisted age assurance, two factor authentication and the right to be forgotten would break the internet. Backed by unprecedented wealth and unparalleled political access, they have exercised extraordinary influence over government policy. Secondly, we have surrendered economic leverage for years.

We have tolerated economic arrangements that place British businesses at a structural disadvantage. Our high streets pay taxes. The e-commerce does not. Black taxes are subject to obligations. Ride hailing is not. Hotels meet standards that. Short term letting platforms do not. Each is a transfer of wealth. Overseas government has poured billions of pounds of public money into global technology companies, while British firms that employ people here pay taxes here, invest here and importantly, train the next generation struggle to gain a foothold in public procurement.

An investigation in last week's London Review of Books describes how, after years of recruiting former officials and consultants with access to Ministers and senior decision makers, Palantir secured its position at the heart of the NHS, culminating in a £330 million contract for its federated data platform. Many trusts have either chosen not to use it at all, or regard it as inferior to cheaper alternatives. Leeds Teaching Hospitals warned it would lose functionality rather than gain it, while Greater Manchester said its own system, I quote, exceeds anything.

The FDP currently offers. The issue is not only quality or value of money, but over time that the NHS becomes bound to Palantir. It continues to own its own data, but depends on Palantir software to use it. Similarly, the Ministry of Defence admits that replacing one of its Palantir systems would, I quote, involve rebuilding the underlying data analytics architecture. My Lords, that is not simply vendor lock in. It is a strategic dependency at the heart of our national security.

Choice exists in theory, but increasingly disappears in practice. And Palantir is not unique across Whitehall. The same pattern is emerging in cloud computing, enterprise software and artificial intelligence. My Lords, sovereignty is not simply the freedom to make a decision. It is the freedom to make a different decision in the in the future. Thirdly, we've surrendered technological capability. Every procurement decision is also an investment decision. Buying technology elsewhere means investing in someone else's industrial future rather than our own.

I've spoken to sources in health, defence, policing who all told me they had been forced to contract AWS because no UK cloud provider was considered financially secure. Yet when I asked whether the combined purchasing power of government could itself create financial resilience for a British provider, the answer was an unqualified yes. Parliament has already provided tools to the competition regulator to challenge entrenched, entrenched digital market power. The problem is not legislative capacity but political strategy.

Cloud computing is only one example. The same logic applies wherever government buys technology. My Lords, procurement does not simply purchase capability. It determines where future capability is built. Fourthly, we have created strategic vulnerability from Microsoft who suspended services used by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and refused to answer questions from Police Scotland about where sensitive law enforcement data was being processed, to Elon Musk withdrawing Starlink access from Ukraine's military operations, or President Trump's decision to limit access to AI models.

Fable and Mythos 5 to US nationals only. And this week's news that an open AI's agent has autonomously hacked hugging face. This, just weeks after OpenAI's chief executive argued that frontier AI should be regulated under US leadership. But the US has no such regulatory regime and the risks are imminent. Together, these reveal the problem of allowing critical public capacity to depend entirely on infrastructure controlled offshore. And, my Lords, those who argue that Britain must wait for global agreement I are, I fear, whistling in the wind.

History suggests that meaningful international regulation follows major incidents rather than prevents them. Meanwhile, across government, hospitals, schools, critical infrastructure, security and intelligence communities, we are replacing technologies whose risks we broadly understand, with systems whose capabilities and failures remain at best, uncertain. A nation that depends on decisions beyond the reach of its own parliament and government, its own regulators and courts, has in practice surrendered its sovereignty. So, my Lords, we have a new government and that is an opportunity to lead.

Britain begins from a position of enormous strength. We have world leading universities, exceptional scientists, some of the richest, most trusted data sets in the world in the NHS, the BBC, the Met Office and beyond. And we have institutions such as the AI Security Institute that have demonstrated international leadership. My Lords, these are not simply public services, they are strategic national assets which we could capitalise on to drive prosperity and independence across some of the technology stack, from AI and quantum to specialist models, medical advances, infrastructure and even a new media environment.

During the passage of the Data Users and Access Bill, I argued these unique, unique data sets should be formally categorised as sovereign data sets. Those working at the frontier of artificial intelligence accept that high quality data is the scarce resource of the future. It is a resource that we have in abundance. That is why my noble friend Lord Tarassenko has repeatedly argued that Britain should develop a publicly supported foundation model. So data generated by the British people continues to create value for Britain, the objective is not to build the world's largest model systems that may or may not be sentient, or that foment unemployment for half the world's population, with no corresponding plan for humankind.

Are Silicon Valley's vision, not ours. The objective is to build models that are responsible and trusted, trained on known data, capable of audit, secure by design, and most of all, tailored to the needs of British businesses, public services, legal framework and security requirements. A trusted AI ecosystem also requires robust systems of transparency, which protect our national security and present an opportunity for licensing at scale. Government must get off the fence. Companies that refuse to respect British intellectual property should not expect access to public contracts, and Britain should create conditions for its intellectual property to be licensed and commercialised across the global economy.

And it is time for government procurement to support British values and build national capability. A sovereign as service unit across government promoting British business, including SMEs. Enabling pre authorised procurement and ensuring that public money develops future skills and capability procurement that rewards openness, interoperability, overseas firms. Above all, government contracts should go only to companies that commit to respecting British law. Finally, we must transform sovereignty from a strap line into a measurable strategy. Ministers speak about reducing strategic dependence, increasing resilience, retaining leverage.

They've spoken about building British capability and working with trusted partners. Yet in practice, they have pursued the logic of dependence, buying, subsidising and valorising foreign technology in the belief that being close to power is the same as exercising it. It is not. I've been working with colleagues at the British Computer Society to develop a national sovereignty dashboard so that we have objective measures of resilience, dependency and capability. Governments already measure inflation, productivity, emissions, debt, because what gets measured gets managed.

To ensure sovereignty, we must have a way of measuring it. France, Switzerland, India, Brazil, UAE, South Korea have all made sovereign decisions about aspects of their technology infrastructure. They are investing in their capability and simultaneously protecting their future security. For too long, our approach has been subservient to the lobbying trope that all but America and China are too late. In fact, the vast majority of the world's population live outside those two superpowers, and tech multilateralism offers the UK a powerful role.

My Lords, sovereignty never meant doing everything ourselves. It means retaining the freedom to choose now and to make another decision tomorrow. Sovereignty is not protectionism, it is statecraft. There is a different sovereign future available to Britain, built on capability, confidence, trusted systems and respectful partnerships,

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and above all, the capacity to choose. I beg to move. The question is this motion be

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agreed to? Lords. We stand today. At a moment of profound

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At a moment of profound vulnerability for the United Kingdom. Our economic security, our Kingdom. Our economic security, our national safety, and even our long term sovereignty are at massive risk because we do not yet host or
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Baroness Berger Portrait Baroness Berger (Labour)
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risk because we do not yet host or own enough of our own computing infrastructure, our own cloud services, our own advanced AI capabilities by relying so heavily on foreign businesses and governments far from our shore, we leave ourselves exposed to the possibility of remote disablement, restriction, or withdrawal of the very systems that our society, our public services and our businesses increasingly depend on. Today, the UK relies almost entirely on American and Chinese companies for the most capable AI models.

Recent events, including the United States restricting access to one of Anthropic's most advanced systems, shows how fragile that dependence is. In a world where AI increasingly underpins economic growth and national security, Britain must develop home grown capabilities. Yes, we have a sovereign AI fund, but it is just a fraction of what our neighbours are pursuing. Other nations are already building sovereign AI systems at scale. The United States, China and the European Union are investing billions into domestic computing infrastructure, national level model development and secure AI infrastructure.

France has launched a sovereign AI initiative centred on national cloud and compute capacity. The UAE is developing its own frontier led models and countries like Japan, South Korea and India are rapidly expanding state backed AI ecosystems. Here in the UK, we have one of the largest and richest bodies of public data anywhere in the world, not least from within our NHS, as the cost of building capable AI systems continues to fall, we have a genuine opportunity to harness that data for ourselves to help clinicians reach diagnoses faster, to build public services that reflect our own standards and our own accountability, rather than simply adopting whatever the market happens to offer us.

But we must also confront the elephant in the room. Leading AI companies are racing towards superintelligence. Despite acknowledging that it could pose an existential threat to humanity, sovereign AI is absolutely critical, but it's only worth investing in if other AI models can be kept under control. As we welcome our new Prime Minister, there is a danger that could overshadow overshadow all of his important goals. The real possibility that advanced AI systems become uncontrollable. How the incoming leadership chooses to approach AI risk will will shape our entire future.

And there are over 120 parliamentarians that have so far called for superintelligent AI to be formally recognised as a national and global security threat. I am one of them. Simply put, the UK must lead an international agreement to prohibit the development of superintelligence until it can be proven safe. If we fail, every other ambition for our country risks being swept aside. The clock is ticking. There are some AI systems that already exceed human abilities in narrow domains such as Google DeepMind's AlphaFold.

In June, the director of the US National Security Agency revealed that Anthropic mythos model identified vulnerabilities in classified systems. This should be a wake up call for every government, including ours. We are only just beginning to see a shift in the West towards an appetite for government action, and it was at the recent G7 summit that Sam Altman of OpenAI and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind both called for a US led standards body to test the cutting edge frontier AI models for national security threats.

But there is no indication that this is actually coming, and there are agitators that we should all be aware of. And it was only just this week on X that President Trump's former AI advisor, David Sax called for, and I quote, permissionless innovation, building more of our AI at home is vital to our security and our economy, but none of it will count for anything unless humans stay in charge. The day that someone builds a superintelligence, or we lose our grip on a powerful AI system, that sovereignty is gone.

And this week, in fact, just the other day, we witnessed just a taste of what happens when humans lose control. We saw the unintended, unprecedented, accidental cyber attack by the new GPT-5.6 Sol and other models on the very platform that was hosting a test. And perhaps it should concern us all that that didn't make some of the front pages of our newspapers. This debate shines a spotlight on something vital for our country. Building sovereign AI capacity is absolutely essential, but if any nation or company builds a true superintelligence without guardrails, that sovereignty disappears everywhere.

We do need urgent action to develop our own models, to ensure that we have rapid investment in our own in our own AI infrastructure, for our economy, for our security, and for our resilience. But we also need urgent action to prohibit the development of superintelligent AI until scientific consensus shows us that it can be made safe. My Lords, the time to act is now.
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Lord Howell of Guildford Portrait Lord Howell of Guildford (Conservative)
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the end of this session, of which, of course, the key one is who holds power and how on earth, in the new conditions in which power is conditions in which power is shifting all the time, we are going to maintain some control of the noble Baroness Laing just spoken noble Baroness Laing just spoken rightly reminds us over realistic areas where we can control and not areas where we can control and not go pursuing hopes and slogans that would raise hopes and nothing can be done, I say.

Incidentally, I think the slogan take back control is one of the silliest, immature and useless slogans that were being thrown into the political debate over the last decade or so, and that isn't the question. It gives us no guidance as to how on earth we establish the new powers and how they can be. We can contribute to them and enable us to retain the areas where sovereignty has obviously been completely changed and partly dissolved from what existed 20, 30, 40 years ago.

Where does it lie now? It lies increasingly, as the Baroness Kidron and others know perfectly well with the great platforms. I'm not sure whether it's a for American ones or 2 or 3 Chinese ones. Other platforms emerging. We try our best in some areas, but it is with the platforms that the power exists, and it is the question of how on earth we are to identify areas where we can retain the maximum influence internationally, as well as retaining our own systems in a much more efficient way than we do.

Examples. The whole of world trade has changed beyond recognition in the last five years. It is now a sort of seething mass of supply chains covering every almost every product, a whole range of countries, usually with computers and usually with computers containing Chinese parts of that. And that requires a completely different approach to bilateral trade control. And anything we have before energy links, people talk about independent energy in this country. Frankly, that makes absolutely no sense at all.

When you look at the technology of energy, all the major sources, both the traditional ones, are fossil fuels and the new and renewable ones. They're all heavily dependent upon international networks of enormous complexity. Even our nuclear side, which I where I think we favour development as we all do, or most people do. People think if we can build a large nuclear power stations will be all right. Complete nonsense. It only requires one difficulty in a Korean nuclear power station, or in any part of any system, the entire world network, to be badly affected.

Anyway, if we're talking about electricity and we're trying to move towards an electric economy, an all electric economy, we know we depend upon endless compute interconnectors and linkages and supplies, which only come from being heavily dependent on elaborate networks, which we must contribute rather than dance around and try and avoid defence and security. All are intensely linked as never before. We say we must spend more on defence and of course we must. But what is this defence and is it.

Is it as it really exists? Or are we in fact more and more vulnerable than ever with strategic threats from hypersonic missiles? Someone was pointing out the other day that the V-2 came at the end of the Second World War. It was wildly inaccurate, but no one had any conceivable means of stopping it. We were completely defenceless against it, and the only defence in the end, was for the Allied troops to overrun the launching stations and the factories where slave labour were manufacturing these things.

That was the only solution. We hadn't really solved the international missile situation. Now we are in fact still defenceless. Then the climate. What we can do our bit, but everyone else is CO2 doesn't obey national national friendships and borders, and nor do the effects of CO2. So this is an area where obviously we have to work entirely new systems and make them operative internationally. Otherwise, we're merely see the continuation of the rise in emissions, which is happening just as fast as it ever was, despite all our efforts.

Then there are all in all, all the areas that the noble Lady mentioned, quite rightly. And then there's inflation and pensions and pandemics. All these are globalised issues. My conclusion is quite simple for the moment. It's that we need new, strong multilateral institutions, which we have not got in 1945, Britain, people in America, Britain, but other countries as well came together and recreated an entirely new international order with strong institutions. Today that does not exist. And I listen in vain to hear that real efforts are being put into restoring the respect and trust which these institutions must have the UN, the IMF, the World Trade Organisation World International Maritime Organisation, Courts of Justice, the whole rule of law, the international flouted.

If I have one wish, it is to hear that new energies are going into that area which I thought provides the shell for what we have to do ourselves as a law abiding country, and a shell that is essential, because otherwise, without that shell, we shall have the same fate as the snail who proceeds without a shell. We all know what that is. They get

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gobbled up. My Lords, I'm. Grateful to the noble Baroness,

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Grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for facilitating this debate on such an important topic. And as always, it's a pleasure to follow my noble friend who makes follow my noble friend who makes such thoughtful contributions. I want to concentrate on artificial intelligence, and, as I think we all know, alongside magnificent all know, alongside magnificent opportunities, it does present many risks. But the greatest of those risks is not intelligence or what the technology can do. It is the concentration of power.

Power concentrated in too few companies, in too few countries, and ultimately in too few hands. And we've seen the consequences. And the noble Baroness Goudie Kidron has already talked about some of them. When digital markets become
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston Portrait Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Conservative)
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dominated by a small number of powerful platforms, reduced competition, weaker innovation and competition, weaker innovation and increased dependency. So the question is not whether concentration of power matters. It plainly does. The question is how we respond. Now, I share with many noble Lords the concern that the UK should not become dependent on a should not become dependent on a handful of foreign tech companies for critical digital capabilities, but I am not convinced that the answer is more regulation.

The largest and most dominant frontier model developers benefit if government. If governments believe that only they can be allowed to develop the most powerful AI, they benefit from a resulting policy debate in which ever greater risks are assumed to require ever greater regulation. And that, to me, is the real danger of regulatory capture. Regulation introduced in the name of safety can become a barrier to entry that protects today's dominant platforms from tomorrow's competitors. So before we legislate, we should ask not only whether a risk is sufficiently real and significant to justify intervention.

And of course, this week's OpenAI's break out cyber attack makes that question a live one. But we must also, at the same time, ask whether the proposed intervention will strengthen competition or simply reinforce existing market power. Because the answer to concentration is competition, and the Open Weight Foundation models are the greatest enabler of competition that AI has yet produced. They fundamentally change the economics of innovation by lowering the cost of deployment and of entry. And I would refer noble Lords to an article in The Washington Post this week by Bill Gurley.

Now, what these open models do is they allow many more companies to, including British start ups, to build world class AI applications without first having to spend billions training frontier models. Recent developments have demonstrated that this is no longer theoretical. The emergence of highly capable, low cost, open foundation models, including from China, shows that cutting edge AI is no longer confined to a handful of closed proprietary systems, and we should welcome that not because we wish to depend on China.

Obviously not, but because competition is the surest antidote to concentration of power. My Lords, I don't think Britain needs to own a frontier model to achieve AI sovereignty. We need the freedom to choose between competing models, the ability to build on them, and the capability to use and deploy them securely on our terms, into our economy and public services. And as I and many other noble Lords have argued before, Britain's challenge has never been inventing technology. It has been scaling technology companies an open foundation.

Models give more British firms the opportunity to compete, grow and retain strategic capability. Here, as in not bought or moved elsewhere. That is why competition policy matters and why only where relevant and necessary, the CMA must use its new powers in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act to ensure that AI markets remain open, competitive and capable of supporting new entrants. Now, competition must, of course, go hand in hand with protection for creators and the arrival of more.

A rival of Open Foundation models makes getting copyright right more, not less important. Creators should have the technological means to know when their work is being accessed, and to decide whether and what terms it may be used for AI training and to receive fair compensation when where it is, and measures such as the private member's bill that my right hon. Friend Damian Hinds is introducing in another place about online software access and transparency, point towards the kind of targeted transparency that can help achieve those objectives.

My Lords, the UK has an opportunity to take a distinctive path embracing open foundation models, protecting intellectual property using our competition powers robustly and creating the best environment for AI companies to start, scale and compete. If sovereignty is our objective, competition, not concentration, must be our strategy, and competition in AI will depend on whether we embrace the technology that enables it. And that, my Lords,

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is open weight Foundation models. My Lords.

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My Lords. My congratulations and gratitude to Baroness Kidron for securing. This debate.

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And though it feels like we almost have a weekly debate in your Lordships House on one or another Lordships House on one or another aspect of AI, I think it's most welcome, by the way, given it is
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Baroness Gill Portrait Baroness Gill (Labour)
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welcome, by the way, given it is one of the most concerning and unregulated areas that affects our daily lives, and it's likely to remain so in the future. Nevertheless, I believe little has been debated how our national sovereignty is being slowly eroded in real time by those who control our data, our infrastructure and our algorithms. And they aren't. Most worryingly, bound by our laws, my Lords, I believe we are standing at a critical crossroads. As we've heard from other noble Lords who have spoken before me, not controlling our own digital destiny means risking becoming a digital colony of the American monopolies and be subject to powers who are, let's say, our fleeting friends.

That's why I strongly welcome Prime Minister Burnham's decision to bring on the AI Minister, Nisha Narayan, directly onto the Cabinet table. This structural promotion signals and recognises that artificial intelligence is the very foundation of our future national security, of our public services and ensuring economic growth. However, whilst this is a welcome change, our defensive and regulatory framework remains dangerously behind the curve. Building fences for the large language models of today could mean being completely defenceless against the autonomous threats of tomorrow.

And. And I agree with what Baroness Stowell mentioned about yesterday. We heard about another example of rapidly moving AI from contained tools to an energetic system that can actively operate across networks without any human intervention. So the true threat to our national sovereignty is from the weaponization of rogue cross border AI, future frontier models will have the capability to bypass localised testing sandboxes, dynamically rewriting their own code to evade containment protocols. And once free, these models can act as borderless, self-replicating digital entities infiltrating critical national infrastructure, military networks and private cloud storage across the globe.

So just imagine if they were subverted by an adversarial foreign nation or cyber criminal syndicate. These autonomous agents could execute a coordinated, low observable attacks on our financial systems and power grids without leaving a traditional digital footprint. So one, one of my hobby horses when we are talking about AI, is how predatory bots are aggressively scrapping valuable copyright content from the UK website owners without their consent, starving our home grown creative industries and a major contributor to our economy.

True digital sovereignty requires us to protect our creators from intellectual property theft and to break up market monopolies and build predictive and hardened defences. A couple of questions to my friend the Minister. When will the government issue a refreshed strategic steer to the CMA to reaffirm its independence and inject urgency into its enforcement, ensuring it acts at a pace that matches the speed at which the AI stack is being monopolised. And secondly, will the government explicitly rule out new copyright exemptions, exceptions for AI and support legislative efforts to give UK content creators the legal certainty and transparency they need to block predatory scrapping bots?

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I'm grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate, and may I add to the plaudits directed may I add to the plaudits directed in the direction of the noble Baroness Baroness Kidron, who has prosecuted her agenda on digital prosecuted her agenda on digital safety and digital rights for more than a decade with acute skill, and has certainly moved the dial on has certainly moved the dial on many occasions. May I also say how pleased I am that the noble Baroness, the Minister, has Baroness, the Minister, has survived the reshuffle cull as she knows, I had a small desire that she would move to the Department of the environment so that we could refer to her as Baroness Lloyd of EFRA of Defra.

But we will have to wait. And may I say how sad I am that the noble Baroness, Baroness Chapman, has left the government. She was an absolutely excellent Minister, and may I declare my interest as an advisor to Digital Futures, which deploys AI engineers into companies and assesses their AI capabilities. My Lords, in November, the House of Lords Science and Tech Committee described the UK tech economy as an incubator economy and more recently, Amanda Brock from Open UK made the point that we should not seek.

When we talk about AI sovereignty, to build the whole AI tech stack by ourselves. And somewhere between those two statements lies the way forward. Because we are in an interconnected world, we cannot simply ignore the rest of the world. But we must do better than the incubator economy that we have been for so many years, and support British companies to scale and grow in this area. So let me make five recommendations to the government. The first is obviously to invest in our infrastructure, to invest in the UK companies that are making the chips, building the data
12:48
Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Conservative)
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centres, investing in the cloud. I was lucky to meet recently a British company, fractal, which British company, fractal, which does indeed make chips. It's a British company between Bristol, London and Cambridge. It's recently London and Cambridge. It's recently raised $200 million, but it plans to stay in Britain and to grow in to stay in Britain and to grow in Britain. These are exactly the kind of companies that we should be supporting. And in terms of not supporting. And in terms of not building the stack ourselves, let us look at our competitive advantage of which fractal is a good example.

It's a very niche business which has identified a need for a particular chip to support large language models, which uses less energy, generates less heat. It's this kind of small infrastructure play that can reap huge dividends for the UK AI economy. That's exactly what we should be looking at. We should be looking at grid connections. We should be looking at building British data centres. And may I also echo the earlier comment about creating a national data sovereignty platform.

It is absolutely right that one of our unique advantages in this space is the access we have to the data of British citizens, which should be handled carefully, but which gives us an enormous advantage, particularly in areas such as the NHS. The third way forward is, of course, to invest as much as possible, and I am delighted that the government has set up sovereign AI. It's only £500 million, but it's still a significant sum. It's less than the 5 billion that the EU has set aside.

But we're just a small island, and also the fund that's been set aside for AI hardware. And I hope the Minister will reassure us when she comes to Dispatch Box, that that £500 million will be fully allocated to sovereign AI and clear up some of the confusion. As her colleague said yesterday, it was moving to a de bist, but I'm now told it's moving to the Cabinet Office. Some clarity on that would be useful. I referred earlier to my work with digital futures and of course skills is hugely important in this area.

I gather there are something like a prediction of something like 900 000 vacancies within the tech economy in the next few years, and a drop in engineering apprentices of some 42% over the last few years. So a focus on building the skill economy that we so vitally need to support these industries is vitally important. And finally, my point is, I think the best way forward would be to abolish the government department that is laser focussed on science and innovation and technology, and to scatter its constituent parts to three different departments and to number ten.

That would be a masterstroke, and allow our civil servants to spend six months trying to sort out where on earth they're meant to be going, rather than prosecuting policy and making delivery. And of course, the the noble Baroness, the Minister won't be surprised that I've descended into my default status of facetiousness. The abolition of DSIT is a huge error, considering the urgency this agenda requires, considering it has taken three years to get this department up and running to find its feet, and it was actually a beacon of excellence in Whitehall.

And many people in the tech economy are very sad to see its demise.

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My Lords, I thank the noble Lady Baroness Kidron for securing this debate and for a very powerful and debate and for a very powerful and incisive introduction that very rightly identified that what we are talking about today is a talking about today is a constitutional issue. Among the many constitutional issues that the British state currently faces, British state currently faces, which has a lot to do with the state of the British country. Today.
12:52
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party)
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state of the British country. Today. Governments have to be able to make decisions, make laws for the good of the people of Britain, not for the profits of a few foreign governments or at the behest of a capricious foreign regime. That's not what's happening in the digital area. As the noble Lady outlined and others have referred to, we see a situation where decisions are made once a contract is awarded in a choice between two or maybe three giant companies out of the handful that might have put in for the contract.

And then we are locked in, unable to go anywhere else because the costs of changing courses would be too great. Now the UK, I think we have to acknowledge, has a terrible record on sovereignty. This is not an isolated issue. And here I am going to entirely respectfully disagree with the noble Lord Lord Howell the slogan take back Control in the last decade showed that the public understood this problem very clearly. The way in which that concern was directed was entirely misdirected.

It was directed to the East when it should have been directed to the West. But nonetheless, the public could see the problem that was arising. And I will just mention another example here, because it fits very nicely with this. The issue of secret courts, ISDs investor state dispute settlement procedures. And I note that in April there was a study out saying the UK was the worst in among European countries in empowering this profoundly undemocratic procedure that stops governments making decisions in the interests of their people.

Now, digital sovereignty is particularly important here because, of course, the digital realm has taken so much control over our lives, over our data, over our infrastructure, over the very actions of our government. Meanwhile, many of us are left. And this is the reality. Of course, we're told how great these systems are. Tell that to someone who's trying to get a system to recognise that this is a photo of them, and it should therefore give them a card. Yes, I am reflecting on a recent personal experience.

Now I want to make two key points about where we have handed control over to the nature of that. And one of those I'm drawing on the work of a Danish academic, Ali Reza Tuschl, who's looked at the Silicon Valley tech bros, the owners of the handful of companies that we're talking about that have such a place in the the British state and sees in them an attachment to a philosophy of reactionary futurism, the deployment of science fiction aesthetics to advance anti-democratic political projects.

They explicitly set out that they want to engineer a return to an idealised, brutal, past 19th century frontier capitalism with radical individualism, unregulated markets, and a rejection of democratic government. But of course, armed with all of the technology of the 21st century, this is a handful of men. And yes, they are all men who have control over much of the operation of the British state and British society in many areas of the country. Now, as I canvassed for the Green Party, I see ring doorbell after ring doorbell and behind that door I speak to people, NHS patients who are acutely aware that Palantir.

And they know that Palantir is a concern, very likely has control over their data, their private details. And of course, we'll also see stacks of Amazon packaging waste, often beside not inside the bins, because they won't fit in the bins. And I also want to put this in the international context. These are individuals who operate in close, often obsequious contact with the American regime. The noble Lady Baroness Kidron spoke about the activist white House, and I want to put this in the context of a piece published in The Guardian yesterday by Robert P Schreiner.

The. Yes, on one day, three speeches, the Secretary of State said that the counter-terrorism architecture should be directed against left wing political activists, peaceful people. And he said that if they claim that their human rights are being denied, will anyone who believes them, they must be on their side. The white House deputy Chief of Staff spoke about left wing political terrorism and suggested that you can tell who these people were by what they looked like, and said that any appeal to human rights must be must fall on deaf ears.

And then, of course, we had an American president who called the American election system indefensible, claiming that a foreign power had control over it through digital means. Let's think about the situation we're in, and I'm going to agree with the noble Lord Lord Vaizey, that we cannot have autarky in a digital world, but what we have to do is decide who we are lined up with, who we are partnered with, but also, crucially, to come back to the to the noble Lady Baroness Kidron point, we have to have the power to change our mind, to move, to not get locked in.
12:58
Baroness Verma Portrait Baroness Verma (Conservative)
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My Lords. >> My Lords. >> I refer my membership of a number of Appgs on digital inclusion, and I also want to congratulate the noble Lady Baroness Kidron for securing this Baroness Kidron for securing this debate today. And like her, I'm not against technology, AI or any of the platforms that exist. What I worry about is the numbers of people that remain excluded from being able to utilise it for their own knowledge and their own protections, and that is why I wanted to speak in this debate today.

A few days ago, I was watching a programme on, on, on the television, and it talked about the two types of intelligence, the artificial intelligence. But then the latent or the civilisation intelligence, which we as human beings have had over centuries in our in our capacity to learn, to retain and to pass on. And it made me think about this debate today. And whilst we can talk about the wider implications of a few companies having such an impact on us in the UK, but also wider, it also made me think about it being a new form of colonisation across the world, where there is actually very little power in the hands of leaders who haven't got access to the complicated, complex technologies that exist in only a very few countries on the planet.

And it made me think that whilst we are very keen to cut down time it takes to get to answers, it also removes the ability for a large majority of people to be able to be part of a debate where they can fully question what is happening to them, and the role of government and the role of us in houses like this is to be able to scrutinise what we are going to deliver and lay out. For the majority of the population of the country we serve.

And I felt myself quite helpless, thinking that large portions of our own country still have very little access to just basic technology, let alone trying to understand the complexities of artificial artificial intelligence and, and all the companies that are going to be utilising their platforms, our data and all the on all the sort of defence mechanisms that we individually can hold but lose out on because suddenly we've updated our power to, to someone else.

And I think that if I was to step back a little and to look at the wider debate of why we are having this debate on policy around the digital and technological world, one of the things I think we should all be very, very mindful of is that whilst we are in a small number of countries are in this mass race to be the first, the most powerful, the majority, the large part of the planet still remains in the slow lane.

And for me, the fear is and I call it colonisation, because I couldn't think of another word for it. But I want us to be able to to look at history and look at what happens when power falls in the hands of the few, and the ability for the majority to challenge it, because they do not have the tools, the knowledge, or actually the platform space to be able to voice their concerns suddenly becomes very, very challenging for me as a public servant in your Lordships house.

And when I was listening to Baroness Kidron opening remarks, I was trying to think, where can I navigate some of my fears of what is unfolding very rapidly in front of us? And whilst this, this, this technology fast lane has been going on for some time, the resilience of us to stop and challenge it has has been actually very, very slow. And whilst I said right up front, I have absolutely no problem with utilising technology, I do not want technology to utilise me and I have a feeling that's the path we are going on and it's it's frightening because I work with communities that are actually so behind the curve on access to even the mere basics.

So my question to the noble Baroness, the Minister, is how do we. How do we ensure that one. Of course, we keep our own sovereignty

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secure, but our duty is not just to the 60 Like a million in this country.

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Like a million in this country. It is also to our place on the global platform. And I don't think global platform. And I don't think that we have been vocal enough about making sure that when we about making sure that when we don't agree and disagree with some of the, the, the actions that are taken on our behalf and on the taken on our behalf and on the behalf of many billions on the planet, that we actually are removing ourselves from the position of power that we've always held.

And that is the convening power of being a voice for the majority.

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Yeah. My Lords, could I also welcome

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My Lords, could I also welcome Baroness Kidron initiative today? I just finished your book and it's a just finished your book and it's a good read, but only one niggle. I

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really gasp at the cost of hardbacks. Yeah. And maybe I'm stingy, but. But

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And maybe I'm stingy, but. But they told me a whole year or something. Until you get a paperback so that more people can read it. Just a thought. I've always digressing should get back to the point, but I do also want to welcome back to her place. My noble
13:04
Lord Moraes Portrait Lord Moraes (Labour)
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friend the Minister, and I'm really happy that she can continue her work in this important area. My work in this important area. My Lords, digital sovereignty means agency. It's such a profound thing. agency. It's such a profound thing. It's the capacity for us in this country to make choices about everything from our the safety of our children online to the smooth running of our economy. Now, that is a vast area to have sovereignty in or to have sovereignty, damage or sovereignty gap.

Yet we are in a position now a very simple position where a handful of US firms own the digital infrastructure that the UK economy runs on search browsers, cloud app distribution, business, software. As my noble friend said, those same companies are now also monopolising the AI stack. So this, in simple terms, leaves UK firms, public services consumers dependent on suppliers who are governed elsewhere. And I think that is a very profound thing. It's something that we need to understand.

And the more difficult part of this is how we deal with that reality. My Lord, this process did not begin with this government. It's not the government's making. It's not the last government's making, and it's not of the government before that making this began in the 20 tens, and it began in one country with another country slightly catching up. And what happened in the 20 tens was an extraordinary thing, which is that the US tech companies determined that they would weaken oversight of the digital space.

They would not have federal legislation. And today, an extraordinary position in the United States, which is that there is no federal regulation, as Baroness Kidron said, or regulation at all in this space. So I can just repeat that for people, because it is hard to believe it all exists at state level. With the weakened oversight, the Federal Trade Commission and all the other organs who are traditionally very powerful in American democracy. Congress has no say, does not want to have a say.

That's a whole other debate. But this reality affects our reality, because those are the firms that exist in terms of our economy. So this is a this is a factual situation. And I want to get on to the issue of how we try, at least to deal with this sovereignty gap. I do want to also mention what has happened to this country and its sovereignty in the digital space. In that period up to today, we were in the European Union. The European Union has a weakness in regulation, which is unlike the United States and China.

It does not have the digital infrastructure, and yet it is the best regulator that we have globally. There are only three global regulators. When we were in the European Union, we had the benefit not just of EU legislation and regulation, but we had the protection in court of limiting the cross-border transfers of our citizens, because that is what those companies are monetising. That is the point of all of this. In the 20 tens, I chaired the Facebook inquiry, met Mark Zuckerberg, and he literally said to us, GDPR is a great thing.

You know, he went to Congress and said, you can see it on YouTube. He went to Congress and said so. He admitted that regulation was essential for human beings in the United States, in China, here all around the world. But they determinedly went in an opposite path. We are now left with this situation. And I think the first thing to say is that there are a number of things that we can start to do. We have to do something now. It's, you know, there's no point in just throwing up our hands and saying, this is how it's going to be.

So I'll just suggest a couple of things. One is that we have to understand what we can do as a country to re-establish that that kind of sovereignty. They seem to be small things, but within the capacity that we have. And I would maybe put this specific question to my hon. Friend the Minister, take Palantir, which at least everyone knows about now. What Palantir are trying to do is to take health data, make cross-border transfer to the United States and sell it.

That's what they are doing. They are paying us very little for the contract. That's why they are paying us very little. And even the public now are aware. Certainly, people who work in the NHS are aware that the systems are not even that good. So one of the things we need to do within our capacity, and I'll put this to the Minister, is, are we actually doing a cost benefit analysis of the contracts that we do undertake? Because there will be a sovereignty issue to that.

Secondly, we need to be really clear about what is happening here and what we can do about the blockages. For example, the US CLOUD Act, it grants US authorities the power to request access to data held anywhere in the world from providers subject to US jurisdiction, with no legal requirement for providers to inform customers. Now, this has been raised in Parliament. The whole issue of the US Cloud Act, and I know the Minister and the Other place has has commented on it, but DSIT has not made any central assessments of what the US Cloud Act is and what what an assessment of what it's doing to to our infrastructure and our sovereignty.

So I would put to the Minister that these are the kinds of questions that we need to try and answer, that we need to make progress on. Another area. Oh, sorry. Another area is just EU alignment. Very quickly. EU alignment. We have safety in numbers. If we can align, we have good data adequacy agreements with Europe and the European Union. We do not have a good data adequacy agreement with the US for obvious reasons. Does that mean we can. And I put this to the Minister, at least align on those regulatory aspects that help us in this country and our sovereignty.

Not everything from the European Union, but at least those aspects where we align with our data adequacy agreement to help

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our sovereignty position. My Lord, it's a pleasure to take part in this debate. In doing so, I declare my relevant technology declare my relevant technology interest as advisor to the Crown Estate and to Simmons and Simmons Estate and to Simmons and Simmons LLP. My Lords, I must start by congratulating my friend Baroness congratulating my friend Baroness Kidron on her brilliant and blistering introduction to this debate. The noble Lady is having
13:11
Lord Holmes of Richmond Portrait Lord Holmes of Richmond (Conservative)
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debate. The noble Lady is having quite a month of it. This debate today, a new book out and a fantastic white paper published just last week. I know it's only a matter of time and quite right that moviegoers will soon be treated to Baroness Beeban the biopic. I'll be speaking with Christopher Nolan later today. My Lords, the departmental chairs have been rearranged. What does this mean, though, for digital sovereignty? Well, yesterday the Minister, Jonathan Reynolds, described the new department as a genuinely new beast.

Make of that what you will. But largely the technology industry were dismayed that DSIT is no more. I ask the Minister, can they all be wrong? My Lords, we also have GDS on the move rather than being the positive, impactful, cross-departmental force, it now will be within DCMs, so it will be part of a department giving departmental view with a departmental Secretary of State seeking to influence other different government departments. How will this play out? Similarly, we have the separation of AI sovereignty and digital infrastructure now relying on coordination where prior we had effective oversight.

How will this benefit digital sovereignty? We have the AI Security Institute now responsible within that office for increasing take up of technology across government. Well, ask anybody if you have the same group responsible for testing the tech and deploying and supplying the tech, what the outcome will be? You'll get a single. And in this context, unhelpful answer adds to that. What's happening with AI, IP, and copyright, what's happening with AI growth zones.

And you have quite a cocktail. None of which of the face of it seems to say anything to have effective and really laser focus on digital and AI sovereignty. So what do we require? As is always the case, I take your Lordships back to the three C's clarity, consistency, and coherence of approach. It doesn't matter whether you're citizen, creative, consumer innovator or investor clarity, consistency and coherence. And in this specific context of digital sovereignty, well, definitions, dependencies and decisions, there are as many definitions of sovereignty as you care to take, but the government need to pick one, stick to it and clearly and coherently communicate that on dependencies.

What is the government prepared to tolerate? We don't need to, nor could we do full stack sovereignty. But the truth of it is no nation, not even the United States of America or China have true, pure, full stack sovereignty. It's not doable and it's not necessary. What is the risk profile that a government is prepared to tolerate? What do they say in terms of broad resilience? To govern is to choose. Ultimately, these decisions have to be made. We've heard variously from the Minister over debates and oral questions in your Lordships House, that digital and AI is now, across all domains.

Nobody would disagree with that. But wouldn't that suggest that we need a cross-departmental cross domain approach when it comes to our legislation and regulation? That's the approach that's being taken with the cyber bill. And I agree with it, though it's deficient and absent in some serious areas, with no mention currently of AI will be coming back to that in the September sitting. But if it makes sense to have a cross sector cyber bill, surely it makes sense to have a cross sector cross economy AI bill for digital sovereignty, for AI sovereignty, cross sector principles based outcomes focussed inputs understood to those principles, trust and transparency, inclusion and innovation, interoperability and an international outlook, accountability, ability, assurance and accessibility.

Many of those principles have been, I would suggest, weakened by the recent changes to departmental responsibilities. And there needs to be that laser focus and clarity, consistency and coherence. Because ultimately, digital sovereignty, AI sovereignty, data sovereignty, all essential elements. But we need to be really looking at how we take an approach which enables, which empowers and fundamentally allows all of us as citizens to say with full throat, our data, our decisions, our digital futures together, our human led, inclusive digital futures.
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Baroness Uddin Portrait Baroness Uddin (Non-affiliated)
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My Lords, it's a pleasure to >> My Lords, it's a pleasure to follow the noble Lord Holmes and thank him for all his work. Echoing thank him for all his work. Echoing all the praises I too wish to convey and express my gratitude to noble Lady, my friend, noble Lady Kidron, for her very powerful leadership, including in this debate. My Lords, my contribution today is framed in the context of having organised quite a number of several numerous discussions and meetings on.

In relation to some of the APPG which I declare on digital transformation and policy on technology as it affects the society. And in this context, particularly on how sovereignty is a matter of national security and promoting our national security as an absolute objective for all, all members of the House of Lords and across the other House, I. In this for their support. I want to acknowledge the library briefing. Open control AI, not open AI control AI and Tasmina Ahmed-sheikh for her ambitious efforts in relation to advancing sovereign AI stack, which I'll make some reference to later, and thou shalt Humza for his precious time, wisdom and foresight.

My Lords, sovereignty used to be visible in borders, laws, currency and armed forces. Today much of it is indiscernible. It sits in the clouds, contracts, chips, code, data and algorithm. The question is not whether Britain governs Britain, it is whether Britain can still choose. As noble Lady said, when the system supporting our public services, business and families are designed, owned and operated elsewhere outside our legal reach, digital sovereignty is therefore not. Technological isolation between cannot and need not build.

Every cloud frontier model. As it's being said, it is about retaining the agency capability and alternatives to act when circumstances change. To build the foundation of economic power, of public services and national security, and of state itself. Digital sovereignty shapes national sovereignty in at least three critical ways. First, strategic autonomy. It's been repeated in this House. Can Britain continue essential services, protect sensitive data and change direction? If a supplier or another state or dominant monopolies dictate trade off terms not acceptable to our national requirements and standards? Second, economic resilience consider what plans are in place to improve investment, which addresses British capability, expand skills employment or will these fast paced development leave us permanently renting access from elsewhere, which may endanger future proofing protection in procurement for our nation? In this context, I would refer to the work I have convened in the House on the Sovereign Power Index, a power index developed by Tasmina Ahmed-sheikh, who's a former MSP, which is one disciplined way to measure whether our current trajectory will deliver real sovereignty.

Third, citizens protection and rights, especially those of our children. Can citizen challenge and automated decision. Can a parent reach a competent human being? Can a child grow up without their attention, identity, vulnerability, becoming somebody else's commercial asset? Tasmina Ahmed-sheikh sovereign AI Power Index offers a system to measure whether investment in translating into genuine national capability control and resilience, and Hamza, a future Ologist, a technology practitioner and an author, says technology should not be should be our servant, not our master, as it seems to be now.

Yet too often, digital transformation removes human competence, quality and kindness. Digitising a broken services does not transform it. It industrialises failures. AI can make good institutions better. They can also make a bad institution fail faster and consistently and with no one held accountable. These are sombre considerations ahead of us. Regards governance and accountability in regards to major public services, including the criminal justice system, education and autonomous use of weapons in warfare on matters of daily occurrence.

Can I bring you back to imagine a UK parent in to to to 31 whose children use AI tutors at school. For one parent, the system is transparent, independently tested and subject to UK law. A teacher can explain his recommendation. One can. One parent can challenge an error and the school can change supplier without losing the child's history. Technology, serving the family and the society. For the second parent, the child is labelled a low potential. Nobody can explain why. No one can locally override it.

The school is locked in, data cannot easily be removed, and the human teacher becomes the administrator of the machines. Judgement with consequential impact on that child. Maybe for a long years. One parent is a citizen using technology and the the other will be captured in never ending circle of machine centric decision. Difficult to challenge or manage. My Lords, in five years, AI agents may mediate education, employment, welfare, welfare and health. Indeed, warfare in ten AI will be infrastructures of the state in 20 years.

Today's primary school children will be the workers, parents, leaders. The defaults we tolerate now. Opacity, manipulation and dependency may become unwritten. Constitution of their digital lives. My Lords, digital sovereignty is not about building walls. It is about keeping the keys to our own doors and ensuring that our children inherit them. And it is about our children's future, and we cannot place our sovereign digital system in anyone else's grasps whilst we do everything we can to ensure I'm finished while we can.

Everything we can to ensure that AI does not become sovereign over Britain and we cannot wait for another determination determined to others

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to determine the future for our citizens and our staff. The noble Lady please to conclude her remarks.

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conclude her remarks. We must invent it with honour and dignity for human lives.

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and dignity for human lives. I stand up very briefly, noble Lords, to remind some members that the speaking time limit is six the speaking time limit is six minutes for backbenchers, and I urge all noble Lords to keep within that limit so that the debate may that limit so that the debate may conclude within the time allowed, without cutting short the Minister's remarks. My Lords, I declare my interest as a science entrepreneur and in particular my roles as chairman and shareholder in Loci Labs and Freeport
13:25
Lord Drayson Portrait Lord Drayson (Labour)
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Technologies. And I add my congratulations to to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on securing Baroness, Lady Kidron, on securing this debate and her frankly outstanding impact in campaigning outstanding impact in campaigning against the harms of Big Tech, brilliantly set out in her recent brilliantly set out in her recent book, My Lords on Tech Sovereignty, the public is well ahead of the public is well ahead of Westminster and on AI. They are both alarmed and impatient. Polling published last month found that 80% of the UK public distrust our government's ability to control AI at all.

The dependency they sense is real and structural. US hyperscalers dominate the UK cloud market despite us being a leading nation in AI science, the UK has failed to invest in the infrastructure needed to enable our science to scale a modern industry, and has allowed the infrastructure. It does have to be controlled by US companies. This risk is not hypothetical. My Lords, under the US Cloud Act, American authorities can compel a US owned provider to disclose data held anywhere in the world, including data held in their UK resident data centres.

Asked under oath by the French Senate whether he could guarantee French citizens data would never be handed over, Microsoft's France's legal director answered no. And when Washington sanctioned officials of the International Criminal Court, its chief prosecutor lost his Microsoft email and a Canadian judge. Her Google and Amazon accounts. Yet in this parliament, we are still using Microsoft 365. Why. Government cloud spending runs at over £6 billion a year across the public sector, paying annual rent on infrastructure.

We do not own and do not control. Now, these decisions to buy from Big Tech, rather than procuring from UK owned and managed businesses, are why we do not have a globally leading British owned tech company resident in the UK. They have either been sold like DeepMind and arm to foreign companies, or they've moved offshore using the Delaware flip to access US capital. Your Lordship Science and Technology Committee reported in November that our failure to scale has reached, and I quote, crisis point and that our economy is bleeding out as a result.

The causes, my Lords, are three self-inflicted wounds procurement that finds that foreign Big tech offers cheapest on the day and ignores the strategic cost of failing to build our own industry. Capital markets know that no longer finance our own companies. London having shed some 800 listed companies since 2015, and UK pension funds holding as little as 4% of their capital in UK assets. When UK founders incorporate in Delaware, they are not being unpatriotic, they are just going where their capital is.

But my Lords, we already know how to solve this when we name the capabilities that must be sustained onshore, such as designing and building nuclear submarines, sustained procurement aligned with strategic sovereign clarity over decades has meant that Barrow in Furness is world leading and we export these submarines to our allies. This method works. So I have three asks of my noble friend the Minister. First, make UK government procurement seriously support the British tech sector. The Prime Minister has said he wants to reindustrialise Britain.

That means ensuring that the billions currently spent with foreign owned tech companies are spent at home. Will the Minister commit to creating a strategic sovereign list, naming the digital capabilities? This country will not outsource. Second turn the capital cap taps back towards Britain. Will the government now mobilise our pension savings into UK businesses and UK infrastructure? We have the laws to do so. We just need to do it. Third, by open, not closed systems, Germany, Denmark, France and others have moved public employees off Microsoft and yes, that Microsoft Office 365 that we are all using does come under the US Cloud Act.

There are plenty of open source alternatives we could be using. Now, I know that some will say it's too difficult or there is no practical alternative to what we're doing, but it isn't true. Last week, Airbus announced that it is moving its systems off Amazon Web Services to the French provider Scaleway. And if a company of that scale and complexity regulated as it is to manufacture aircraft, we can do it. My Lords, this is not a question of capability.

It is a question of will. By ensuring that the digital technology shaping our lives is built to our values rather than somebody else's, that respects the rights of creators, that protects children, that creates British jobs and pays UK taxes. We do have an alternative.
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Lord Ranger of Northwood Portrait Lord Ranger of Northwood (Conservative)
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Yes. >> Follow the noble Lord Drayson. We share our views on the Science and Technology Select Committee. I know his passion and commitment for know his passion and commitment for British technology, and I also thank the noble Baroness Kidron for securing this debate at this crucial time and declare my interests in supporting British tech businesses. V three great way of AI, automated analytics and a co-founder of the business AI Alliance. My Lords, future generations will look back at this period of the 21st century as the moment we unlocked the next stage of human potential.

Through our advancements in science and technology, we stand on the cusp of dramatically accelerating change in our lives, our societies, and perhaps even our politics. In a relatively short time, we will see legions of driverless vehicles, flocks of flying taxis, oodles of digital money, armies of personal robots, precision preventative medicine, wearable and even bionic enhancements. I believe we shall solve some of the greatest challenges of our age. We shall redefine what we mean by work and leisure. We shall create, discover and travel further than we have ever travelled before, even to the stars.

This, my Lords, is all to come, but it is still early stage of the technological evolution. We must, of course, think carefully about the foundations upon which these extraordinary achievements will be built. For beneath the excitement lies a rather traditional contest between nation states for technology supremacy. And that brings me to the question before us today what do we actually mean by national sovereignty in the digital age? For decades, we assume that globalisation would diminish the importance of borders. That era is changing.

We are witnessing the fragmentation of globalised settlement. Economic security has become national security. Data has become a strategic asset. Artificial intelligence has become an instrument of geopolitical competition. Increasingly, political influence is exercised not only through governments but through globally significant businesses that carry strategic interests of their home nations. The United States has made its choice. China has made its choice. The question before us today is whether Britain is prepared to make ours. Having spent much of my career working with some of the world's largest tech businesses across multiple continents, I've seen first hand that the relationship between governments and global technology companies has become one of the defining features of modern statecraft.

Their influence on investment standards, infrastructure, talent and increasingly, national resilience cannot be ignored. We know that sovereignty in the digital age is no longer simply about where our borders lie. It is about whether Britain possesses the capability and the confidence to shape our own technological destiny, rather than merely consume technologies designed elsewhere. The choice of where our sensitive data resides, the choice of who builds critical infrastructure, the choice of how emerging technologies reflect our values and serve our national interests.

And against this backdrop, I confess to finding regrettable. At precisely the moment. Technology is becoming central to every aspect of government. The government has chosen to abolish the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology Departments. Matter. Priorities matter. Institutional structures signal intent. Sovereignty is not achieved through talking about technology. It is achieved by making clear strategic choices about where Britain will lead and where we will compete. Are we truly prepared to back our world leading universities and research institutions to provide the innovations that will define tomorrow's economy? Are we prepared to ensure that our entrepreneurs and start-ups and scale ups secure the investment they need to scale globally, whilst remaining proudly British? Are we determined that the City of London will remain the world's leading international financial centre in the age of digital assets, digital money and Tokenised finance? Are we prepared to invest in sovereign capabilities that will determine our competitiveness for generations to come? Because digital sovereignty is not simply about artificial intelligence, it's about ensuring British ideas become British industries.

That British innovation creates British prosperity. And then British values continue to shape the technologies that will shape the world. My Lords, I do not believe that nations that prosper in this century will have to invent and scale every technology. There will be those with the confidence and strategic clarity to decide which capabilities matter most to their national interest, and then back those choices with conviction. Britain has led great technological revolutions before, and history teaches us success is never accidental.

It does require clear political vision. It requires enduring partnerships and structures between government, academia and industry. And, above all, it results. It requires the resolve to stay the course until the job is done. So, my Lords, let us be clear about the choices we make. I ask the Minister and the government to define with confidence and ambition what British digital sovereignty means, not only to ourselves but to the rest of the world. Then we can both measure and manage our sovereignty posture.

Then, if we can do that, Britain will not simply adapt to the technological age. We will play our full part in defining it.
13:37
Baroness Shields Portrait Baroness Shields (Conservative)
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My Lord, I too would like to begin by thanking the noble Baroness Baroness Kidron for once again bringing us together for this important conversation at a moment in time when AI is emerging as the in time when AI is emerging as the operating system of all of our lives. In May, I cautioned this House that frontier AI systems were shaping our world and that they were. We were being controlled by an extraordinarily narrow concentration of power, capital and data, and that most nations were not participating in that process but inheriting it.

I returned to that argument today because it is no longer a forecast. It is now a fact pattern. Frontier AI capability sits overwhelmingly in the hands of a few companies headquartered mainly in the United States and China. Every other nation participates by permission, not by right, and that permission can be withdrawn arbitrarily in an instant. We saw this explicitly on June 12th, when the US Commerce Department directive forced Anthropic to suspend access to its most advanced model, called Fable 5, for foreign nationals worldwide, including its own foreign national researchers.

Unable to touch the model they had built because of the passport they held, access was indeed restored on July 1st. However, sovereignty was not. The UK has no seat at the table. Taken together, this incident, along with this week's reports of an autonomous AI agent powered by OpenAI models escaping its research sandbox and interacting with the Hugging Face open source repository illustrate a profound shift now underway. Our security institutions have been built on the assumption that agency is human.

That assumption no longer holds. We are entering a world in which software agents will increasingly make decisions, no negotiate with one another and act on behalf of people, companies and nations. Both incidents report to the same underlying truth. Sovereignty is not simply a function of computing power. It is a function of control over access, deployment and consequences. And that is where Britain's real vulnerability lies. My Lords, this is a motion about policy. But we cannot make good policy the way we normally do through debate precedent and incremental regulatory convention.

When the assumption that those conventions rest on is that intelligence and decision making are exclusively human, that no longer holds. This is a new magnitude of change. It transforms both the nature of global competition and the meaning of sovereign control. No single country can dominate every layer of the technology stack, and we should not delude ourselves. UK public investment, measured in hundreds of millions, can never compete with private capital measured in hundreds of billions. The strategic question for Britain is therefore, not whether we can match the raw capability and scale of foreign frontier models, but where our genuine advantage lies.

Our specific strength is our vibrant British tech ecosystem. In domain specific models, they're building the physical systems they're creating, including advanced robotics and drones and deep vertical applications where Britain already holds genuine competitive advantages. But there are risks in that domain as well. Just last week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned that of what he calls a reverse information paradox, organisations that plug directly into foreign frontier models are paying twice, once with their capital for access and again with their institutional knowledge that they seek, prompt by prompt Palantir.

Alex Karp puts it more bluntly he calls this losing your alpha, your core intellectual property handed to a competitor who never had to earn it. This reflects a broader shift in where strategic value now resides. The AI frontier is also commoditizing faster than anyone predicted. Intelligence is becoming a utility. Consequently, durable value, and with its strategic risk, have migrated to the layer that interfaces with our critical infrastructure, including our health service, our energy grid, transportation and agriculture systems.

Government's role should should be to set the gold standard by certifying the boundaries around critical infrastructure, ensuring personal data is protected, data leakage is prevented, and government and British intellectual property is defended by certifying that protective layer to rigorous standards. We allow our tech ecosystem to flourish safely. We maintain sovereign control over our data, even when the underlying frontier models change, turning digital sovereignty into a competitive asset for British industry. To achieve this, the government's immediate priority must be auditing our dependence on foreign frontier models and establishing strict procurement standards for data sovereignty.

That is why I propose a special inquiry into AI power and sovereignty focus on three non-negotiable pillars national sovereignty, data sovereignty, and cultural sovereignty. Beginning alongside the UK's G20 presidency in 2027, it would bring together those who build the most advanced AI systems with those who govern them. Identifying British Britain's strategic autonomy is strong, where it is vulnerable and what can be done to protect it. The timing would lead this international conversation with authority. At exactly the moment we assume this responsibility, Britain still has time to strengthen its strategic autonomy.

But the window is closing. My Lords, we must not wait until permission is withdrawn to discover what sovereignty was worth.
13:44
Lord Bishop of Oxford Portrait The Lord Bishop of Oxford (Bishops)
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My Lords, it's a real honour to take part in this debate, and I join others once again in thanking join others once again in thanking Baroness Kidron for her penetrating analysis. In the words of our new analysis. In the words of our new Prime Minister on the steps of Downing Street a few days ago, Britain needs to show the world that we can regain our stability once again. Stability is a deeply Christian virtue and, of course, by many other world faiths. The Psalms speak of God as a rock, our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble.

The rule of Benedict, with his emphasis on stability and faithfulness, undergirds many of our institutions, from schools to hospitals, universities to our great cathedrals. In recent years, new technology has become one of the many factors at work in undermining our stability as a nation. There are many gains from technology, but as we know, there are existential risks to mental health, to our climate, to cohesion, to truth, to relationships, to community, to patterns of work, and in the distribution of power, which affects every part of society.

And the international order and the risks inherent in AI are a product of its accelerating speed of development. In part, many speak now, and the language has been used this afternoon properly of a race to artificial general intelligence, frontier AI, the speed of change and the significant power unleashed make this revolution distinct from other technical developments in the past, because there is a risk that the speed of change will itself undermine the very benefits that change brings.

There is simply no time for public trust and confidence to grow. And we've heard of the growing public awareness of risk and the desire that something be done. Debate consistently lags behind the deployment of technology and public awareness institutions, which give stability to society are undermined. New markets and new jobs have no time to grow. Where existing ones are superseded so rapidly, and there is little time to build capacity in industry, in local authorities, in governments, internationally, and the acceleration we see at the moment is not inevitable, but is almost entirely driven by commercial factors.

The huge investment required to develop AI demands massive returns in a very short and contracting space of time. Every example of future scenario planning I have read identifies growing existential risk. My Lords, we can identify the accelerators. But where are the brakes on AI development globally? Globally, where are the constraints and the restraints for responsible AI which ensure harms are mitigated? Trust is built and benefits justly shared. A responsible balancing. Slowing down can only come and needs to come from two sources.

The first is from the assertion of sovereignty from individual nations, and that assertion of sovereignty needs to be clear, to be ethically shaped and in the interests of our whole society, sovereignty will always be a basket of different things. There are no absolutes, but sovereignty must be clearly expressed as a standard by which to measure each new development, each new investment of others have clearly argued. This afternoon the United Kingdom does not yet have that clear standard and statement of intent.

We need it urgently. What steps are the government taking to make clear our position and our willingness to slow development to a manageable pace? And the second source is the combined and collective power of nation states acting in concert. And again, the United Kingdom has a major role to play in drawing together a common approach. What steps is the government taking to draw such a coalition together? For the good of all? My Lords, I've been immensely grateful for the opportunity to serve in this House from beginning to end.

The experience has been a sharp learning curve. I've learnt so much from colleagues in debate, including today in APPGs and particularly in the select committees on AI and the Environment and Climate Change. I'm immensely grateful to the staff of the House, to the doorkeepers, to those who keep us safe. I'd record my thanks to my researcher at Simon Cross, to Simon Stanley and Richard Chapman of the Church of England's parliamentary unit, for their expertise and wisdom. My Lords, the most important part of a building is its foundation, the most vital part of a boat in a storm is the keel, giving stability in the water as the world navigates the transition to the age of artificial intelligence, we will need more than ever before the values and ethics of our common tradition, rooted in centuries of Christian faith and practice, AI can be a tool for the common good, a source of great benefit, but only if governments remain sovereign does the Minister agree.
13:50
Lord Clement-Jones Portrait Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords, I declare an interest as a consultant to DLA Piper on AI as a consultant to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation and as chair of the board of the Authors Licensing Collecting Society. And Licensing Collecting Society. And can I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness congratulating the noble Baroness Lloyd on her reappointment? But of course, the Bed of Nails are having a debate on the last day of the term, of course. Comes with it, my Lords, it's both a privilege and a sadness to follow the right Reverend prelate in his valedictory speech, my Lords.

And so, before turning to the substance of this debate, I hope the House will allow me a brief word about him. He's unusually served both as a Bishop of Sheffield and of Oxford in this House, the latter for exactly ten years. This month Bishop Stephen has been an influential and instrumental voice on artificial intelligence in this House. A member of our original House of Lords Select Committee on AI and absolutely crucial in developing the principles for AI development set out by the Committee and my Lords, we just avoided designating them as our ten AI commandments.

He was a founding board member of the centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, and someone who's always put the ethical and human dimension of these technologies. Dignitary trust, the value of work, human flourishing. First. He was also a co-founder and member of it of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Environment and Climate Change. He anticipated the neats and AI human flourishing debate by emphasising the importance of adequately preparing young people for changing economic and technological conditions by providing meaningful routes from education into work, and ensuring that technological change does not undermine opportunities for younger generations.

And it's very fitting that his last contribution to this House should be in a debate on digital sovereignty. Since the question he has pressed throughout his time here, whether we are shaping these technologies or being shaped by them, is precisely the question that this debate poses at a national and European level. With his insights, collaborative spirit, friendship, enduring dedication to ethical innovation and policy making. He will be greatly missed. And I know I speak for all of us across the house in wishing him

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well and all best wishes for the future. Amen. My Lords, I'm very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for securing this debate and for her superb introduction. And to all her superb introduction. And to all noble Lords who've spoken today. And I do congratulate both the And I do congratulate both the noble Lord Morris and the noble Lord Drayson on their summer Lord Drayson on their summer reading material. It is. It is way.

It has ranged widely from infrastructure to intellectual property, from procurement to accountability. But a single thread runs through it. Digital sovereignty is not an abstract concept. It's crucial for our economic, societal and security future. Noble Baroness Kidron the noble Baroness Berger, Baroness Gill, and Baroness Shields reminded us what the absence of that sovereignty looks like in practice. Last month, the US government placed export controls on Anthropic newest models. President Trump gave in less than 90 minutes for the company to cut off non-U.S.

citizens. This restriction was lifted on the 1st of July, but the episode and potentially the recent open AI episode mentioned by some of the noble Baroness, showed that what we have built in this country is not technological independence. But in the AI minister's own phrase, a search for strategic leverage. My Lords, but leverage is not control. Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court could tell us the same. Sanctioned in 2025, he lost his Microsoft email account.

Yes, my Lords, Microsoft 365 at the decision of a boardroom in Redmond, Washington state. Not a court, my Lords, the. The. There is an economic cost of this dependency. The Competition and Markets Authority found AWS and Microsoft hold 70 to 90% of our cloud market, as the noble Lord Drayson said, and this costs UK customers in the region of £500 million a year and the same is true of the rest of the AI stack. My Lords, we are heavily dependent on US big tech.

The noble Baroness Verma used the expression colonisation in this context, but as a noble Baroness Uddin said, this is not isolation, and as the noble Baroness Shields said, we need to determine where our advantages lie. That noble Baroness Kidron said one reason why this persists is not market failure alone, but regulatory timidity. And my Lords, I believe very strongly in competition. But I do part company with the noble Baroness Stowell. I believe strongly, both in regulation and in competition.

Specifically, I agree with the possibilities of open source and open weight models. But my Lords, the CMA would cross a strong cross-party support, has the powers that it needs under the Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act, but only three designations as an SME's of Big tech services have yet been made. The CNA declined to designate Amazon or Microsoft in cloud services as having strategic market status, despite strong recommendations from an independent inquiry and a requirement for Google to negotiate fair and reasonable payment terms with news publishers has been repeatedly delayed.

A new strategic steer, which could be issued within weeks, directing the CMA towards binding remedies and reaffirming its independence, would cost nothing and require no legislation. My Lords, will the Minister commit the government to that? My Lords, the noble Baroness Berger Lord Vaizey, Lord Drayson Baroness Shields and the noble Lord Ranger talked about the question of data. The noble Lord Ranger used the expression data assets. My Lords and I agree it's very much about exploiting the sovereign data assets that we have in the UK.

It's not only about where the data sits, the security systems that protect our networks have to read the data they are guarding to do their job. So a residency promise does not get to the heart of the problem. Microsoft's own European digital resilience commitment, a pledge to legally contest any order to suspend services here may be welcome, but as critics rightly call it, this is sovereignty. Washing a contractual promise cannot override a foreign law, and I very much hope.

I very much agree with the noble Lord Moraes in wanting answers in this respect. The noble Baroness Kidron Baroness Gill touched on the importance of copyright. The noble Baroness Kidron has already secured the Minister's confirmation on the record in this House that the sovereign AI fund recipients must comply with UK copyright law. Yet she herself has called that assurance disingenuous, pointing out that some funded firms will not disclose whether their training data

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Complies at all. We need transparency. So, my Lords, I share that scepticism. Confirmation of that scepticism. Confirmation of compliance is the is not the same as verification of it. And I would welcome the Minister's assurance welcome the Minister's assurance today that the difference is understood. Noble Baroness Kidron. understood. Noble Baroness Kidron. Noble Baroness Bennett Lord Drayson Baroness Shields have all raised the importance of procurement. My the importance of procurement. My Lords. And in that context, many of them also mentioned Palantir, the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee found that found the government worryingly comfortable with dependence on a small number of providers and named Palantir.

Specifically, the Financial Times has reported that the Ministry of Defence's own data systems are now built on architecture that only Palantir is licensed to support. Lock in by design, not accident. My Lords, the noble Lord Moraes drew the comparison with Europe, and it's instructive. On the 3rd of June, the European Commission adopted what it explicitly called its tech sovereignty package. President van der Laan was blunt. We cannot afford to depend on others for the technologies that keep our hospitals running, our energy grids stable and our services secure, set against our own sovereign AI unit.

The contrast, I think, my Lords, is rather stark. The EU has a structured, published, cross-sectoral strategy. We do not, my Lords. Now, my Lords, many noble Lords raise the question of accountability. Indeed, the noble Baroness Kidron and the noble Baroness Bennett used the term constitutional as an issue. My Lords, and this is particularly the case with the prospect of artificial general intelligence and the reality of Agentic AI. My Lords, sovereignty is hollow. Without this we need a single or lead AI regulator.

Mandatory algorithmic impact Assessments and Accountability for Algorithms Act and A and A and a strict human in command standard. My Lords, and we need to ensure responsible AI through that, as the noble, as the right Reverend prelate said, Lords, I will leave the Minister with two questions already put by several noble Lords this afternoon in different forms. Will the government publish a clear, measurable, cross-departmental definition of digital sovereignty, addressing infrastructure standards and data and procurement to replace the current fragmented approach? Second, will they commit to reporting annually to Parliament on our strategic dependency risk? As our allies in the EU, Japan and United States are already doing? My Lords, every procurement decision that embeds foreign dependency is an accumulation of strategic vulnerability.

It's time to decide our digital future in Westminster, not Silicon Valley. And as the noble Lord Drayson says, it's a question of will, not capability. Now, my Lords, like the noble Lord Vaizey and the noble Lord Holmes, I'm not convinced by the current government reorganisation of AI and tech structures in government, but with a new government, this is an opportunity for a new effective sovereignty policy. My Lords, I very much hope that the government will take it.
14:01
Viscount Camrose Portrait Viscount Camrose (Conservative)
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My Lords, I too thank the noble >> My Lords, I too thank the noble Lady Baroness Kidron for securing this important debate and thank all of those who have participated. I of those who have participated. I think it's been fascinating throughout and brilliant points have been made on all sides. I to welcome the return of the noble Lady, the Minister, to her place. As ever, the reward for hard work turns out to be more hard work, but certainly welcome the continuity in which a well for her continuance.

And let me also add my own thanks and comments to those of the noble Lord Lord Clement-Jones to the right reverend Prelate, the Bishop of Oxford. I must say, in my. My dealings with him have always been a pleasure. I think he's shown, particularly on the subject of AI, true leadership in bringing the ethical dimension to our deliberations here, and he will indeed be greatly missed. My Lords, I'm delighted that we all recognise the growing importance of and the complex dynamics behind this debate.

The risk of erosion of Britain's strategic position in digital technologies is real. The capacity of most nation states to shape their own digital future is far lower than we might want to imagine or wish. From critical national infrastructure to our public services, the need to strengthen our sovereign capability is both acute and growing in urgency. The British government needs to be working to a coherent, holistic sovereignty strategy, one that assesses our strengths and weaknesses relative to the full range of sovereignty risks and sets out a path to fortify our position.

But I'm afraid, in a quandary familiar to noble Lords who take an interest in the Cyber security Bill, we are trying to assess Britain's digital sovereignty policy without the government having first published a comprehensive digital sovereignty strategy. Indeed, as of this week, we don't even know which ministry to ask for such a strategy. Now, I fully accept, of course, that Ministers have set out various measures, including the sovereign AI unit, the compute roadmap and some industrial strategy initiatives.

But where is the overarching programme? Where is the white paper that brings all the elements together? Where is the strategy, and where is the explanation of how these disparate powers and initiatives fit within a broader, holistic approach to protecting our digital economy and our strategic resilience? Let me discuss briefly the nature of the risk and some of the boundaries of our actions. Now, I, I won't try to repeat or outdo the noble Lady Baroness Kidron brilliant summary of these risks, but I would like to offer a further refinement.

The risks to sovereignty do come in different forms, but I think discussion very often focuses on the extreme end of the risk spectrum. That is to say, the catastrophic loss of access or control of our digital systems as a result of, of decisions made in other countries. As we've been hearing from a number of noble Lords. But I think while we have to bear that risk in mind constantly, there is a more probable, if lower impact risks or range of risks that deserve more attention than they often receive.

We may find that even while our systems continue to function, we lose access to the most advanced capabilities, or we cede further control of our data when our hospitals, energy systems, financial infrastructure, and armed forces depend on technologies where we lack genuine alternatives, we face the risk of strategic disadvantage. And of course, the further we fall behind, the more we risk depending on others for the innovations that confer competitive advantage. I worry that we are edging towards strategic drift.

We need to have clear answers to essential questions. Where is sovereignty genuinely essential? Perhaps starting with defence and cyber, and how do we retain it where sovereignty is not achievable? How do we become indispensable, where neither sovereignty nor indispensability are possible? How do we develop resilience? So perhaps when the noble Lady, the Minister, comes to speak, she can explain how the government thinks about answering these questions. In addition, of course, to Baroness Kidron's excellent point about measuring the results of their intervention and maybe the inquiry proposed brilliantly by my noble friend Baroness Shields, is the right step forward as we develop a holistic strategy.

Thank you. I'm sure that many noble Lords will agree that the stakes are highest in artificial intelligence, and the noble Lady, Baroness Burgess, set this out very clearly and well at a certain level of artificial superintelligence, at which it becomes impossible to control and our species is in mortal danger. And there there is universal agreement that we must collaborate to protect ourselves against this. However, there is a level of AI beneath this at which its developer attains permanently unassailable strategic, commercial and military advantage, the winner take all model.

And so we hear the leaders of the AI labs and indeed the People's Republic of China just earlier this month calling for international safety, collaboration and regulation while behind closed doors, remaining in hot pursuit of those sovereign AI models that confer on them unprecedented power. The winner takes all dynamic in AI means that public commitments to safety measures, even if made sincerely, are systematically subordinated to the strategic imperative of technical advance. My Lords, this raises troubling questions about the adequacy of a strategy that relies primarily on inward investment from large foreign technology companies.

As the previous Prime Minister's approach prioritised short term inward investment over long term sovereign capability. Will the new government alter that calculus? I suggest there are available to us at least three levers to address the sovereignty problem. The first is the use of open source and open weight models. As my noble friend Lady Staal set out so well. And clearly that is build AI tools from from open source models or open weight models, and in so doing, develop sovereign capability around building our applications from their foundations.

This doesn't just reduce the costs of and time for development, it reduces the winner take all incentives of the AI labs that are driving the AI industry towards what I might call a Darwinian oligopoly, and eventually monopoly of sovereign solutions. Can the noble Lady, the Minister, confirm what proportion in that respect of the sovereign AI unit's funding is directed towards open source components of the AI stack? The second lever is government procurement. As others have observed, both central and local.

Here, my Lords, I should declare my own interests as set out in the register in early stage tech ventures. The state is and continues to be the largest technology buyer in the United Kingdom. We are very fortunate here in the range and technical accomplishment of our start-ups, but the state does not buy enough. From our early stage tech ventures. We often worry here, as my noble friend Lord Vaizey described, how to convert more of our start ups to scale ups, and really, a large part of the answer is for the state to be more open to being their customer.

And I thought the noble Lord Lord Drayson set this out brilliantly. This creates credibility and cash flow for the Start-Up, and it brings innovation and productivity to the state. And as they show us every day in the United States, it creates the sovereign technologies of the future. I refer noble Lords to Oracle, to Palantir, to SpaceX and many others, all of whom started out through government procurement in the United States. Perhaps the noble Lady, the Minister could outline what proportion of government procurement in digital technologies.

Is currently directed towards early stage British tech ventures. What benchmark is the government using to assess whether procurement is being deployed effectively in the service of sovereignty? I'm going to accelerate to the end of my speech. Otherwise the noble Lady, the whip, will will need to hurry me along and I've written too much. But let me just say briefly that the better use of the Digital Markets Act, the. Is going to be the third lever, and I feel we should make more and greater use of that.

In conclusion, let me ask the government to provide, as soon as possible a comprehensive digital sovereignty strategy, clear criteria for determining where Britain invests in direct sovereignty versus strategic leverage. A coherent procurement strategy aligned with sovereign capability objectives. An explanation of how digital competition policy serves sovereignty rather than undermining it. And, of course, clarity on data and copyright policy that preserves our strategic leverage. These seem critical and urgent questions. I too deeply regret that we no longer have a single front door to a ministry that can answer them all, and that those civil servants who could be focussed on answering them will instead spend the coming months in a complex reorganisation.
14:12
Baroness Lloyd of Effra Portrait Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Labour)
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Yeah. question for short debate. And I too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for bringing forward the discussion on this significant discussion on this significant issue, despite the fact that we maybe once or possibly twice a week discuss the important issues of AI, I always find additional points being raised by your Lordships for thought, for reflection, and to to discuss with colleagues afterwards, so I will endeavour to respond to the points made today, and if I do not, I will follow up afterwards.

I think just to respond immediately to the questions around the publication of a digital sovereignty strategy. We have heard this request from one of the committees and from your Lordships, and are reflecting on it, but I cannot at this stage confirm that we'll be publishing such a strategy as proposed by a number of your Lordships today. This debate does indeed raise fundamental questions for our economy, our society and our national security, and how we ensure that the remarkable capabilities of modern technology work in the interests of society, support economic strength, protect citizens in the UK and around the world, and remain rooted in British values, is incredibly important.

As many of your noble Lordships have mentioned today, the UK has huge strengths from subsea cable connectivity to telecoms companies investing in connecting citizens throughout the UK, our world leading universities and incredible companies in space, in autonomous ships, in vehicles and in chips. And as the noble Lord Lord Howell of Guildford reminded us, no more than ever, technology is a part of global supply chains that link the smartphones we use every day to critical minerals from all around the world, and the government is committed to ensuring the UK has the right balance between access to these best technologies global markets have to offer, and ensuring our national growth, resilience and security in respect of AI.

As many interventions have made clear today, it is a small number of global firms that now underpin critical infrastructure, from cloud computing to advanced AI systems. In light of this, the government is focussed on ensuring long term resilience, security and control over critical systems. Our approach is to reduce over dependencies and increase resilience in key national strategic priorities. The UK believes the extraordinary complexity of critical technologies of the present and the future, and the range of inputs needed to bring them to market, means that it is unlikely that any single country could achieve independence, let alone dominance across the entire supply chain.

Therefore, there will be inevitable and essential interdependence hardwired into the tech stack. Lord Ranger and of Northwood and others. Asked what our strategy is. It is not to dominate an entire technology. It is about developing world leading research and industry in specific elements of the stack, ensuring that we have sufficient domestic capacity in key elements such as compute and a resilient, diversified set of relationships with allies to underpin reliable access to our wider supply chain needs.

As part of this, in our modern Industrial Strategies Digital and Technology Sector plan, the government set out the plan to back six frontier technologies that drive growth and support UK security and sovereignty, which are advanced connectivity technologies, AI, cybersecurity, engineering, biology, quantum and semiconductors. As many noble Lords, including Lord Vaizey and Baroness Uddin, highlighted. And indeed, my noble friend Lord Drayson, we are also working to create the necessary conditions for innovative companies to grow and existing companies to adopt new technologies.

The UK has a strong private capital ecosystem, the third largest in the world. But there is more that we can and should do to support companies to access the capital they need. That's why we're expanding the British Business Bank so high growth tech firms can access the capital they need, doubling its annual investments to two £2.5 billion and committing £5 billion to growth stage funds. And as referenced by my noble friend Lord Drayson, the Pension Schemes Act will also drive consolidation in the pensions market and boost investment in UK plc through the mansion House commitments and a new and new British Business Bank.

Vehicles like the British Growth Partnership and Venture Link. So enabling pension funds to invest in scale in UK science and technology firms, supporting high value jobs and innovation in the UK and the UK has one of the fastest growing and competitive AI sectors in the world. UK AI firms raised 6 billion in investment in 2025, with estimated GVA among dedicated AI firms nearly doubling to 2.2 billion in 2024. And in respect of the sovereign AI fund, which has £500 million, we are backing strategically important UK AI companies.

I was asked about the specific areas they are infrastructure, life sciences and AI assurance and I'm sorry. Apologies, I haven't got the full list here. I thought I had. So the UK has greater resilience and influence in global AI economy, but alongside that, to respond also to my noble friend Baroness Berger, there is £1 billion to expand the AI research resource 20 times by 2030, including seven £750 million for a new national supercomputer in Edinburgh, as well as the five AI growth zones and a 1.1 billion AI hardware plan combining to make AI Britain Britain an AI maker, not just an AI taker, and to respond to the points and questions raised by Baroness Kidron Baroness Stowell of Beeston and the noble Viscount Viscount Camrose.

We are building non-language frontier models such as ineffable, and we believe that the approach for language models can look different. The Bold Lab, recently announced, based at the University of Oxford, will develop human centred, resource efficient AI systems that can operate safely and effectively in the real world. We are also back in the UK tech sector, committing up to £2 billion to establish the UK as a world leader in quantum, including the world's first commitment to procure large scale quantum computers in early 2020.

In the early 2030s. I'd like to also touch on the point raised by Lord Vaizey and Baroness Verma about skills and digital inclusion. These are absolutely essential. We have published a digital inclusion action plan. We are investing £187 million in the Tech First programme, and we are supporting companies to adopt AI so that we can be absolute users and shapers of AI as it's adopted, as well as in its development. And in terms of the the important points raised by Baroness Bennett about the rest of the world and ensuring that all countries contribute to the discussion on the future of AI, AI adoption and AI governance.

We are funding practical partnerships with the OECD, African Union and South East Asia to support responsible AI adoption and, of course, participate in the UN's Geneva AI week, which encourages a role for the UN that promotes sharing science based information. So that I think that the investment in sovereign UK companies in UK skills in UK infrastructure puts us in a good place. But of course. All of those who have raised the risks of AI, there are legitimate concerns and these are absolutely right.

And where there are abuses of AI technology happening, where they're facilitating harm to UK citizens, we have shown we will not shy away from taking on AI firms and act decisively. For example, in response to the generation of the vile and degrading, non-consensual sexual deepfakes of grok earlier, earlier this year, and in respect of the cyber threats and the recent cyber incidents which Baroness May, my noble friend Baroness Berger and Baroness Gill referenced, leading AI systems. Cyber capabilities are indeed advancing rapidly, and the UK's AI Security Institute is studying the behaviours seen in this incident an AI system pursuing goals through an unintended and unauthorised means as part of its world leading efforts to make frontier AI safer.

And as AI capabilities evolve, it's important that everyone steps up their cyber defences and Ministers have written to the UK businesses with clear, practical steps they can take to do so, and AC continues to work with all labs to better understand AI all labs to better understand AI capabilities and improve safeguards. Many noble Lords raised the importance of British values and British culture in in shaping the development of our technologies, and asked specific questions around where we are on copyright and our approach to copyright in March, recognising that the previous proposals on copyright did not command widespread support, we set out a new way forward.

We want creators to have greater control over how their work is used, and we will take steps to drive best practice on transparency and the use of mechanisms available to creators to control their works online. We also recognise it's right that we value and protect human creativity by labelling content, so it's clear whether it's been made by using AI to help inform people's choices. And we will be establishing a taskforce to put forward proposals for government on best practices, on labelling in.

In response. Sorry to respond. To the questions on that Baroness Kidron raised on. Public data sets and others, the government has launched a call for evidence on the marginal cost restriction of public sector data reuse, seeking views on whether charging for access to public sector data should be reformed to better support innovation, growth and public value, and that call for evidence explores whether the current approach to charging access to public sector data remains appropriate, including the potential impacts for greater cost recovery on data availability, reuse and investment, and many noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Moraes.

Asked about the government's strategy on data sovereignty and the government's approach is to ensure that the UK has the right balance between access to the benefits of international data flows and carefully protecting both personal and non-personal data. This is underpinned by data protection law, UK security standards and international obligations. We continue continue to monitor these trade offs and seek the best balance for the UK and the department have recently published a call for evidence Data Flows that You can trust, which seeks to gather views from the public and businesses on the approaches they would like to see the government take in this space.

Many noble Lords raised the question of our public sector, rightly highlighting the role of the government in procurement and the role of public sector in adoption. It's crucial that the public sector has access to the best technologies offered on the market, while also supporting UK industry to strengthen capabilities across key technologies across the public sector. We are embedding frameworks, standards and guidance to ensure AI is deployed in a way that is fair, transparent and accountable. This includes the data and AI ethics framework and sharing resources through the AI Knowledge Hub, such as the AI playbook, the Algorithmic Transparency Recording standard ensures the public can understand how systems are used.

This is critical not just for risk management, but for building public trust in the systems we use. The government recognises that cloud services underpin many public services, and concentration in a small number of suppliers can create risks for resilience, competition and value for money. We're improving visibility of cloud use, strengthening resilience standards and using procurement to secure better value, greater choice and stronger public services. The National Cloud Infrastructure Programme is exploring how the government can better coordinate the way it buys cloud services, works with industry and secures better outcomes for taxpayers.

It aims to create genuine opportunities for a broader range of suppliers, including British firms and SMEs. The recently published Cloud Challenge book supports work to help the public sector act as a more coordinated sector act as a more coordinated customer at at at national scale. Noble. Lords are also right to highlight the importance of international cooperation and leadership and the vital role of the UK, the UK's first Digital Standard strategy, released on the 17th of June, recognises the important role that digital standards play nationally and globally.

From strengthening national security resilience to contributing to economic growth and the innovation behind technological development, we want to ensure that international standards development ecosystem remains effective, efficient and responsive, and the standards they develop reflects our society's values and interests and delivers market benefit. We will continue working strongly with the G7, the OECD and other multilateral partners to shape the future of governance and the adoption of AI globally. Noble Lords have also raised the centrality of technological developments for our war fighting capability and in defence.

The Defence Investment Plan sets out the programme of investment to support this in the UK, in particular to the points raised by a number of of noble Lords about its role in procurement and indeed in supporting novel technologies. And it is quite clearly set out the proportions of the Defence Industrial Investment Plan that will be that will be allocated to to novel technologies. I would also like to pay tribute to the the, the the Reverend prelate, the Bishop of Oxford, for his work over the many years, and in particular my engagement with him in the preparation for the.

The debate instigated by the Archbishop of Canterbury on AI and society, and I think it is also. Worth remarking to noble Lordships that I launched the OECD policy Handbook only a few weeks ago, which was indeed, I think, part of the. The. Which was informed by the work of many of your noble Lordships over many years. So that impact will continue onwards. I would like to just conclude by saying that the UK will not be a passive technology taker in this world.

Our ambition is to shape how frontier technologies are built, trusted, deployed and governed, not looking inwards but outwards with others and on our terms. We will continue to collaborate closely with global partners in the multilateral system to maximise our reach, delivering UK tech priorities through the most suitable forms and scaling up achievements with our partners. We will continue to invest in infrastructure, digital skills and AI adoption for all. And for those of you who have not yet had the pleasure to meet the Minister, Kanishka Narayan, whose seat will be at the Cabinet table, I think you will be pleased that he brings that clarity of focus and an extraordinary amount of energy to the role of bringing this together at the centre of government.

And if we can seize this transformative opportunity of technology in a way that puts society first, benefits the citizens across the UK and globally, that prize for all of us is significant.
14:31
Baroness Kidron Portrait Baroness Kidron (Crossbench)
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My Lords, can I start by >> My Lords, can I start by disappointing Lord Holmes by saying there will be no biopic about me? there will be no biopic about me? But the Oxford University are currently building a Baroness Bi chatbot that might help my productivity. And I also want to apologise for the cost of a hardback book. But I will say to all noble Lords that I actually donated one to the library. So that is the importance of culture and sharing in our communities.

My Lord, I am very often met with a level of surprise at the sophistication of this House on this subject. I think there are a lot of people inside and outside the technology sector who don't quite believe that there is such a depth of knowledge, and I would say passion, and I don't I mean that in the best possible way on this subject. And I think today's debate is indicative of that. I wrote down a number of noble Lords, said the word full stack.

We don't have enough capacity to do the full stack. And then I realised I'd started writing it down as full fat sovereignty. And I think we can all agree that we're not going to have full fat sovereignty. But there were so many ideas in today's debate that it adds up to a strategy. And I say to the noble Lady, the Minister, with deepest respect, that the list that she was asked to give us is a series of activities. Some of them are very important, some of them are very welcome, but it is not yet a strategy.

And I know across the House that there were only two disagreements. The first was whether take back control is a good slogan. I think we'll leave that on one side and the other was whether we have open weight models and regulation or just open weight models, and I think we probably can actually walk forward on the basis that there is cross-party agreement that we desperately need an urgent strategy. And and I'm going to just say whether these responsibilities sit within DSA or another department is ultimately a machinery of government question.

But but it cannot be the case that we wait for a strategy on tech, on sovereign tech. And I absolutely agree with those who say it goes beyond AI on all kind of technology, because without that strategy, we cannot put all the brilliant ideas that all noble Lords have put forward today into practice. And I really do thank you all for your

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contributions. This motion be agreed to. As

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This motion be agreed to. As many as of that opinion will say content contrary, not content. The contents have it. We'll just take a moment before I call the next business for the house to rearrange My My Lords My Lords question My Lords question for short debate reducing gambling harm among young people.
14:35
None Portrait Short debate: Reducing gambling harm among young people Lord Foster of Bath (Liberal Democrat)
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Lord Foster of Bath my Lords, >> Lord Foster of Bath my Lords, may I begin by congratulating the noble Lady, the Minister, and what appears to be yet more appears to be yet more responsibilities that she's taking on. And I welcome this opportunity to debate with her what the government plans to do to reduce gambling harm among children and young people. And in doing so, I declare my interest as chair of Peers for Gambling Reform. My Lords, we've long accepted a simple principle where there is clear evidence that commercial activity harms children.

Government have a duty to intervene, adopting a public health approach, and we've accepted that principle in relation to tobacco, to alcohol and more recently, to vapes. We're applying it to unhealthy food, to social media, to alcohol. And again, more recently, high caffeine energy drinks. The same should surely apply to gambling. Yes, my Lords, of course it is illegal for children to gamble, but a very large number of them do so. So clearly we're not doing enough. Despite the protection of children and young people being a core licensing objective in the ill conceived 2005 Gambling Act.

Now, last year, the Gambling Commission found that 59% of young people had taken part in some form of gambling in the previous year that 30% had used their own money in doing so, and that 3 in 10 children see members of their own family gambling. But most worryingly of all, it found that some 80,000 children are suffering gambling harm and, in common parlance, 80,000 children are gambling addicts and many thousands more are at risk of becoming. So we need to do more to catch up with the rapidly changing gambling landscape.

Because children today encounter gambling brands almost everywhere, they see gambling company sponsoring football shirts, stadiums, competitions. They watch televised sports with gambling promotions before, during and after the event. They receive gambling related content through social media algorithms. See influencers promoting betting products. Many play games containing gambling like features such as loot boxes and social casinos that blur the line between gaming and gambling. This constant exposure matters because it normalises gambling for children who are learning to see gambling as a routine part of sport, of entertainment, of gaming and of online life.

Dealing with all of this is a public health issue, and while the government isn't doing enough. Many parts of local government are doing their best. Many councils have already banned gambling advertising on their premises, on their land, on their vehicles, and others have gone even further ahead. For instance, of the 2022 World Cup, one council launched its anti-gambling harms campaign. Odds are they win it pointed to harmful industry practices having negative impact on peoples, including children's health and wellbeing, finances, work relationships and so on.

And it made clear that whatever the gambling product, whoever the gambling operator and whichever way you look at it, the odds are they win. And the council leader said the main aim of gambling operators is to maximise profits, and these profits are the result of customer losses, which, particularly during a cost of living crisis, risk having serious detrimental impact on people's lives. And he went on to say this the review of the Gambling Act is now well overdue, and the government must take this opportunity to do more to protect our residents and people right across the country from the harmful practices of the gambling industry.

My Lords, that council leader was our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. So when she responds, I hope the noble Lady, the Minister, will have her Prime Minister's words ringing in her ears now to identify what more could be done. Peers for Gambling Reform recently hosted a round table of experts in the field, and they recommendations included first ending the government nonsense claim that it is possible to grow the gambling industry while reducing gambling harm. Way back in 2018, academics claimed, and I quote, preventing gambling related harm is not possible without limiting the overall volume of the activity and hence the profits of the gambling industry.

And recently, four reports all show that by reducing the volume of gambling activity in the country, the country's economy would be strengthened and not weakened. So will the noble Lady. The Minister, last, accept that the government has got this wrong? Second, restricting gambling, advertising, marketing and sponsorship. Now, clearly, with 79% of children recalling gambling advertisements, current safeguards aren't working. I've even seen a computer game the other day with an age rating of four plus containing gambling advertisements.

My Lord, the UK has more evidence on the harmful effects of gambling advertising than almost any other country in the world, but we are taking much less action. So does the Minister accept that reducing harm among children and young people requires reducing their exposure to gambling, advertising? And so does she also agree with her Prime Minister, who said for the sake of children and young people, it's time to take a stand and relegate gambling sponsorship of sport to the history books? My Lords, I entirely agree with the Prime Minister.

Third, requiring greater accountability of digital platforms. Children encounter gambling marketing online to content marketing designed to look like advertising, not look like advertising at all. Through sports commentary, influencer style content, live streamed gambling, affiliate promotions, and of course, illegal offshore operators. So can the Minister say whether the government will place a specific duty on online platforms to prevent underage teams from being exposed to gambling, advertising? And fourth, addressing the convergence of gaming and gambling lootboxes skin, skin, gambling, crypto gambling, social casino games, esports, gambling are all areas where existing legal definitions and voluntary approaches are insufficient.

There is clear evidence of a stable and consistent association between lootbox use and problem gambling, with risks likely to be higher for children and young people. So will the government move beyond the failed industry self-regulation and bring loot boxes and gaming like digital products within a stronger regulatory framework? My Lord, my Lords. The Round Table identified other recommendations, such as greater protection for young adults who are more likely than older ones to experience gambling harm and further development of the welcome introduction into the s component of the school curriculum at a gambling element.

But I believe that should be strengthened still further. And my noble friend Lord Addington will touch on this later. All need to be addressed as a public health issues and done so without the involvement of commercial interests of gambling companies. My Lord, such a generation will not ask whether Parliament debated these issues. They will ask whether we acted. While the evidence. A vast amount of. It was already before us, and I hope that when they do, they will be able to say that this House once again played its part in putting the protection of children ahead of commercial interests.

My Lords, I look forward to the Minister's response.
14:43
Baroness Anelay of St Johns Portrait Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Conservative)
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My Lord. >> My Lord. >> Sir, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord foster, on securing this short debate, but also for his long short debate, but also for his long standing work on preventing gambling harms. And like him, I'm very pleased to see the noble very pleased to see the noble Baroness, the Minister, continuing in her role at DCMS. My Lords, I will focus my remarks on the international implications of gambling harms experienced by young sports players. I am a member of the International Agreements Select Committee.

Currently, we are scrutinising the impact of the government's proposal to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, known as the Mechelen Convention. It is the first and only international treaty on the manipulation of sports competitions. My Lords, I'm grateful to all of those who have given evidence to our committee. We have learned a great deal about how young sports people can fall into the traps set by those who organise international illegal operations and bribe them.

Young people who are just starting out on their careers may be easy targets. We heard compelling evidence from ex-footballer Moses Wibowo about his experience of match fixing and the broader systems behind it, and about how easy it is to get sucked into the illegal gambling world. Whether you're playing in league or non-league matches, his entry into professional sports started when he was 16 and playing for his Croydon State School, he secured a one year professional contract with Crystal Palace F.C.

and entered an environment of mentors, structures, big brothers and discipline. A new world for him. When he moved to Lincoln City aged 19, a team-mate introduced him to the world of match fixing for the first time. It was a word he had never even heard of. He knew it was morally wrong. He just wanted to play football. But he did not feel that he had the power or confidence to go to Chris Sutton, his first team manager, and say the team-mate who introduced me to match fixing is the captain.

Fast forward to 2015 and Moses was sentenced to 16 months in prison for conspiracy to commit bribery following his role in a 2013 match fixing scandal. During his time at Bromley FC, the prosecution said that two Singaporean businessmen were the central figures in that conspiracy. Since his release from prison, Mr. Schweiber has devoted his career to combating match fixing. He's become one of the UK's most active voices in sports integrity, education and reform, with a particular focus on educating young footballers who might well fall into the traps where he fell.

Mr. Schweiber told our committee I quote, if you have a young Moses at 18, look at his background, his family and his siblings, what were the influences around him that shaped this opportunity for crime and corruption? My Lords, we were also given evidence by Doctor Madalina Diaconu. She told us, and I quote her, in the past 15, maybe 16 years, we have seen a tremendous increase in the infiltration of organised crime into match fixing of a wide variety of sports, including esports.

This is where the McKellen convention comes in, because no single sports organisation or sports betting organisation can fight international organised crime syndicates, that is a job for law enforcement and international cooperation in this field, which is precisely what the McKellen convention does, end quote. My Lords, the UK signed the convention in 2018, but the government has only very recently brought it forward for ratification. So can the noble Baroness Minister explain why there has been a delay in seeking to ratify that convention? I do understand that there may be good reasons for that, but what are they? My Lords, I'm grateful to Lord foster for bringing this debate, but also for his unfailing and tireless work that he does in this area.

I declare my conflict of interest as medical director of the Primary Care Gambling Service,
14:48
Baroness Gerada Portrait Baroness Gerada (Crossbench)
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which treats patients experiencing gambling related harms and services gambling related harms and services across England. But no matter how good my services, when a young person walks through that door, we person walks through that door, we have already failed them. The numbers, as you've heard, tell numbers, as you've heard, tell their own story. Nearly half of 11 to 17 year olds have gambled in the last year. 30% have spent their own last year. 30% have spent their own money, and that's up from 20% last year.

And most strikingly, the increase is being driven almost entirely by unregulated gambling, which has risen from 15% to 18% in just one year. Separately, the Gambling Commission finds that 1 in 5 18 to 24 year olds now gamble to relieve stress. These my laws are not statistics about a handful of unlucky individuals. They describe a generation growing up in an environment designed to make gambling feel normal, feel safe and feel sociable on their phones and their feeds, increasingly disguised, as we've heard as a game with no meaningful age gate.

This is why prevention cannot begin only once harm has appeared, and cannot mean simply warning young people about risks. It must mean intervening upstream in product design, in advertising, in the free to play and the loot box mechanics that train children in gambling behaviours before they've ever placed a bet with real money. And it has to mean treating gambling harm as his own, House's health select committee has said, and has. How Lord foster has said so eloquently as a public health issue, not simply as a matter of consumer choice.

Which brings me briefly to the statutory levy. We finally have a statutory levy replacing the old voluntary system and in principle, real progress. It has raised £120 million this year, roughly triple what voluntary donations ever achieved, and it gives us a sustainable foundation for research, prevention and treatment. And while the levy gives us more money, it does not in itself give us a gambling prevention strategy. My Lords, GambleAware closed its doors at the end of March after more than 20 years, warning that the transition risked fragmentation and that uncertainty had consequences last year, citing a lack of sustainable funding, GamCare ended its young people's provision, which has reached more than a quarter of a million children, young people and parents over the last five years, coming as the new levy settlement leaves youth prevention work unfunded.

It's exactly the kind of capacity we should be protecting, not losing. I raise this not to relitigate the levy, but because prevention, schools based education, youth work, early intervention, public awareness campaigns around major sporting events, as we've just had with the World Cup, is precisely what suffers when funding is unstable or uncoordinated. Prevention depends on continuity. But my central ask today is not about the levy. It is this if we are serious about preventing gambling harm in young people, we need to close the gap between how we regulate gambling and how fast the products marketed at young people are evolving.

Unregulated gambling products, influencer influencer marketing and constant gambling content on social media are shaping attitudes long before young people are legally allowed to gamble. And we need to keep asking this, as this House has done before, whether we are designing policy around what protects children or around what the industry finds tolerable. Prevention is not measured by the number of people it treats. It is measured by the number of people who never need treatment in the first place. If we get prevention right, we will spare thousands of young people avoidable harm and spend far less in treatment in years to follow.

My Lords, that is the investment and the responsibility that I hope this Minister, who again I'm pleased has remaining, will keep firmly in view. Thank you.
14:53
Baroness Fox of Buckley Portrait Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated)
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My Lords. I'd like to thank the noble Lord Foster of Bath for tabling this debate on reducing tabling this debate on reducing gambling harm among young people, and that sounds admirable, but hot on the heels of the Academy of Ideas World Cup sweepstake organised by one of our young team, Jake Weston, an enthusiastic gambler himself, I want to appeal for perspective, a reminder for the vast majority of people across all age groups. Gambling is harmless. As Culture secretary Lisa Nandy has noted, it can bring joy to millions of people who enjoy a regular flutter.

So many get their pleasure in having their and honing their skills in working out and hopefully beating the odds. Others just enjoy the thrill and challenge of taking a risk, often the sort of instincts we actually want to encourage, for example, in would be entrepreneurs. Yet too often in debates in this chamber, we discuss the legal, legitimate leisure activity as though it inevitably leads to ruin on unfairly characterised as toxic pathologised, as addictive, a threatening destroyer of individuals and family life.

I thought of all this when watching a lovely clip of football icon and, in my opinion, the real King of the North, Kevin Keegan. A filmed interview doing the rounds. Since his sad death, Kevin movingly recalled how his dad used to back the horses regularly, just like most miners at the time. One year he won a few quid on the Grand National and used all the money to buy his young, football obsessed son some second hand football boots, an act of fatherly love and generosity paid for by his hobby and not some sordid, dodgy, selfish activity.

So will the noble Lady. The Minister, reassure us that the government will avoid policies that purport to protect the young, but in reality are a Puritan Trojan horse for a prohibition that unfairly demonises gambling per se. Don't get me wrong, I know from personal experience how out of control gambling can bring misery. But we need to be honest. This is a small minority acknowledging this will. This will allow bespoke policies that target real problems, rather than a blanket culture of disapproval or a catch all of ineffective, excessive state intervention into people's private choices.

We also need to interrogate some of the data and terminology that can misleadingly suggest this is a growing problem. We are not helped by the fact that there isn't a single data set that measures problem gambling amongst young people. There isn't even clarity about our definition of young people in gambling related law. Two young people, young people, can refer to adults between the ages of 18 to 25 who can legally gamble with licensed operators, but with age targeted restrictions. And then there's under 18, defined as children who are prohibited from gambling.

In that way. This can be confusing. For example, having two categories of adult the 18 to 24 year olds or 25 and over. Apart from anything else, are we in danger of infantilizing young adults who we otherwise expect to be responsible? Grown ups the prospect of 16 year olds being considered adult enough to vote will not help this muddle. Unfortunately, too many commentators in gambling have developed the bad habit of using the phrase young people to cover under eighteens and the under 25 category.

Regardless, what does the data show? According to the NHS Health Survey of England, confusingly using the age confusingly using the age range 16 to 24. That shows that problem. Gambling rates fell from 1% in 2018 to 0.5% in 2024. So why is this age group a focus of special concern? Or are we really worried about gambling by children, especially when it is stated as fact that 8000 children suffer from gambling harms? Except that that number, 8000 is extrapolated from 25 children.

Yes, 25 who are classified as problem gamblers in the 2023 Young People's Gambling Survey. Of of schoolchildren. To note harm is classified to a hugely lower threshold than Post-16. So what is labelled harmful gambling and has been described as addiction here for those 25 children would make should make us pause before we panic. Two thirds self report playing amusement games like crane grab at seaside arcades. Shock horror one half are called problem gamblers because they place bets with friends and family, 40% for playing cards with mates and siblings, or occasionally buying lottery products such as Scratchcards.

And what constitutes illegal gambling for children is even more banal. If kids bet using pocket money or school lunch money, it is against the law, even if spent on forms of gambling that are legal. Counterintuitively, even the pantomime villain online gambling has one of the lowest rates of participation in this age group. And so, as an antidote to those who are oversimplistic on the stats, this these people who are gambling online, those children is largely accessed by adult parents, allowing their children to use their online gambling account.

To conclude, yes, let's tell the kids some home truths about the pitfalls of gambling. But don't let scaremonger them. And don't let scaremonger ourselves in this house.
14:58
Lord Herbert of South Downs Portrait Lord Herbert of South Downs (Conservative)
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And my Lords, may I join in congratulating the noble Lady, the congratulating the noble Lady, the Minister, on her reappointment? We are discussing gambling harm among young people, but perhaps we should young people, but perhaps we should spare a thought to the trauma caused to Ministers responsible for gambling policy. And I apologise if I'm about to add to it. My Lords children, that is, the under 18 are prohibited from gambling. But we also need to protect young adults. That is, the 18 to 25 year olds who are permitted to gamble from harm.

Fortunately, problem gambling rates among young people remain low. The problem gambling rate for 16 to 24 year olds, according to the NHS Health Survey for England, fell from 1% in 2018 to half a percent in 2024. Gambling for young people is regulated with additional safeguards, including lower online slot limits for under 25 age targeting restrictions, deposit limit prompts and financial vulnerability checks. Of course, we can debate the scope of these safeguards, but I want to draw attention to the danger of making the wrong policy choice with particular reference to horse racing.

I think there's a very strong case for saying that racing is different and should be treated differently when it comes to policy relating to gambling harm, which I fear it isn't. First, British racing is financially dependent on a strong legal betting market. A long standing, mutually dependent relationship exists between racing and betting, worth approximately £350 million annually to the sport through key revenue streams like media rights, payments, sponsorship and horse race betting levy. And second, the potential harm from betting on racing is relatively low.

It actually carries roughly the same risk as that of betting on lottery scratch cards. Nevertheless, two weeks ago, the Gambling Commission announced that following a protracted pilot period, there will be a phased introduction of financial risk assessments known as affordability checks on betting over the course of an implementation period of unspecified length. These checks will have severe financial implications for racing and the economy, as well as subjecting racing bettors to unwarranted levels of intrusion. Independent modelling has suggested that British racing could lose up to £250 million in five years due to the checks, while customers refusing to provide financial documents will lead to significant reductions in betting turnover and an estimated loss of more than £13 million per year in horse race betting levy receipts.

We were promised by the previous government that the checks would only be introduced if they were fully frictionless, but the checks have been proven by the Gambling Commission's own pilot not to be so. My Lords, the crucial point of relevance to this debate is that, far from protecting consumers, these checks will have the opposite effect. They will drive more customers to the illegal market, which puts them at far greater risk of gambling related harm. As well as starving the Treasury of much needed revenue.

Young people are rightly being taught about credit checks in school, so they will be increasingly worried about their credit rating. So now we have a new generation who will actually be incentivised to avoid financial risk checks and instead turn to the black market. Illegal operators can advertise without age controls and offer none of the protections required in the regulated sector. Black market advertising is extremely effective, not least because their prices are so much better because they don't pay tax or the levy.

During the World Cup, several illegal adverts appeared using AI generated versions of Harry Kane promoting wins on illegal sites, and that's something that regulated UK operators are rightly not permitted to do. Concerns about affordability checks for adults are shared by the betting industry. Politicians, campaigners and policymakers, all of whom have repeatedly warned of serious unintended consequences for British racing. And those adverse consequences have been highlighted in this House and by concerned members of Parliament. So I find it difficult to understand why Ministers have allowed the Gambling Commission to proceed.

And furthermore, the policy has been signed off by the Commission without key stakeholders in racing and betting being able to see vital evidence about the impact of the pilot. That is deeply unsatisfactory. So may I ask the Minister two specific questions? How is the government measuring the impact of affordability checks, and when will the data from the pilots be available for all? To understand? The perverse consequence of current policy is that people, including young adults, will be driven to the unregulated black market.

Of course, that isn't the intention of the government, but that is the risk. Affordability checks were not this government's policy. The plan was inherited from the last conservative government. And even when shadow Ministers in the think tank, architects of the policy now warn that the checks are not proceeding as they intended and should be halted, the Gambling Commission ploughs on regardless. So with the new Prime Minister Lord Dobbs the time debates come to conclusion, I'll conclude in five seconds and new priorities.

I would respectfully suggest that this would be a good time to recalibrate a misguided and ill targeted policy, give clear direction to the Gambling Commission and focus on the real issue here, which is problematic and harmful. Gambling in other areas.
15:04
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party)
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My Lord, in following the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, I just feel like putting on the record that the like putting on the record that the Green Party very much supports the affordability checks that the government's planning to introduce. government's planning to introduce. We have an awful lot of money sloshing around in the in the UK economy in all sorts of areas, and keeping a closer check on it is clearly a very good idea, and I should perhaps declare an interest in that.

Tomorrow I will be speaking at a protest on the 100th anniversary of the first official greyhound race calling for the ban on greyhound racing in England to follow that in Scotland and Wales. I begin by declaring my position as a member of Peers for Gambling Reform and thanking our formidable leader, noble Lord Foster of Bath, for securing this debate. And to echo his comments, hoping that the ill conceived Gambling Act of 2005 that our new Prime Minister might act at scale to reverse many of its disastrous impacts that we're focussed today on children.

And like many noble Lords, I'm drawing on the report from the Young People in Gambling 2025 report from the Gambling Commission, and particularly looking at advertising. And essentially half of young people. And here I'm talking about children under under 18 are exposed to gambling related adverts legally weekly and boys more likely than girls because of the very strong sporting link which has been closely identified. They also see a huge amount of exposure to social media personalities promoting gambling.

And another report out last year from GambleAware children as young as 11 reporting regularly that they attempted to try betting after being flooded on their social media feeds on the apps by celebrities and sports stars. From promoting gambling. And as the noble Lady Baroness Gerada said, this is avoidable harm to which we are subjecting our young people and I want to go to the young people themselves, because that GambleAware study found that nearly 4 in 5 children said nobody under the age of 18 should be exposed to gambling adverts.

Now, we often hear about how we should listen to the people affected. Let's listen to the young people who are saying, stop exposing us to this, which we know is harmful and we also know is very seductive. And that's the reality. And on that line, I want to go to something that's absolutely directed at young people. Anyone who's got a young person in their life will probably be aware of Roblox, hugely popular gaming. And I have to credit Sky news here, and particularly reporter Mickey Carroll and colleagues who've demonstrated again and again how much illegal casinos are advertising on Roblox to children.

Now, after that, that group of journalists did report in 2024, some of those illegal casinos were actually shut down. Roblox Corporation, with its capitalisation today of 40 billion USD, 2400 staff shut down some of those casinos. But just in May, the reporter found an email in their inbox blocks flip is back. This is an illegal casino operating on this children's gaming platform, emailed her because she'd signed up to research it to say, it's now back and you can play here.

Now, many of these illegal casinos, yes, they have a geo block, so theoretically you're not able to access them from the UK. Well, the noble Lords in this debate, I'm sure most of them don't need to be reminded about VPNs. But should any of the children happen to not know about VPNs you can find on all the chat platforms, the casino operators helpfully telling anyone how they can get around geo blocks by using VPNs? Now, I'm not. I based that on the research.

I've based that on media reports, but I'm going to finally go to the words A cry from the heart, from a woman who's a mother of two children, including a ten year old called George, who is autistic and has ADHD. And this ties to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord foster, about the convergence of gambling practices and gaming practices. This mother reflects on how randomised rewards read, item drops, daily login streaks, limited time events, and content prompts to return.

Use many of the same behavioural principles as gambling. And one final story. I asked Labour Lords to imagine this. There was a reward that was only available if you played on Christmas Day. And this mother talks about Christmas Day being a war zone, as in her family. As a result of that.
15:09
Lord Norton of Louth Portrait Lord Norton of Louth (Conservative)
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My Lords, I. I commend the noble Baroness Baroness Bennett because I see she's speaking in all three see she's speaking in all three debates today, and I. To congratulate the Minister on her congratulate the Minister on her additional appointment, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord foster, on securing this debate. He's identified a problem that requires government action. However, action by government alone is not sufficient. My Lords, too much time of our courts is taken up with violence and theft caused by alcohol abuse, drug habits and gambling addiction.

The problems are not unrelated. Public Health England's 2021 report on gambling harms found a clear link between alcohol consumption and harmful gambling, with 35% of non-drinkers participating in gambling, compared with 74% of those who drank 50 plus units of alcohol per week. In terms of problem gambling, court appearances are the tip of the iceberg, as we've heard, the extent to which it affects young people is apparent in terms of the figures, online marketing is a particular problem, given that it is inherently skewed towards young people, they are susceptible.

Given that studies show that they do not fully understand how odds work, adopting simplistic views of risk. One study found that among children who gamble, the most common reason for doing so is because it is fun. Once hooked, we know the problems in terms of psychological distress. Young people in the 18 to 24 age range who experienced problem gambling are around 50% more likely than average to be experiencing high psychological stress and low mental health well-being, and are over five times more likely to be at high risk of suicide.

The problem is getting more severe, as young people rely increasingly on social media and have difficulty distinguishing advertising from independent comment. One study found that most 11 to 17 year olds have seen or heard gambling advertising through online platforms, which, with such platforms rarely including visible risk warnings or transparent disclosure. I should add, I wasn't surprised that one survey found that certain adverts for safer gambling make the viewers want to gamble more. There's a problem, especially with unlicensed gambling sites and with influencers, a rather benign term for what are manipulators who advertise gambling related content? The problem is not confined to online betting.

One study found that of 11 to 15 year olds who reported gambling, 8% had been to a betting shop. As the briefing paper from the library revealed, of 11 to 17 year olds had experienced gambling, more than a third had played, played arcade, arcade, gambling, gaming machines. My Lords, this is an issue for the government. I don't share the government's somewhat rosy view of the robustness of the current statutory and voluntary framework. We need much tougher controls. I concur with the recommendations of the various parliamentary bodies.

Adumbrated in the excellent library briefing. My view is that we need to go further and give more powers to local authorities to regulate casinos, clubs and bookmakers. I appreciate that a task force addressing illegal gambling has been established and that a consultation is underway. However, it will be helpful if the Minister can tell us what is being done to tackle what is known as skins betting. I know the government are aware of the issue and what plans they have to ensure that gambling ads emphasise the dangers of gambling.

Children, as we've heard in particular, need educating as to the dangers. My final, but most important question derives from the number of online gaming sites that operate outside of national jurisdiction. I was, as the speech of my noble friend Baroness Hayman showed, action by the UK government is necessary, but it's not sufficient. There needs to be greater cross-border cooperation. Can the Minister update us on what is being done to generate international action, to tackle what is a major and growing problem?
15:14
Lord Addington Portrait Lord Addington (Liberal Democrat)
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My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord foster for bringing friend Lord foster for bringing this subject in front of us. And it's a difficult one, and we all know why it's a difficult one, know why it's a difficult one, because if you are taking money out of somebody's pocket for gambling, it is not there for other subjects, and it can become an addiction and it can destroy their life. If we forget that, we forget really why we're concerned about it. We then have the secondary point, very important point raised by my by the noble Baroness Anelay here, the fact that sport is actually potentially threatened and destroyed by the use of gambling coming in and stopping it, the whole essence of sport is threatened.

The World Cup could have been made an irrelevance by a betting conspiracy, conspiracy, all that excitement, all that adrenaline, all that bringing together, all that positiveness could have been ruined by one betting scandal there. Cricket came close at one point and a huge amount of energy. Indeed, even racing. Racing is the most experienced bit of this. I live in the village of Lambourn. The amount of energy that goes into stopping illegal interference through gambling in racing is massive and has gone on for a long time, and indeed, I know people who have been involved in this and involved in the police, involved in accusations, going through, hopefully it all coming up on the right side of the law, or at least that's the ones I've met, my Lords.

But it is there. It is something which actually can pervert that thing. If we take that into account, what are we doing to stop betting behaviour becoming endemic and effectively uncontrolled in the young? That is really the question we are asking ourselves here. And I think we only have one voice that thought. It's not a problem, but the Baroness Fox is used to being by herself. So my Lords, I would actually just say, what are we doing to really get in PHE e going down gambling and whether do we do enough in other bits? I know it is.

I have often guarded against this. And when it comes to education, are we getting down to teach people that, you know, roulette table. It's not that you will win big once in a while going round. The odds are always pretty bad that you will win on every single turn. That's why it's there, the way that gambling is there, because somebody expects to make money from you and normally does. That's why they're still there. This is something which I don't think we get across enough.

There is a difference between somebody playing cards for a few pennies, but then suddenly realising, oh, I'm going to lose if I play against somebody else. Does somebody going to one of these big organised sites which are always at your pocket, always being told you might win big, but we know you won't. The vast majority of times that's why they're doing it. Saying to you, yes, here's a gambling house that gives you a small buzz but will take your money off you consistently.

Kevin Keegan's father may have won big giving football boots. One wonders if he didn't actually bet on the horses regularly. He might have got new ones earlier. My Lord, we've got to make sure that we actually get what the damage is. That information into the young and into their parents as well. If we are going to these formats, these new formats, which there are age barriers over, people do not understand them. Are we making sure that people understand there are inherent dangers there? I think my noble friend and myself have spoken about loot boxes very often, and I have met very distinguished games designers who think they destroy the essence of many of the challenging and more complicated games out there, the ones with some intellectual content, because you're always being guaranteed by some money and you might get the thing you need to carry on with your activity, but you probably won't.

So you better buy a few more. And then you have lots of wasted product. But it's the essence there. What is the government doing to inform those involved and those who are at risk, and those who influence them, that this activity is going to take money off you and give it to somebody else, no matter what the buzz is. That's the answer. That's the answer. And unless we get that established, my Lords, we are going to miss the essence of it because that's what it's about.

That's where it happens.
15:19
Lord Evans of Rainow Portrait Lord Evans of Rainow (Conservative)
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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord Lord Foster of Bath for this very important debate. I also welcome the noble Baroness back to her place. Firstly, it is important to place. Firstly, it is important to define what is meant by young people. Those under the age of 18 are classed as children and despite the government's incoherence on this, in other policy areas, gambling remains prohibited for children. Those adults aged 18 to 25, on the other hand, are free to, but with additional safeguards such as financial vulnerability checks, deposit limit prompts and other age targeted restrictions.

The previous government was proactive in tackling issues related to gambling. In 2019, a gambling clinic for those aged 13 to 25 was introduced as part of the NHS long Term plan. We published a review of the Gambling Act 2005 in December 2020 to assess whether it provided the right balance in 2023, the Gambling White Paper sought to strengthen protections for children and young adults significantly, including the statutory levy and state limits on online slots. That is not to say there are no longer any problems.

Over 16% of calls to game Centres National Gambling helpline came from those aged 18 to 25. Technology is constantly evolving and cooperation with the sector is crucial. However, the regulated sector is itself threatened by the illegal gambling market, whose operators cannot cannibalise without any of the protections already mentioned in the Lordships House. According to forecasts from the World Advertising Research Centre, advertising spend by licensed operators is expected to decrease by over 9% this year, while spend by unregulated operators is projected to grow by 32% by 2028.

This could mean illegal firms will account for the majority of gambling advertising spend. That is why any government action to tackle the issues must be thought through. A strong legal betting market can also provide notable benefits. For example, accumulating spend by betting companies in horse racing is around £20 million on direct sponsorship and and 165 million on marketing, media rights, sponsorship and the horse race betting levy together contribute about £350 million every year to British horse racing. We therefore do not want to drive more gambling activity into the illegal market, and negativity negatively impact other industries and legal sports.

The Gambling Commission found a 3% increase in the number of 11 to 17 year olds participating in unregulated gambling between 2024 and 2025. This can just be a bet between friends, but children can also be targeted with advertisements via social media. We on these benches have argued for a social media ban for under 16 seconds, which would remove children's exposure to advertisements from unregulated sites. I would appreciate it if the noble Baroness, the Minister, could give us an update on the government's progress in finally implementing a social media ban.

In addition, will the funds raised by the statutory levy, which came into force last year, be used for an evidence based response to the issues raised by noble Lords here today? What other steps in the government taking to crack down on the black market? I am grateful for the valuable insights of noble Lords to this debate, and I look forward to the noble Baroness. The minister's response.
15:23
Baroness Twycross Portrait Baroness Twycross, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) (Labour)
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My Lords, this has been an important debate and I thank the important debate and I thank the noble Lord Lord Foster of Bath for securing it, and all noble Lords who took part. And thank you as well for the kind words of noble Lords from across your Lordships' House. Let me be clear. This government is fully committed to government is fully committed to ensuring that the protections are robust to show children and young people from gambling related harm. Over the past two years, important progress has been made to strengthen protections to reduce the risk of gambling related harm for young people.

In response to the noble Lord Lord Herbert of South Downs and the noble Lady Baroness Fox, and I hope with all noble Lords would support, we will always follow the evidence on policy making process in this area. My Lords, we know that the digital world moves faster than traditional regulation, and this is why we've introduced a £2 online slot stake limit for 18 to 24 year olds, a targeted intervention aimed at young people who are particularly vulnerable to unaffordable losses. And as the noble Lady Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle said, harmful gambling appears higher among boys and young men.

The noble Lord Lord Evans of Rainow asked about age and definition of age. I think we're clear on what categorises children and young people within gambling policy, but I'm happy to discuss that with him if he thinks we haven't got it clear enough in the land based sector, we've rolled out, I think 25 replacing think. 21 and we believe this will minimise underage in person betting for children, which has remained about 1% since the introduction. We also recently consulted on raising the statutory age limit for category D cash out slot machines from 16 to 18.

Legislation will build on the sector's voluntary commitment to ensure that land based venues further protect children and young people from gambling related harm. A response to this consultation will be published in due course. A number of a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord foster, spoke about the impact and potential impact of advertising on children and young people. The government recognises these concerns and that is why we have existing robust protections in place to ensure advertising does not exacerbate harm among children and young people.

The ASA requires that online operators use all available tools to exclude under 18 and vulnerable groups from advertising exposure, and since October 2025, has prohibited influencers, which I hope will be music to the noble Lord. Lord Norton of Louth's ears as prohibited influences. With over 100 000 under 18 followers from promoting gambling to ensure it's not marketed as a risk free lifestyle choice, the government's planned social media ban under 16 will also help reduce exposure to gambling adverts on social media.

The noble Lady Baroness Gerada highlighted issues around illegal gambling, which was mentioned by a number of other noble Lords. My Lords, while licensed operators are subject to strict advertising rules, illegal operators present a very different challenge. This is not a matter I take lightly, and that is precisely why I personally establish and have chaired the Illegal Gambling Task Force in January this year, which includes an illegal advertising subgroup. I hosted the most recent meeting of the task force last week by bringing together industry platforms, regulators and government, we are collectively identifying ways to clamp down on illegal advertising and ensure that exposure is reduced for young people.

I will provide an update on our progress later in the year. A number of other questions were raised throughout the debate. So the noble Lord, Lord foster, the noble Lady Baroness Gerada and the noble Lord Lord Addington in particular raised the question around loot boxes, and we recognise the close links between gaming and gambling, especially through loot box mechanics that can imitate gambling. Alongside independent research on skins gambling that we published last year, we've also commissioned independent research to assess the effectiveness of the industry guidance on loot boxes.

We've engaged relevant government departments, regulators and industry to consider the results, and we will publish, report and set out our next steps in due course. Lord Norton raised a particular point around Skins gambling. My Lords is currently no licensed operators which offer skins gambling, meaning any websites doing so may be operating illegally. The Gambling Commission is clear that where products amount to illegal gambling, they will take swift action. The noble Lord Lord Evans of Rainow and the noble Lady Baroness Gerada talked a little bit about evolving products, and I absolutely recognise that this is fast moving.

DCMS and the Gambling Commission are working together to understand the market, including evolving products, and they monitor developments closely. The noble Lord, Lord Norton and the noble Lord Lord Addington, raised how children might be taught about odds at school or sort of the education in school. And since 2020, children have been taught about the risks relating to gambling as part of the. Relationship, sex and health curriculum. The Gambling Commission also publishes an annual survey on children's exposure to, and involvement in all types of gambling to help us monitor gambling related harm.

The noble Lady, Baroness Anelay of St Johns asked around. Asked about what progress had been made in ratifying the convention. I'm delighted to say we are making progress with the ratification of the convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions. The explanatory memorandum laid by FCDO is undergoing scrutiny in the House with Lords, with the Lords International Committee ratifying the convention will demonstrate UK leadership and our commitment to working with international colleagues to tackle match fixing. The noble Lord, Lord Herbert and the noble Lord.

Lord Evans raised points around the importance and significance financially of gambling to horse racing and the noble Lord, Lord Herbert in particular raised the issue of financial risk assessments. My Lords, we support the recent announcement by the Gambling Commission to implement EFRA for online gambling through a careful, phased approach. Working with the sector in an implementation phase. This is a decision for the Gambling Commission, who have met stakeholders throughout the recent pilot process to ensure implementation is focussed on protecting consumers.

The government has encouraged the Commission to continue and increase engagement with the gambling industry. Successful implementation is vital and this requires engagement from all interested parties. Interested parties the vast majority of customers will never require an EFRA. People who place an occasional bet are are a winning customer, or even regularly spend hundreds of pounds would be unlikely to need a check, and I'm happy to meet with any peers to discuss EFRA, as is the Gambling Commission. So we can. We can arrange that.

Subsequently, the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, also talked about publishing data and the. Measuring the impact of Fras. The government will work with the Gambling Commission to ensure successful implementation. There will be a significant implementation phase which will involve key stakeholders, including the horse racing sector and operators through implementation groups. And I will raise the point about what data can be released again with the Gambling Commission and where they can. We're encouraging them to do so. The noble Lady Baroness Fox of Buckley.

Raised really important points about how we need to be proportionate in our response to gambling, and I want to reassure the noble Lady that we do understand the importance of striking the right balance between acting on problem gambling or harmful gambling, and ensuring that aren't unintended consequences for for those who do enjoy a casual bet and don't suffer gambling harm. And as I said earlier, we're absolutely determined that we follow the evidence in how we implement gambling related policies.

I'd like to once more thank the noble Lord, Lord foster, for bringing this important debate before your Lordships House, and I thank all noble Lords for their thoughtful contributions. Today's debate has demonstrated our shared determination to protect children and young people from gambling related harm. We have built a strong foundation over these past two years to ensure those most at risk, including young people, are protected from gambling harm. We have committed to reviewing a range of selected policy measures through the Gambling Act review evaluation to ensure they had the intended impact.

We also look forward to any future evaluations to understand the impact of our measures and inform future policy making. We will continue to work closely with the Gambling Commission, industry and health and education partners to keep pace with emerging risks and do everything we can to protect children and young people from gambling harms.
15:32
15:33
Baroness Keeley Portrait Baroness Keeley (Labour)
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I welcome this debate on. >> I welcome this debate on. >> The important role of current level three qualifications for the creative industries and the potential impact of their potential impact of their replacement with T-levels and V-levels. While this debate affects the wider creative industries, I the wider creative industries, I will also focus on music education and on the Brit School as case studies to draw out the current strengths and some of the risks of the government's reform proposals, and I would like to thank UK Music and the Musicians Union for their support with the briefing for this debate and also the Brit School, the University of the Arts, London Rock school, RSL, ISM and BPI for briefings.

Now, at its heart, this debate is about whether replacing large numbers of existing level three qualifications such as extended diplomas, BTec nationals will improve quality and clarity, or will it reduce choice for learners and remove proven pathways that currently enable many young people to succeed? This issue has been a source of concern across the creative sector and among awarding bodies, including the University of the Arts, London. Since the reforms to Post-16 education were first proposed by the 2019 conservative government, those reforms sought to simplify level three qualifications around A-levels and T levels and removing public funding from qualifications deemed to overlap with them.

However, campaigners argue that this risked removing successful applied qualifications which serve different learners and different purposes. It was therefore right that the Labour government reviewed these reforms in 2024, and my noble friend the Minister, writing about that review in Fee Week in September 2024, said. Where the review identifies the balance of learner and employer needs within a sector requires level three qualifications other than T levels and A levels. We will maintain the relevant qualifications. This may well be in areas that overlap with T levels, which is a change from the approach from the previous government.

For creative subjects and music in particular, that principle is essential. However, in October 2025, the Government's White Paper on Post-16 education proposed the introduction of V-levels and T levels to replace many existing qualifications. So I feel it's important in this debate we consider the potential implications for the creative industries before any more work is done to make changes. The UK music industry is one of our great success stories. It generates £8 billion a year for the economy. It supports 220,000 jobs across the country and projects British culture around the world.

Yet every performer, producer, composer, sound engineer, technician and educator begins somewhere. If we weaken the educational pathways into music, we weaken the future workforce of the sector itself. And music education is not simply about producing future music professionals. It equips young people with creativity, confidence, resilience and the skills of collaboration, and it improves wellbeing and delivers significant cultural and social benefits. Now, the music industry has concerns about the proposed reforms and reflecting these concerns, I will argue for four specific adjustments to the government's proposals.

First, be willing to keep existing successful vocational level three qualifications. Second, work with industry and educators to develop larger V-levels that meet the needs of the creative industries. Third, consider whether the T-level model can work to address the technical skills needed in the music sector, and work with industry and educators to develop music T levels that are appropriate for the sector. Fourth, take urgent action to address the decline in A-level music. First, the case for retaining existing level three qualifications.

At present, D levels are a blank slate. They could become successful qualifications if they build on the strengths of established qualifications, but until that happens, it is vital that successful applied general qualifications, including extended diplomas, remain available. And that's particularly important because the numbers taking vocational qualifications are growing at a time when GCSE and A-level music entries have been declining. Between 2018 and 2021, the number of pupils taking vocational music qualifications after key stage four increased by 48%, demonstrating strong demand and significant untapped potential to engage young people in music education.

The IFS has argued that the government's post-16 reform proposals are especially likely to affect those groups, who benefit most from vocational pathways. Students from lower income backgrounds, pupils eligible for free school meals, students with special educational needs, students with disabilities and those who are not yet ready for T levels. Now, the Cultural Learning Alliance reports that 54% of schools in the most deprived fifth of local authorities have no GCSE music entrants, compared with 21% in the least deprived. Fifth, any reduction in vocational pathways is therefore likely to have a disproportionate impact on disadvantaged young people.

Successful institutions such as the Brit School rely heavily on qualifications like the UAL level three extended diploma, so there remains no clear like for like replacement. And that's putting frozen pathways at risk. Now, the value of these pathways can be seen in the achievement of Brit School alumni, including Amy Winehouse, Raye, Olivia Dean, Jessie J and Katie Melua. Over 30 years, the Brit school has shown how specialist vocational education can transform opportunity. In 2025, 98% of its students progressed to higher education, apprenticeships, employment or further training.

The Brit school warns that if future qualifications move away from the characteristics that have made vocational creative education successful, accessibility, depth of learning and authentic assessment, there's a real risk of narrowing the pipeline of talent entering what is one of the UK's fastest growing sectors. So my friend the Minister, therefore clarify if she will look again at retaining current existing creative sector level three qualifications. Now, if some existing qualifications are ultimately replaced, it is essential that any replacement can serve the same function.

The proposed model of small V-levels equivalent in size to a single A-level is seen as unlikely to equip students sufficiently for further study or skilled employment in music and the performing arts progression within music, the performing arts and other creative industries requires learners to build a portfolio of creative, technical and professional skills over time. Applied level three programmes equivalent to three A levels are particularly well suited to supporting that progression. The proposed focus on V-levels dismantling established two year programmes, including the UAL and RSL Extended Diplomas, which currently provide successful progression routes into higher education and skilled employment, and in specialist areas like music performance or music technology.

There is a fear that learners could be left without a coherent programme of study. There are also concerns about whether campuses delivering a broad range of subjects at a single V level may lack the specialist facilities, such as recording studios, rehearsal spaces, music technology equipment essential to high quality music performance, composition and music tech courses. So I hope my noble friend the Minister, can tell me whether the government will actively consider the larger V-levels equivalent in size to current extended diplomas for specialist creative subjects, as recommended by the Becky Francis Review.

My Lords, the question of larger V-levels leads directly to my third point T levels. At present, there are no music T-level there is no music T-level. However, the challenge is not simply the absence of a music T-level it is that the current two level model is not seen as compatible with the realities of employment within the music industry and other creative industry roles. The music industry is characterised by freelancers, portfolio careers, micro-businesses, project work, and self-employment, so the proposed T levels would their one size fits all lengthy industry placement and narrow and prescriptive national occupational standards are seen as incompatible.

Now, the Curriculum and Assessment Review explicitly recommended a large, flexible V level for creative disciplines, replacing this with a single, narrowly defined T level risks misunderstanding how careers in music actually develop. Without significant structural changes to T levels, it is difficult to see how T levels in their current form could achieve broad uptake among music learners and the music sector. A triple size V-level would be much more likely to meet the needs of learners and the music sector, and the government could also work closely with the music sector to develop a broader variety of T levels that address the range of technical skills needed in the music sector, but that would need to be accompanied by the financial support that would enable SMEs and other small music businesses to offer placements.

So, alongside considering a large, flexible V level, will my noble friend the Minister commit to working directly with music industry, employers, educators and representative bodies to develop a qualification framework that genuinely reflects employment patterns within the sector? Now, we cannot discuss Post-16 education in isolation from what happens earlier in the system. The decline in A-level music that we're seeing begins with declining opportunities to study music at earlier stages of education, to ensure the health of the creative talent pipeline, we must also address the decline in A-level music as a matter of urgency.

And as I said in our recent debate on live music, our Labour government inherited an education system in which the EBacc had squeezed music education from the curriculum, damaging both music teacher recruitment and retention, and contributing to declining GCSE and A-level entries. But A-level music remains in crisis. Entries have fallen by 41% since 2013, to a record low of 4635 students, while GCSE music entries are around 27% lower than 2010. Disturbingly, in 18 local authorities either only one school or in fact no schools offered a music qualification, either a level or vocational, and that declining trend must be reversed if we're serious about protecting the music talent pipeline into universities, conservatoires orchestras and the wider music industry.

Now, the government's planned reforms to EBacc and progress eight should help strengthen arts provision and encourage greater uptake. However, reversing the cumulative effects of many years of curriculum narrowing and funding pressures will require additional action, and that should include reforming A-level music in close collaboration with the music sector, broadening the syllabus to reflect the diversity of musical traditions shaping contemporary British music, including black music. Completing the current GCSE music review in partnership with the sector, and investing in the music education workforce by improving recruitment and increasing teacher training incentives.

Finally, expanding access to music making opportunities in and beyond. School for children from lower income families. Because, as I've said, the case for music education extends beyond the needs of the creative industries. Academic research has consistently demonstrated its benefits for cognitive development. The acquisition, acquisition, acquisition of adaptive and collaborative skills and mental health research by Making Music and the Association of British Orchestras, found that most adults who receive music education or learned an instrument at school credited with providing vital skills that supported their careers, regardless of sector.

And as we heard on Monday, my noble friend the Minister actually did progress with both the piano and the cello, so she'll understand the skills that she acquired. Studies also suggest that pupils who continue learning music throughout school tend to achieve higher academic outcomes than their peers, and public support for music education is strong. Research commissioned by UK music found that more than half of parents whose children learn an instrument believe it enhances creativity, confidence, perseverance and resilience, and these educational and social benefits should be considered alongside the economic value of music education when decisions are being made about future qualifications.

My Lords, this debate is fundamentally about talent, opportunity and growth. The United Kingdom's creative industries are admired throughout the world, but their future success is not guaranteed. It depends on the choices we make now about education and skills. The question before us is not whether reform is needed, but whether reform expands opportunity or narrows it. And my concern is that unless government builds on what already works, some of the most successful pathways into our creative industries may be lost. Existing level three creative qualifications have enabled thousands of young people, including many from disadvantaged backgrounds, to progress into higher education, skilled employment and successful careers in the creative industries.

And unless suitable alternatives exist and are shown to work, those pathways should be protected. I do therefore, urge the government to retain successful creative level three qualifications to work closely with industries and educators on larger V-levels and fit for purpose T-levels and technical music skills, and to take urgent action to reverse the decline in A-level music. If we get this right, we will do more than reform qualifications. We will widen the opportunities, strengthen social mobility, secure the talent pipeline for our world leading creative industries and ensure that the next generation of musicians, producers, composers and creative entrepreneurs can fulfil their potential.

And that would be good for our young people. It would be good for education and good for the future prosperity of our country.

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So I beg to move. A question is that this motion be agreed to.

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be agreed to. My Lord, I'm grateful to follow Baroness Keeley so early in this debate, and I thank her for debate, and I thank her for securing this subject as something for us to discuss in the chamber for us to discuss in the chamber today. And I echo much of what she has already said, which I'll return to in a moment. But may I also take to in a moment. But may I also take a moment to congratulate the Minister on surviving the reshuffle cull? I've seen on social media how pleased she is to have held on to her role and how much she enjoys it.

And may I also say that in principle, it's also great to see her on the frontbench, because the future success of our creative industries, led by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, depends very much on close cooperation with the Department for education, and it is an interesting point that the music education system that Baroness Keeley spoke of so eloquently is effectively funded out of the Department for education via the Arts Council, and many of the high level schemes that support elite arts education.

And I am not embarrassed to use the word elite, such as the music and dance scheme, are also funded by Baroness Smith's department, so it is vital to see this cooperation. And
15:48
Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Conservative)
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although the noble Lord Lord Gove is often criticised for the EBacc, it was thanks to him when he was it was thanks to him when he was Education Secretary that we were able to bring some form of strategy able to bring some form of strategy to music education with the creation of music education hubs, a more uniform funding system for local authorities, and a joining up of separate initiatives such as the of separate initiatives such as the in Harmony scheme to ensure their success.

And. May I dwell briefly on the in Harmony scheme, because the in Harmony scheme represents a massive career enhancing opportunity for the noble Baroness on the front bench because the. In harmony scheme, although in. Although inspired by Julian Lloyd Webber, was implemented by a Labour culture secretary known as Andy Burnham, and I visited one of the in harmony schemes when I was a Minister, and it was in West Everton, not on. Adjacent to a football club supported by a man called Andy Burnham, and I will always remember that visit.

It was a very emotional visit because the sheer power of music to inspire children from difficult backgrounds, to inspire their parents and their carers was a wonder to behold. And I hope that in the next three months I will see the Minister and the Prime Minister visiting the in Harmony scheme in West Everton. To emphasise the point of the importance of music education. As Baroness Keeley pointed out, not just in creating the musicians of the future, but inspiring many young people with the rigour, the discipline, the sense of responsibility that will really enhance their prospects in many different ways.

And it is good to have a culture. Former culture secretary as our Prime Minister, because the more I debate issues in this place, the more I think not about picking winners, but this is a fantastic country that should be focusing on our natural advantages, and we need a government that will focus and double down on them. And it goes without saying that the creative industries are one of those advantages film, television, video games, fashion and indeed music. And the noble Baroness mentioned the Brit school.

It's a phenomenal institution set up by the record industry, which has itself perhaps inadvertently been picking winners from Adele to Olivia Dean throughout its existence. And so it needs, obviously, the continued support for government, but it's important that we understand just how important the creative industries are, not just for our national life, but, frankly, for our economy. So in terms of looking at the future of T-levels and V-levels, for the creative industries, I wonder whether I am wrong in thinking that perhaps they've been put at the Back of the queue.

The first V-levels come in coming in 2027 are, as I understand it, digital accounting and child development. Very important issues. But creative T-levels are only due to arrive in 2029 and creative V-levels a year later. In 2030. The last carriages on the train, if you like. So I would be interested to hear from the Minister how the Department decided to sequence the introduction of these new qualifications. If it is because they are harder to design, that would be understandable.

I also hold some reservations on the evidence so far, and I think Baroness Keeley referred to this in her remarks. A V-level carries 360 guided learning hours, but I think the Brit school has said that something like a thousand guided learning hours are needed, 360 hours is the equivalent of a single A-level. The qualifications being replaced, including the larger BTECs, offer a great deal more and the government's own consultation response. Industry and universities both said 360 hours was not enough to give them confidence.

And also, finally, V-level content is tied to occupational standards set by Skills England. That might be a perfectly sensible discipline for accountancy, where an accountant is a recognisable thing. But UK Music put the difficulty well. Creative careers are portfolio careers and forcing qualifications to align with occupational standards that do not exist, risk making them irrelevant to how the industry actually works. In 20 years around this sector, I have met very few people in this sector doing one job.

The government have promised to consult on content before these courses launch, and I would like the Minister's assurance that this means the sector helping to co-design them, not merely commenting on a fait accompli.
15:53
Baroness Garden of Frognal Portrait Baroness Garden of Frognal (Liberal Democrat)
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Baroness Keeley for initiating >> Baroness Keeley for initiating this debate. But I should also like to give a shout out to level one and level two qualifications, and level two qualifications, because level 1st May go to an adult who has never gained a national qualification, and the boost to confidence about learning and the sense of achievement can be life changing. Level 1st May well lead for somebody to go on to level two, and even three from someone who may have written themselves off as dim and useless until national recognition, even to very low level, encouraged and incentivise them.

But level three is evidence of someone who has the skills and knowledge to operate on their own in their chosen field. Now, my Lords, creative skills used to be validated and awarded by City and Guilds, where I worked for 20 years, initially on hairdressing and beauty therapy. One can be quite versatile in this life. I find an allied skills in all those areas. It was possible to go all the way to fellowship at level seven. I then moved on to look after the senior awards levels 4 to 7 with Post-nominal letters and gowns and hoods to indicate their parity with university degrees.

Sadly, City and Guilds has been betrayed by the then chairman, chief executive and finance officer who managed to bypass the trustees, council and president. The Princess Royal of this long standing Royal Charter charity founded by the City of London and livery companies in 1878 and highly regarded around the world for the quality and standards of its work based qualifications. Because they sold the awarding part to a foreign owned commercial company, people set up a small team has been left under the title of the City and Guilds Foundation to continue to support the charitable activities and sustain the Royal Charter.

Two of the three perpetrators were given lucrative welcomes and subsequently sacked. How strange life can be. Anyway, the Charity Committee is investigating how this could happen, as is a growing band of staff members, fellows and friends of the institute. But what is crucial is that candidates do not suffer for this. The qualifications they were working for will continue to be delivered because they do not deserve to be deflected by machinations of people who should have known better. And we have been assured that this will be the case, and that the qualifications will continue to be to the highest standards, as they always were.

Now, my Lords, there is always a problem with vocational practical technical qualifications that most parliamentarians and civil servants have gone the university route. They don't know about further education colleges and the amazing work they do, nor the very wide range of qualifications and individuals they support. So they meddle in a way we don't see with GCSE or A-level. We do continue to have BTECs understood by students, universities, employers and, crucially, many parents. But they're now under threat as the newer, shinier, T-levels technical, you understand, is so much classier than vocational arrive on the scene to be followed by V-levels well come back vocational.

All is forgiven, my Lords. It takes a while for any new qualification to be understood and valued, more so for practical than academic ones. So just as T-levels have taken a while to find their place, who knows how long it will be for V-levels to be the talk of the town? We should thank the University technical colleges Lord Baker valuable utcs which provide a clear path to skilled employment, because a number of them have developed particular expertise in supporting the creative industries where employers continue to face skills shortages.

And my Lords, the creative industries are often the most valued and valuable of our industries. The UK leads the world in many of these skill sets. The Heritage Cross Association produces a regular list of endangered crafts, some continued by a sole trader, where taking on an apprentice would severely affect their ability to earn a living. Yet anyone who embarks on silversmithing Clockmaking Enamelling basket making upholstering knows the immense satisfaction in creativity. And I won't talk about music because Baroness Keeley has spoken so eloquently about that.

But again, music and dance are vital skills which really enhance life. And if we lost any of these skills, it would be a real loss to our quality of life as well. My Lords, as to the economy. So we should venture with extreme caution in changing qualifications which are valued and understood. Why not put effort into attracting the young and not so young into sporting crafts in danger, which could enrich their lives? So can I ask the Minister why the government is embarking on V-levels, when there are already established qualifications for the creative industries? Many are under threat and need support, not a pointless exercise in rebranding.

There are level three diplomas and extended diplomas, with some 84,000 students who do not need to be distracted by the arrival of a new kid on the block in the form of mysterious V-levels. So please, will the Minister commit to pause defunding of his existing creative levels one, two and three qualifications until creative T-levels and V-levels have been fully designed and piloted and are shown to deliver work based standards and comparable outcomes for progression, and this is particularly important for Send learners and disadvantaged students, many of whom may have talents in creativity far in excess of their abilities in other subjects.

I look forward to the minister's reply, and like others, I welcome her back to her brief.
15:59
Lord Knight of Weymouth Portrait Lord Knight of Weymouth (Labour)
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My Lords, I remind the House of my education interests, in my education interests, in particular as a member of Pearson's Qualifications Committee. It's always a joy to follow the noble always a joy to follow the noble Baroness Garden, and I also pay tribute to Baroness Keeley for securing and for her introduction to this debate. And I want to add that I am delighted that the Minister is still in her place after the reshuffle. My Lords, my first job at 13 was in the West End production of Oliver.

Seven years later, I co-founded a theatre company with Sam Mendes and went on to manage art centres. My wife, after drama school, spent years delivering creative partnerships in schools. My daughter, Ruth is now a successful opera director. All three of us have done well thanks to the vocational pull of the performing arts. But this is an industry that can't be measured by productivity and earnings. At 30, it is about vocation and about weaving the cultural fabric that binds us together. Witness the connection between the fans and the players.

Created by Wonderwall at the World Cup. My Lords, I want to focus today on why T-levels and V-levels as designed, cannot deliver the talent that our nation needs to maintain our status as a creative superpower. I'm a keen supporter of the Post-16 reforms in general, but not as currently applied to this sector. T-levels and the proposed V-levels are built on national occupational standards, competencies mapped to define jobs. How will that work for creative artists? My good friend Emily Burnett is a BAFTA winning actor for film, TV and and and as a TV and theatre performer.

She's also a writer, a director, and a performer. Steve McQueen is a Turner Prize winner for video installation, has been shown at the Tate and the serpentine and won an Oscar for the film 12 Years a Slave. One career moving fluidly between fine art, documentary and narrative film. No single occupational standard could describe these trajectories, let alone train for them. Whilst the creative arts require technical skills, they also need aptitude, fluidity and inspiration. They're more than the sum of their constituent skills.

This points, in my view, to a category error at the heart of the reform T-levels are by design technical qualifications, built to prepare a student for a specific occupation with a narrow specialism at their core. Look at the craft and design T-level its occupational specialisms mapped to a single narrow trade standards. Ceramicist, bespoke furniture maker, garment maker, jewellery maker. Each is precise and each is far narrower than the breadth a young person actually needs to build a creative career. Practitioners move fluidly across creative, technical and entrepreneurial work over a single career and what the sector itself calls a polymathic portfolio based working life.

And that mismatch has already shown up in the numbers. Two creative T-levels have now been through full commissioning and delivery. Craft and design managed just 136 starts in its debut year. Media broadcast and production around 600 combined a rounding error against the roughly 84,000 learners currently on large creative level. Three qualifications. My Lords, creative education is vocational, not technical. It builds a craft and a practice, not entry to one job title, and that distinction has a practical consequence.

In learning hours, a T-level runs to around 1800 hours across two years, weighted heavily toward one narrow specialism and a placement. A single V-level, by contrast, is projected to be 360 guided learning hours like an A-level. Neither fits creative training, which needs neither the narrow technical depth of one occupation, nor the shallow breadth of 360 hours. But sustained studio and rehearsal time across a broad practice. That is precisely what the UAL extended diploma of 1080 to 1170 hours currently provide.

And then two further technical problems would need to be resolved. First, assessment T-levels require substantial examined assessment, but A-level art and design, as an example, have long relied on non examined portfolio based assessment precisely because they capture a creative process and development that are timed exam cannot, the Brit School told the Curriculum and Assessment Review that learners must be graded on vocational ability, not solely on written ability under pressurised exam conditions. Push creative qualifications towards examination and we repeat a known mistake.

Students writing about practical outcomes instead of producing them. Second, industry engagement T-levels currently require a discrete 45 day placement dependent on employers able to host it. The extended diploma embeds industry engagement continuously through live briefs and employer set projects running throughout the course. Now, I know this Minister is listening to these arguments, and I hope the creative sector can engage with her to find the right way forward. To do that. This engagement needs to quickly resolve whether we can rebuild occupational standards for creative jobs.

If not, the sector should then be given the certainty of retaining the extended diploma. This existing qualification already delivers the right hours, the right assessment, continuous industry engagement and with progression into higher education that nearly three quarters of the creative workforce holds. Ministers can then confirm its funding on a permanent footing, not a repeated reprieve to 2030, and then let T-levels and V-levels find their place alongside it, not

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in place of it. My Lords, I thank my noble friend Baroness Keeley for friend Baroness Keeley for introducing this debate in such a thoughtful and compelling way, and thoughtful and compelling way, and I'm delighted to follow my noble friend, Lord Knight. My Lords, this friend, Lord Knight. My Lords, this House has many times focussed on the importance of the creative industries and the economy, and in
16:06
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Portrait Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Labour)
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industries and the economy, and in our social fabric. It can't be emphasised enough how much creatives enhance our reputation and soft power across the world, and our productivity at home in theatre, film, dance, music, computer games, craft design, visual arts indeed, any area where individual creativity, skill and talent play a key role. Those who are able and willing to advance those skills need to be encouraged, supportive, supported and given. Freedom to fly, not thwarted, straitjacketed or discouraged by any entry system of examinations which is not targeted to their needs or to the industries they aspire to enter.

My my Lords, others in this debate have real knowledge of the requirements for entry into these subjects and the impact of the specific changes currently being considered. As we have already heard, I don't, but I have learnt a lot. The library brief was excellent and I'm grateful to Baroness Keeley for a thorough grounding in the ongoing discussions with government and the government's intentions. I want to make three brief, broad points. First and most important, the creative industries are too vital a part of our economy to get this wrong.

When tens of billions of pounds of gross value added and the jobs of 2 million people are at stake, we need to attract the best recruits and ensure that no unhelpful obstacles or poor offerings impede keen youngsters from whatever background they come from. It's clear that the government wants exactly that. Second, creative roles increasingly blend technical fluency software digital production data with distinctly human capabilities, originality, storytelling, collaboration and, my Lords, it's clearly a sign of the times that I met recently, a senior executive in a company who was indeed director of storytelling, a creative economy that wants to keep growing, needs a pipeline of people who can move fluidly between craft and technical skills, and it's clear that placements are an important part of these qualifications.

I was very struck by the responses of students who struggled to find placements, particularly in the creative industry sector. Given that 95% of companies are micro-businesses and up to a third of the workforce is self-employed. So can I ask my noble friend how will the government address this placement issue? Third, digital technologies and are increasingly being used to create exciting opportunities, but they'll need to be continuous learning opportunities to enable them to update technical skills. And that's linked to the growing demand for collaboration across disciplines.

Creative professionals now often work alongside software developers, engineers, marketers and data analysts. So communication, teamwork, problem solving, adaptability and leadership skills need to be developed. And I think anybody who's seen the film The Odyssey and been through what must be at least five minutes of acknowledgements at the end of the film for all the crafts and skills involved, I think would echo that. My Lords, all of these points, all of these point to the need for close consultation and cooperation with those charged with developing the courses, exams and assessments for these subjects.

It's clear that providers want to work with the government to get this right, but it's also clear they have significant concerns. Many students who thrive on coursework based learning may find the structure of T-levels less accessible. There are concerns about the number of guided learning hours in V-levels, with industry and higher education stakeholders anxious that it won't be enough to assess levels of applied experience and practical competence, UK Music has argued that national occupational standards are not appropriate for creative careers.

University of the Arts, London, called for the government to allow flexibility of content. My Lords, I know higher education institutions support a diverse Post-16 qualifications landscape with multiple pathways beyond A-levels and T levels, particularly in creative and practice based disciplines. But arts and vocational subjects have already been squeezed by previous policy decisions. Reforms need to strengthen, not reduce creative pathways, ensuring parity of esteem between vocational and academic qualifications, and protect progression opportunities into creative careers.

So finally, can I ask my noble friend and echo one of the points made by my noble friend Baroness Keeley, whether she will pause decisions on funding existing successful creative level three qualifications until the new T and V levels have been designed, piloted and shown to deliver comparable or even better outcomes.
16:11
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Portrait Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party)
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My Lords, I thank the noble Lady >> My Lords, I thank the noble Lady Baroness Keeley for securing this very well patronised debate in our last break break debate before last break break debate before recess. It was pointed out in the last debate that I'm taking part in last debate that I'm taking part in all three debates today. And and one of the advantages of that is that you can make links between them. So I want to link to the first debate where the noble Lady, Baroness Kidron, talked about digital sovereignty and linked that to constitutional weaknesses in the UK to this debate, and point out how constitutional weaknesses are affecting the subject we're discussing here.

Creative education. The first past the post electoral system has traditionally produced a seesaw between two parties, two sets of policies and plans, if not always much ideological difference. And creative education has been very much a victim of this seesaw. We saw Lord Gove, now a member of your Lordships' House, make an active attempt under the previous administrations to suppress creative subjects in schools with the EBacc to push for a focus on a handful of subjects and exam results that saw many creative subject teachers leave education, certainly leave schools, move on to other careers, and active discouragement of new teachers coming into the area.

So I note that, among many others, the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, referring to music education, has focussed on the chronic shortage of teachers. As the noble Lady Baroness Keeley referred to. Now. Now we're seeing the seesaw come down the other way. We have a government that last year said it would end what the playwright James Graham described as the madness of the last decade, when coach cultural subjects had been so devalued. But let's look at the reality of that.

Since 2010, enrolment in arts GCSE has fallen by 40% and the number of arts teachers has fallen by 23%. Now, a number of noble Lords have already raised really important points on the questions of V-levels and T-levels, whether, as Baroness Keeley said, these will have the depth of learning and effective assessment. The noble Lord Lord Vaizey suggests not currently in his place. Asked whether there was enough hours, the powerful points made by the noble Lord Lord Knight about the difficulty of something structured for something like accountancy being applied to the creative sector.

So I'm going to pass all of those and simply ask the noble Lady, the Minister, given the background I've painted, is the government confident that there will be enough resources in terms of human capacity? Teachers, trained teachers, experienced teachers to deliver what the government is proposing. And in along similar lines, I reflect back on the learn the Lords visit to a school that I'm going to anonymize so as not to get into anyone into trouble. Where. The arts teacher told me that when he'd started a decade or so earlier, he'd had a budget of £3,500 a year for materials.

His current budget for materials is £500. Now we're not I'm not talking about here about any inflation adjusting. I'm talking about raw pound figures. Is the government going to resource these subjects in the way that they need to be resourced? But I also want to take a further step back, because if these V and T levels are going to work, we need to see students taking them up, students being encouraged to follow their interests and passions. Now, I would imagine the noble Lady, the Minister is aware of the recent Nuffield Foundation report, which really focussed on the underrepresentation of women and girls and people from lower income backgrounds in the creative industries, something that seeing a pathway that narrows and narrows along people's life course.

It looked at 1.7 million students in in England and surveyed people working in creative fields. Now, encouragingly, almost half of 14 year olds said they enjoyed creative subjects, but just 1 in 25 was working in a creative occupation by the early 30s at every stage, GCSE post-16 and higher education, there was a fall off, but particularly a fall off among poorer students and students and girls with girls from lower income backgrounds being doubly affected in those figures. So if we're going to ensure that we have a real flow of the students, the range of students who want to have into these B and T levels, what's the government going to do to ensure that happens? Two final brief points.

The noble Lady, I'm sure, is also aware of the Creative Collaboratives programme, which is piloted in bidding creativity in classrooms, not just addressing the specific subjects, but right across the curriculum, an approach that focuses on pupils ability to think imaginatively, to make connections and generate original ideas. Now again, that if we have that education right from the start of primary school and onwards, that potentially could feed pupils in to these T and B levels, is that going to happen? And I just want to make one final point, because I think there's been a lot of focus in this debate on the importance of the creative education sector to the economy.

I want to actually focus on something more important. We often see talk of Stem subjects as providing solutions to our crises the climate and nature, emergencies, poverty, inequality, dissatisfaction with politics, the sense of disempowerment in communities. But solutions very much, often must come from the creative sector, from people coming up with new ideas, new solutions, new approaches to living on this battered planet, to people getting together and cooperating. So it's really crucial that the government gets this creative education right.

It's heading in the right direction in reprioritising it. But there is many, many questions that your Lordships are rightly asking.
16:17
Lord Isaac Portrait Lord Isaac (Labour)
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Grateful to the noble, my noble friend Baroness Keeley, for initiating this really important initiating this really important debate on the future of Post-16 creative education, an area that's creative education, an area that's often neglected when we focus often on universities. The. The on universities. The. The Cinderella sector. As has been noted by many, many people before me, I declare an interest as the chair of governors of the University of the Arts, London. As you will have heard, the Arts University, which runs the awarding body for the current Diploma and extended Diploma system.

As my noble Lords have heard today, the arts are central to our cultural life and I have spoken about that on many times in this chamber. It's central to our economy, to social mobility and the general well-being of society. It fosters, as we've heard, imagination, collaboration and most importantly, innovation. And that's why the government has rightly identified the creative industries as one of the eight priority growth sectors in its industrial strategy. Yet since 2010, the number of pupils taking GCSE creative subjects has.

We have just heard from the noble Baroness Baroness Bennett has fallen by 40% and the number of specialist arts teachers in state schools has fallen dramatically too. It's therefore vital that Post-16 education provides strong pathways into employment and further and higher education for the diminishing number of students who wish to develop their creative skills. My Lords, this debate is not about undermining apprenticeships, T-levels or V-levels in my view, or indeed A-levels. It's about ensuring that in simplifying Post-16 qualifications, we do not damage the established creative pathways that already serve students and employers well.

Creative level three courses, as we've heard, must be broad. They must be practical and portfolio based. They must allow time for experimentation, rehearsal and studio practice. They are essential to developing successful artists, designers, performers, filmmakers and media professionals. The names that we've heard this afternoon Steve McQueen, Adele, but also Tracey Emin and Grayson Perry. We also need the creative industries to draw on talent from every background. Existing qualifications provide opportunities for disadvantaged students, young people with Send and those at risk of becoming Neet.

Together with A-levels and foundation courses, they are important routes into the workplace and in higher education and in relation to higher education. In 2023, 96% of applicants holding the UAL level three Extended Diploma received a higher education offer, and I'm delighted that 85% of those offered accepted places. So I fear that the new arrangements mean that fewer creative students will qualify for university, or they'll be able to develop the skills that employers need. The Ucas tariff for T-levels means students must achieve a distinction to secure the points.

Many extended diploma students routinely attain. And some universities, as I understand it, are already declining to accept T levels for certain creative degree courses. There are also questions about capacity and scalability. This year, only 814 students started one of the two creative T levels, compared with 84,000 studying level three creative diplomas and extended diplomas. How will we address the scalability issues and and address those particular challenges? I'd be happy to talk to the Minister to explore that with her and her colleagues.

Colleges are also saying that current T levels are too narrow, and they do not replace existing qualifications. Exeter College is a case in point. There. The college tells us that T levels and extended diplomas are both on offer to their students, but that the creative media course as a T level lacks artistic context and focuses only on technical skills. We also know that the Becky Francis review recognised that, as currently anticipated, creative V-levels will not fill that gap and there are too narrowly defined.

So my Lords, until T-levels and V-levels can demonstrate the same breadth of learning, progression and outcomes as current creative qualifications, there's a compelling case for retaining successful level three creative diplomas. Without that safeguard, these reforms risk. I fear narrowing opportunities for the next generation of creative talent our young people, our creative industries and our country

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deserve better. My Lords, I warmly thank my noble friend Baroness Keeley for noble friend Baroness Keeley for securing this debate and warmly welcome my noble friend the welcome my noble friend the Minister, back to her place to add to the statistics skills England estimates that the creative industries will need to fill around 1 million vacancies by 2035, a significant increase. Crucially, 82% of those roles will require qualifications at level four and above, compared with an economy wide average of 62%.

Now, that
16:23
Baroness Caine of Kentish Town Portrait Baroness Caine of Kentish Town (Labour)
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means that occupational standards exist where they do largely at level four, not at level three, level four, not at level three, which is the basis for the T levels that we're under discussion. 90% of creative businesses are micro-enterprises, as we've heard, employing fewer than ten people with more than 30% of the workforce is freelance. But that critically is freelance. But that critically increases in some key subsectors, film and television being one. It's over 50%. For many years, the Department for education has tended towards a one size fits all policies designed around larger employers and more traditional sectors.

Creative industries have repeatedly been recognised as atypical, yet the flexibilities needed to support them have too often been absent. As a result, employers have frequently developed their own solutions. Now, when the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education mapped the creative and design pathways a few years ago, it concluded that T levels were not the right qualifications for music, performing arts or graphic design. Two technical T levels were introduced. Craft and design. As my noble friend Lord Knight has mentioned, and broadcast media production with 678 students over two years now studying it.

And to repeat, because these T levels exist, funding will be removed from alternative level three qualifications of 1080 guided learning hours or more that map across to them for the 2020 728 year. So what does that mean for the screen industries? What does it mean for the Ofsted outstanding London Screen Academy, founded and supported by leaders from the film and television industries, it delivers UAL level three and level four diplomas across a range of screen disciplines. Will parts of that provision be defunded or all of it? What does it mean for Birmingham or Winchester, an academy whose innovative partnerships are helping to build Birmingham's fast growing screen cluster, which parts of its screen and Stage Academy BTec provision are now at risk? I ask the Minister to consider aligning funding change timelines so that the sector and its providers can be considered strategically and as a whole.

Important though, those T level students are, their numbers do not come close to meeting future workforce demand, nor do they justify destabilising successful institutions and courses at such speed. To turn to another example, visual effects, animation and games. Ten years ago, industry leaders UK Screen and Ukie decided not to wait for policy to catch up. They created the next gem AIM Extended Diploma in VFX, Animation and Games and established the Next gen Skills Academy Network, supporting partner colleges across England and Northern Ireland.

More than 3000 young people have since benefited from high quality education and strong progression routes. That success now faces uncertainty as Schools England develops a T level focussed solely on visual effects. UK screen is clear that industry needs a broader qualification in computer generated screen content, one that reflects the reality of modern production is viable for colleges to deliver at scale, and supports progression and opportunities for young people into adjacent sectors. In addition work placements.

They are an issue in terms of finding them in industries that are populated by small companies, but also are an issue in terms of the nations and regions of the UK. The main cluster of these industries is based in London, in the South East, for people and young people to have opportunities elsewhere requires different forms of accessing them to experience. If not, we face a catch 22. Creative investment will not go to areas largely deprived rural and coastal, where skills provision doesn't already exist, and skills provision cannot exist unless there are employers locally to supply the placements.

It is a catch 22, as the Creative Industries Council has made clear to government the existing level three qualifications and the key institutions that deliver them are a vital part of the UK's creative ecosystem. And I should declare my interest as having led skills and education for the Creative Industries Council for over decade. Qualifications need updating and simplification is important. But a simplification first approach risks destabilising successful provision and limiting opportunity. Without employer confidence and support, change will not succeed.

We must find a more flexible and pragmatic way forward that protects opportunities for young people and strengthens the talent pipeline on which these growth industries depend. And I look forward to the minister's response.

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My Lords, I too would like to join the chorus and thank Baroness join the chorus and thank Baroness Keeley for securing this debate and would like to associate myself with the comments that she has already made. My Lords, it is indeed an honour to follow Baroness Caine with her track record in terms of with her track record in terms of leadership at Goldsmiths College, and it's thanks to that college that my son is in the creative
16:29
Baroness Gill Portrait Baroness Gill (Labour)
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sector and I get this knowledge. But so the UK film and television But so the UK film and television sector is is a global powerhouse. And the government's commitment to And the government's commitment to securing its future pipeline is highly commendable. The Department for Education's constructive approach in its recent Post-16 approach in its recent Post-16 level three pathways consultation response is to be welcomed because by proposing a phased route by route transition over the next four years and introducing alternative V-levels, the government has shown it is listening to the education sector and trying to simplify a complex qualification landscape.

However, as the DOF moves towards publishing its upcoming implementation plans, we must ensure that the unique project based reality of the British film industry is fully integrated. The film and media sector does not operate like the traditional corporate environment. As I understand from my son and his friends, it thrives on collaborative, deeply immersive and fluid craft skills that cannot easily be retrofitted into standard technical boxes. Our current level three landscapes, specifically large scale qualifications like the Diploma in Creative Media Production, succeeds because it provides the immense studio hours creative freedom needed to write, shoot, edit and produce a film portfolio.

So as we look to the newly designed T-levels and single A-level sized V-levels, a dialogue between government and industry experts, I believe is really vital to address some of the structural challenges around recognising that film and high end TV productions are overwhelmingly staffed by short term freelancers and microbusinesses operating on a project by project basis. And as it's already been stated, you know, finding thousands of structured, mandatory 45 day T-level industry placements within this highly transient ecosystem is a massive logistical challenge for colleges, leading sector bodies and your Lordships' House today have expressed concerns that the standardised 360 degree guided learning hours proposed for V-levels may not provide the deep, practical immersion required for technical film crafts.

A student cannot master cinematography or advanced visual effects as a minor part time component of a broader curriculum, and we've already heard a lot of concern expressed here about the Department of Education's decision to list level three Extended Diploma in Creative Media for defunding. Because of the overlap with the T levels, this risks, as we've heard, dismantling a highly valued, industry approved talent tension before the new 2029 and 2030 creative qualifications are fully mature and like other noble Lords, I would also like to mention the success of the Brit school and the education that they provide for many children with Send and the success they've had in placing them in full time work.

So the government's recent updates allowing for placement flexibility, such as utilising group projects, remote elements or multiple employers, show an excellent willingness to adapt. We now need to build on that flexibility to co-design a framework that protects our world class film sector, to help strengthen this transition and support the department's mission skills agenda. I have a couple of questions to the Minister. But first, may I congratulate my noble friend on her reappointment. So my question, given that the film and television workforce is overwhelmingly composed of freelance crews and temporary project waste productions, how can the department work alongside screen skills and major UK studios to design a bespoke, flexible placement model that works for independent film sets without placing an unmanageable bureaucratic burden on independent producers? Secondly, while I welcome the introduction introduction of V-levels to provide vital vocational choices alongside A-levels, many universities and film colleges worry that the standard 360 hour model lacks the practical studio depth of current extended diplomas.

Will the government collaborate with creative awarding bodies to approve larger double or triple weighted qualification sizes specifically

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for technical, film, media and production pathways? My Lords, can I congratulate.

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My Lords, can I congratulate. Baroness Keeley for securing this important debate? I know from many conversations. With her that she.

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Is. Utterly passionate about support for education in the creative industries, and. Brings real.

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Brings real. enjoyed. This debate. So far because I've also

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So far because I've also discovered that a friend of mine was Oliver, in the same production that Lord Knight was the Artful Dodger. Who knew, who knew?
16:35
Lord John of Southwark Portrait Lord John of Southwark (Labour)
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I've spoken before in the House about my support for centres of artistic excellence in South London and in particular Mountview Theatre School, the Central School of Ballet and the Old Vic Theatre. And I should declare my interest as a member of the President's Circle at Central and a trustee of the Old Vic. And I want to thank my noble friend, the Minister, for the wonderful visit which we pay to the Central Ballet School a few weeks ago, where we both saw brilliant classical ballet teaching in action.

We didn't dance, but we saw the. We saw the students. While central isn't a level three provider, I think our conversation that day underlined the thrust of this debate that every cultural education provider, usually because of their size and specialism, is unique in the teaching and courses they provide, and consequently so are the financial challenges they face. But one size fits all in the cultural sector, especially in teaching and qualifications. At Mountview, those students who don't have level three qualifications can enrol for their foundation or certificate of Higher education courses.

They're intensive, they're popular, and they work meeting the needs of those students who then move on to degree courses. Now, my Lords, we all know the importance of the cultural industries of the UK economy last year, contributing over £145 billion in gross value added and growing at an incredible rate of nearly 5% per year. If only the rest of the economy was matching that growth. My Lords, this is especially true in London. Only today, the times reports that the capital's cultural pull is increasingly visible in the booming film and television industry.

Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney are expanding their British operations, while Pinewood and Shinfield Studios are operating at capacity. Film London estimates that £9.5 billion will be invested in production across the wider capital area in the next five years. And citing The Hollywood Reporter, the article said that London has become more Hollywood than Hollywood, driven by generous tax incentives, premier infrastructure. And here's the important point a deep pool of creative talent. My Lords, this is all great news, but it makes it even more important that our approach to future creative talent is not undermined by complacency.

So we need to listen to the University of the Arts. As my noble friend Lord Isaac said, and the Brit school who say that large vocational qualifications do not narrow opportunity, but instead unlock multiple successful pathways including higher education, further training and employment. If I might paraphrase leave it alone, it works. Now, as others have observed, courses which open doors by their flexibility and inclusion, increase social mobility. Now, my Lords, this government and this House have many members with a deep rooted commitment to and love of the arts and culture.

So I hope that my noble friend the Minister, is able to give us some cause for optimism today. This is a week of hope and change. I hope that there will be a change in the government's approach to this subject, and I ask my noble friend the Minister, quite simply, will this debate have an impact.

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Here, here, here, here, here? I'm delighted.

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I'm delighted. To be participating in this debate. I am by no means an expert in the field in which we are. We in the field in which we are. We are debating. I know very little about creative qualifications, but about creative qualifications, but I have been involved in the creative industries for most of my career, my first, first career, I career, my first, first career, I suppose, before I became a lawyer, was in the fashion industry where I spent seven years working with
16:40
Baroness Kingsmill Portrait Baroness Kingsmill (Labour)
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designers and with photographers and with all sorts of other creative people. And I am currently, creative people. And I am currently, and I declare an interest. I'm currently back in the fashion industry and have been for the last industry and have been for the last ten years as a director of Inditex, otherwise known as Zara. And otherwise known as Zara. And furthermore, I declare an interest in this specific area as a trustee in this specific area as a trustee of the Conran Foundation, having been a member of the board of the Design Museum for very many years as well, the United Kingdom has enjoyed for a very long time the reputation as being the greatest, one of the greatest creative economies in the world.

And yet we too often discuss it as though it was simply a matter of cultural interest rather than a strategic national asset. The facts tell a different story. Our creative industries now contribute almost 126 billion to the economy. It supports around 2.4 million jobs and generates a substantial trade surplus through exports of services, intellectual property and digital content. They are growing significantly faster than the economy as a whole, and are rightly recognised by the government of one of the United Kingdom's priority growth sectors.

These industries are also a powerful source of Britain's soft power around the world. People know the country through our music, theatre, film, television, architecture which hasn't yet been mentioned. Architecture, publishing, design, fashion and increasingly our digital creativity. They strengthen tourism, attract investment and encourage talented people to study, work and collaborate here. That success, however, depends on one essential ingredient people. If we wish to remain a global leader in creative industry, we must ensure that talented young people continue to have a clear and and credible routes into creative careers.

That's why level three qualifications matter so greatly. I welcome the government's recognition that a broader pathway is needed alongside A-levels and T levels. The proposed introduction of V-levels represents an important acknowledgement that creative careers rarely follow a a single, narrow occupational route. But qualifications alone will not guarantee success. We must ensure that creative education continues to value practical learning. We must recognise that portfolio development, collaborative projects and interdisciplinary skills matter just as much.

We must recognise further that many creative businesses, as has been mentioned, are small, project based, freelance and therefore must also be part of the of the of the system. They. It cannot always be recognised that it's only large employers that that that should be can can concerned. Above all, we have to avoid the unintended contradiction in public policy. If government identifies the creative industries as a priority growth sector within its industrial strategy, then the education system must actively support the pipeline of talent on which that strategy depends.

Creative education should therefore be seen not as a cost, but as an investment in one of Britain's strongest competitive advantages investment in studios, specialist teachers, technical facilities and high quality vocational pathways should be regarded in precisely the same light as investment in scientific research, advanced manufacturing and advanced manufacturing or digital infrastructure. Our competitors certainly understand this if Britain wishes to remain a world leader in creativity and innovation, we cannot simply celebrate past success. We must constantly renew the talent that sustains it.

I therefore hope Ministers will continue to to ensure that qualification reform, industrial strategy and regional growth policy move forward together. My question to the Minister is this what mechanisms are in place to ensure that the Department for education and the Department for culture, Media and Sport jointly assess whether level three reforms, qualification reforms are strengthening rather than weakening the future workforce of one of the United Kingdom's designated

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priority growth areas. My Lord, my.

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Noble friend Baroness Keeley. I think by facilitating this important debate in an area, the important debate in an area, the development of a new landscape for 16 to 19 qualifications, that's been the source of, what shall I been the source of, what shall I say, more than a little controversy since the introduction of T levels since the introduction of T levels in 2020, I was one of a number of noble Lords who joined campaigning by the Protect Student Choice
16:45
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Portrait Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour)
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Coalition, which secured delays to the defunding of applied general qualifications such as BTECs, qualifications such as BTECs, meaning that at least 300,016 to 19 year olds have either already studied qualifications that would otherwise have been scrapped or will be studying them in the years will be studying them in the years ahead. Retaining a jqs has enabled many of these young people to progress to higher education and or progress to higher education and or skilled employment, a journey that would otherwise have been out of reach, and it has avoided a creation of a qualifications gap that tens of thousands of students would have fallen through.

And the announcement in March by my noble friend the Minister, whom I am delighted, will be continuing in her post announcement of a stay of execution for popular courses, while alternatives are developed was most welcome. That said, the problematic nature of the package of reforms to 16 to 19 education does, I believe, go beyond the timetable and the most important of these is the replacement of numerous existing diplomas with V-levels, which are being designed as A-level size equivalents. The first three V-levels will begin next September, and one of the causes of concern is the speed with which they will be introduced, and I would urge that the lessons of T-levels should be noted.

T-levels are well intentioned and I have always said that I want them to succeed, but their combination of tight specialism and level of difficulty, as other noble Lords have mentioned, means that there are many young people for whom they are simply not the right choice, and they've not yet become established. Indeed, in the sixth academic year, that's the one that's just finished. Only 27,000 students began a T level. And part of the problem with T levels is that they're not widely enough understood, and still struggle to gain recognition.

The same, my honourable Lords must not be allowed to happen with that. With V-levels in the creative sector, T levels remain tiny and scale and providers say they cannot grow to replace the existing provision. Now the UK Screen Alliance represents companies in animation, visual effects and video game sectors, which together contribute more than £10 billion to the UK economy and employ

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Almost 50,000 highly skilled people, and they are among Britain's most productive industries and are repeatedly industries and are repeatedly identified by government as growth priorities. But at the moment, the future of the sector skills pipeline is threatened by the government's determination to impose possibly the phrase of the of the afternoon, a one size fits of the afternoon, a one size fits all, which is quite unsuited to the creative sector. As my noble friend Baroness Caine has said more than a decade ago, employers in those industries recognised that the education system was simply not producing enough young people with the right mix of creativity, technical ability, mathematics and digital skills.

So being creative people, they created their own pipeline. And in the ten years since the level three qualification, the I am extended diploma was introduced. More than 3000 students have completed the programme, with nearly three quarters of these young people progressing into higher education, with others moving into apprenticeships and employment. The students tackle live industry briefs. They receive feedback from professionals, visit studios and showcase their work to leading companies. This is employer engagement at its best. Yet despite its success, the qualification faces defunding because it does not fit neatly within the architecture of T levels and occupational standards.

As other noble Lords have highlighted. T levels involve industry placements, which rarely work in the creative industries and for colleges in rural, coastal or disadvantaged areas. Mandatory placements can become an impossible barrier. Even after recent announcements on placement flexibilities, my noble Lord Lord Knight still, I should say an Artful Dodger after all these years, spoke of the use of portfolios in assessments. Creative employers do not recruit on this basis the basis of exam performance alone. Of course, they use portfolios, collaboration and demonstrated ability and the sector's own qualifications reflect that reality through continuous assessment and group project based learning.

It nurtures talent in a way that reflects how creative work actually happens. The AIM diploma is a success, and yet it faces defunding in 2029. I have to ask, where is the sense in that? As the University of the Arts London awarding body has said, the DfE should not introduce exams, prescribed controlled conditions or prescribed content into creative subjects by default. Larger, scalable and successful qualifications that already contribute to the creative industries should be retained, and I would suggest that the DfE should listen to creative industry employers more, because employer engagement in buying will be key to the ultimate success of T-levels in any sector, it should be said.

I also want to say something about a study in skills option that only one other noble Lord has mentioned so far today, and that was the noble Baroness Baroness Garden, and that's University technical colleges. UTC seemed to fly beneath the radar, but they provide an important alternative, I think, to a predominantly academic route through secondary and post-16 education. Working with universities and local employers, they offer specialist technical pathways, including the creative industries, which are designed around local skills needs, and it is important to point out that they account for only 2.9% of all T-level enrolments, despite representing only 1.2% of schools.

And it would be interesting. I would be interested to hear from my noble friend what role she believes Utcs can play in delivering both T-levels and V-levels, as well as courses in the creative subjects. In conclusion, my Lords, I say to my hon. Friend that the government and the DfE simply must take account of what the creative sector is saying about the potential impact on that sector of the replacement of current level three qualifications with T levels and V levels. And if, to paraphrase my noble friend Lord John broke, don't

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fix it. My Lords is the last backbench

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My Lords is the last backbench speaker. I have to congratulate my noble friend Lady Kelly on having noble friend Lady Kelly on having promoted a really interesting debate with which, on the whole, I found very, very little to disagree and very little extra to add. I should also congratulate my noble
16:51
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Portrait Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Labour)
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should also congratulate my noble friend the Minister, were she in her place, and I shan't take it at all personally that she left the chamber just before I stood up. But nonetheless, I'll keep talking in the hope that she'll catch some of it. My Lords, my professional career, I really won't take it personally. I look at my noble friend on the front bench at the moment, and I'm sure he will assure her of that. My professional career has been spent in the cultural sector, specifically in the performing arts, where much of my time over many years involved the finding, assessing and employing of performers and directors for theatre and musical productions.

Unfortunately, it didn't include the talented child who went on to become my noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth, but it did include, at a very early stage in his career, his friend Sam Mendes, whose incredible career now could not have been predicted at the time that we both knew him best. Just in. Just to make the point that you can't always see what's coming in this particular field. So, my Lords, I'm approaching this subject not from any expertise in the relative value of this qualification over that, but from extensive practical experience of what works for employers and employees in this complex area.

My Lords, I've only got a couple of points. I really want to reinforce that have been cogently outlined by a number of other speakers, but I think they will bear a little bit of emphasis emphasising, and I'm instinctively disinclined to special pleading and exceptionalism. But I do believe that education and training for the creative industries is unusual, if not unique, as we have been hearing. And to make clear why understanding this is so important, I can do no better than.

Quote from a recent edition of Further Education News, which was helpfully included in the library briefing. And I quote, creative industries. Education has never been about training for a single job role. It is about developing transferable adaptive capabilities that allow learners to thrive in multiple, across multiple sectors. Careers and economic shifts. Most creative professionals do not follow linear career paths. Instead, they build portfolio careers, combining freelance work, short term contracts, cross sector projects, and entrepreneurial ventures.

This reality demands education that prioritises, prioritises flexibility, creative problem solving, collaboration, communication, resilience and self-direction skills that are inherently transferable and increasingly valued across the entire economy. And my experience, my Lords, that is the end of the quote. My experience entirely bears this out, including watching my own two children, both Conservatoire trained performers, both now well into mid-career progress in exactly this way and arrive at quite different and unexpected places. And like others, I want the new vocational qualification to succeed.

But as currently envisaged, they are not well matched to the needs of the creative industries. As we have heard over and over again in this debate. And I hope my noble friend, when she replies, can reassure us that the promised consultation about how to structure new qualifications for the performing arts will not just listen to the concerns of employers and practitioners and education providers, but genuinely hear and understand what they are saying. I will not repeat the mantra of the day except to say, if it hasn't dawned on my noble friend already, one size really does not always fit all.

The UK's creative industries are precious. We are rightly proud of them and the government is relying on them to continue contributing to economic growth and to our international reputation. But they are also vulnerable if we do not protect and enhance the pipeline of talent into the sector. If we fail sufficiently to recognise its special nature, we will eventually lose the pre-eminence in this field that we currently enjoy and enjoy. And that,

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my Lords, would be a tragic mistake. Yes.

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Yes. My Lords, first let me congratulate Noble Minister on being in her place. Although having being in her place. Although having a debate when you have ten backbenchers behind you, all firing backbenchers behind you, all firing shots at the back of your neck may not be the most welcome way of
16:57
Lord Addington Portrait Lord Addington (Liberal Democrat)
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not be the most welcome way of coming back in. OK, they may not all be killing blows, but it's their. But we go through this and there are certain themes which are clearly established in this one. We have our question marks still about T-levels and V-levels. We just don't really know what they are yet. And if they're going to get rid of qualifications that work, we'd like them to be a lot better preserved, presented, and know a lot more about them than we currently do.

Now. T-levels haven't had a great start. Indeed. When they first came out, I remember there was one course where nobody finished one and going through and the fact you've got this big block, that means you can't do anything other than a T-level. That's one of the most scary things about it. V-level doesn't have that. It fits in with the A level structure. This may be a strength. It may be a weakness. We don't quite know yet, but it is certainly an idea of a new examination is coming in to do a job and maybe removing examinations and structures which are achieving.

Could it be better? Could it be worse? We don't know. But one thing that goes with this and goes to the structure and changes. There's something that hasn't been touched here. What is careers guidance going to do about telling pupils and more importantly, their parents about what this this is going to do for you in the future? Because if you get that wrong, I don't care how good it is, it will fail because nobody will do it or people will only do it as a last resort.

And that does happen to exams. You come down. This is the established pathway. We're going forward now. GCSEs and A-levels are your absolute solid standard. Government reforms of the previous government have actually made them even more solid, in my opinion. What are we going to do with them? How do you fit into this structure? This is something which I hope the Minister will be able to answer, because unless you know how they work together, the opportunities they are seen to create, you can't really give that advice.

And much of the discussion here, and I have learned quite a lot in this debate, not only about the noble Lord Knights, who ability to pick a pocket. Sorry, I couldn't resist that. Is that we you know, we've got a structure here that works very well, but most people will not hear about it. I'm sure people bypass very good training processes because they don't know what's there. And when I looked at this debate initially, I was thinking about those supportive services for things like film and other forms of creative activity, those things that go round it, those technical support structures and innovations, which I have done through work in the DCMS DCMS brief, how do you actually get these skills, which are universal skills which can be taken across the world with you? How do you get qualified to that? And the fact that we don't know how to do that, we have lots of English graduates coming in and having to reskill at, say, level 4 or 5 and going through, how do these exams allow you pathways to get to level four and five skills, good old fashioned technician level education.

The thing that we've actually had a problem with for decades, more decades even than I've been in this house, how do we make sure that goes through? And how is that pathway going to be educated? How are we going to educate the population that that is the way forward? This means giving a little bit more status to further education. And at the moment, let's face it, we have, shall we say, the higher education sector might look back over its shoulder and say, a university is not going to lose too much sleep if it starts to skill people at levels four and five.

Let's face it, we've actually do graduates in further education level six courses in further education colleges. Let's interact the two of them because they will have the connection there. They will understand what's going on. And I would hope that this current government, with this huge majority and the new saviour from the North, I keep thinking winter is coming. But there again. You know, there we are, there we have it going forward. Because unless we get that sort of interaction between the various bits of the education system, it's going to go wrong because that's what's happened in the past.

Now, I then come to a subject and I'm sure the noble Baroness will be sending me rude notes if I didn't raise it about special educational needs. And I get a nod for that. It is a case that the way forward and the entrance into this is tends to be about English and maths at GCSE. I would hope with the creative industries, that we will be a little more flexible about how we allow people in and through my noble and noble Baroness Garden, my noble friend is now on the Woolsack did mention this initially.

What are the ways through now, if we're still going to be obsessed by the GCSE entrance level? It used to be C, D, now it's three four. The barrier for English and maths you're going to continue to exclude. Now I, I would say that wouldn't I. Because I'm a dyslexic who's present the British Dyslexia Association who also happens to be a chairman of an assistive technology company, Microlink plc. I think there are ways around and through. If the noble Baroness can say, what are they actively encouraging us to show that somebody can communicate using technology now to communicate in English and possibly maths? Dyscalculia is out there.

Dyspraxia means you can't finish exams. If in this sector, this sector that should be more flexible. That actually everybody has said should be more flexible, can't take the first step forward as saying, can you demonstrate that you can communicate or use this technology? Not in the conventional exam situation. We are actually missing an opportunity. Let's make sure that we get people into something which is developing and growing, and we make sure we have a structure in which people can strive.

Because if the performing arts is one thing, but those supporting it around the sides, those things that make sure the set is there, that the person who is helping the computer graphics work properly, the technical level is there to support them. That is where the big the big figures for employment are. It's how you get those supported and through that will help. Now the the end of this I think, would actually, everybody has said to the government is don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, one size or even 2 or 3 sizes won't fit everybody.

And how are we going to get the best out of the sector that is growing, providing economic benefit for the rest of society and indeed directly a more pleasant time? It's a win win if we get it working properly, but it requires one knowledge of what what the opportunity is out there, and knowledge about how you get through and then, and the greater flexibility of approach to get people in here. And once you've done that, you can start to finish it off with a bit of status.

And that status also comes with knowledge. It's an opportunity for this government and future governments to take, and I hope we will embrace it, because it might just make our lives more pleasant.
17:05
Earl of Effingham Portrait The Earl of Effingham (Conservative)
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My Lords, we thank the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, for securing this debate and for her long record this debate and for her long record of work with the arts on protecting copyright for creators against copyright for creators against generative AI, championing inclusive music and arts education, and advocating for the financial resilience of the UK's theatre and cultural sectors. And it was not a surprise that the noble Lord Lord Isaac gave us an in-depth insight into the creative industries, given his role of chair of the Court of Governors at the University of Arts, London, nor that the noble Baroness, Lady Kingsmill, given her directorship at Zara, flagged fashion design, amongst other things.

And the noble Lord Lord John talked about a deep pool of creative talent and the creative industries combined does contribute £124 billion to the economy. They employ 2.4 million people, over 7% of the national workforce, and their output has grown at more than one and a half times the national average since 2010. Creative education is valued. That is not in doubt. The question is whether these reforms will produce qualifications that actually enable people for jobs, for university and for higher technical study.

This process does have cross-party parentage. It began with the noble Baroness Lady Woolf's report in 2011, which found that too much post-16 vocational provision had little or no market value. When in government, we started to remove overlapping qualifications and the current government have continued rationalising a landscape of more than 900 such courses is essential in principle, and His Majesty's loyal opposition supports the momentum the Woolf test. If I, if I might call it that, remains entirely correct.

A qualification exists to serve the learner, not the system that awards it. However, reforms should derive from evidence based data and analysis skills. England's assessment of the creative industries, published only last month, excluded media and communication courses from its priority analysis because historically it is low portions of those education leavers who progress into priority occupations. The noble Lord Lord Vaizey flagged the 360 hours limit and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, referenced a shallow breadth and the government's own consultation response reported that both industry and higher education warned that 360 guided learning hours is insufficient to establish practical competence.

That warning was overridden and the extended diplomas being defunded carried 1080 hours of study. Their replacement carries only 360, UK Music points out that occupational standards for portfolio based music careers simply do not exist. While the Minister for skills conceded that the original transition was, in her own words, too aggressive, it is the case that the timetable was fixed before the design existed. My Lords, we believe a qualification must do at least one of three things.

It must confer occupational competence that employers recognise. It must carry currency with universities, or it must provide a ladder to higher technical study at levels four and five, the new system appears to fail. Those tests T-levels, after five years, are enrolling around 28,000 students. Just 2.5% of the 1.1 million strong level three cohort and creative placements are structurally the hardest to supply because a sector of freelancers and small firms cannot provide 45 day placements at scale.

V-levels will be classroom only and one A-level A-level in size. They cannot realistically confer occupational competence. Their currency with universities is untested and no progression. Route to levels four and five has been published. Prima facie, this looks like simplification, not reform, which is the failure that the noble Baroness, Lady Woolf, identified. My Lords, 78% of creative employers report shortages in their three highest occupational groups, against a benchmark of 31% across all other industries. The government's skills audit, published in May, highlights the shortage occupations as software developers, graphic and multimedia designers, and advertising and marketing executives.

With 63% of creative employers expecting digital skills demand to rise, driven by artificial intelligence and the noble Baroness Lady Caine referenced Skills England, highlighting that over 1 million new workers would be needed. Some 60,000 creative workers currently are not proficient in their roles because technology is outpacing the training and skills. England has projected. This large number of workers needed in priority creative occupations by 2035, many requiring qualifications at level four and above.

Based on that evidence, the pipeline the country needs is technical, creative, digital and higher level. Yet, with all due respect, nothing. The government have published maps, creative, V-level or T-level to a shortage, occupation and surely the right course of action is to build replacements that are demonstrably better. Both T and V levels should offer this. And yet at the moment, neither does the noble Baroness. Lady Keeley talked about the two year UAL extended diploma and in terms of transition, the University of Arts London Extended Diploma in Creative Media Production and Technology is defunded from autumn 2027 due to a suggested overlap with T levels.

The UAL itself disputes the merit of that in both content and approach, and is appealing against it, and the noble Lord Lord Vaizey quite rightly referenced the last carriage of the tray, the back of the queue, because creative V-levels will not arrive until 2030, which means a three year void with no large creative qualification. The reality is that providers act on defunding dates years in advance. Courses close, specialist staff leave and recruitment collapses ahead of the deadline.

The noble Lord Lord Vaizey talked about West Everton parents, carers and disadvantaged students. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden talked about disadvantaged people and Lord Isaac flagged that students may not achieve the grades they needed. And we should also be asking what will happen to those students who will be displaced. T-level entry requirements commonly demand five GCSEs at grade five or above, including English and maths. However, the Association of School and College Leaders has confirmed that the students on these qualifications are disproportionately special education needs.

Pupils, as referenced by the noble Lord Lord Addington, or disadvantaged pupils. Without those level of grades, my Lords, what will happen to them? Would it not be fair, reasonable and sensible to first undertake a mapping of courses with the labour market? Which shortage occupation on the government's own audits? Will each creative V-level and T-level serve? Secondly, to publish the progression routes for students? What articulated routes to levels four and five will be attached to each qualification? And thirdly, to understand and publish whether any new qualifications will be accepted by employers and universities before, not after the existing qualifications are switched off.

We would also suggest addressing the communication problem seemingly reflected in T-level uptake rates. A 2% uptake rate indicates they are not as widespread as they should be, or the government hopes they will be. And finally, my Lords, the noble Baroness Lady Caine repeatedly, quite rightly said what does this mean? What exactly does it mean? The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, said, pause, pause for thought and reflection on what will happen. And the noble Lord, Lord Watson and the noble Lord Lord John said, do not change it without full analysis, and His Majesty's loyal opposition believes that the measure of this reform is not just the number of qualifications to be streamlined.

The question is whether a talented 16 year old in 2028 will have a route into that workforce as good as the one that is now being taken away. And if the answer is yes, that is a great result. But if the answer is no, which appears to be the case based on many noble Lords reflections this afternoon, we would hope the government will address the constructive challenges from all sides of your Lordships House on this incredibly important issue for the creative sector.

My Lords.
17:17
Baroness Smith of Malvern Portrait Baroness Smith of Malvern (Labour)
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Can I start by thanking my noble >> Can I start by thanking my noble friend Baroness Keeley for bringing forward this debate today and also noble Lords around the House for congratulating me on maintaining my role? I am absolutely delighted about it. Not least, of course, because what would I do on a Thursday afternoon if I didn't have the opportunity to engage in excellent debates like we've been able to do today? And this discussion has rightly focussed on a matter of great significance, how we ensure that all young people, regardless of background, can access high quality routes into the creative industries while also building a qualification system that is stronger, clearer and fit for the future.

And my noble friend Baroness Kingsmill was absolutely right, as were others, in identifying that the creative industries are one of the United Kingdom's great success stories. They contribute approximately £145 billion to the economy, and have grown four times faster than the rest of the economy since 2010. I think those figures are slightly higher than some others have suggested, but demonstrate the success of our creative industries, and that's why the government's industrial strategy recognises the creative industries as one of the growth driving sectors that will help power our economy in the years ahead, and that success does depend upon a steady pipeline of talent.

And that is why the education and skills system must work for this sector. I will, just before we come on to some of the other creative areas, I will just point out, and I think this was a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Effingham, that, of course, many a significant proportion of the skills that are needed in creative industries do fall within that digital and technical area, as Skills England has has demonstrated. That's one of the reasons, of course, why digital is both a successful T-level already.

It's why it will be one of the first three levels to be introduced, and it's why in the Growth and skills levy, digital areas and artificial intelligence are some of the very first apprenticeship units to be developed and and offered. But it is a case that a key part of this plan is a continued commitment to specialist education to develop the next generation of music performers, producers and industry professionals. And I know that that noble Lords, I'm sure, will have noted the government's publication last week of the music plan, the commitment that that showed to a wide ranging approach to supporting and developing music in this country, including through our education system.

But I have to begin by being clear, and I was even before this debate, that the government recognises the concerns that have been expressed about qualification reform and the future of creative education for 16 to 19 year olds. We are listening carefully to creative industry employers, education providers, awarding organisations, higher education institutions and representative bodies. We understand that the creative industries have distinctive characteristics and that qualifications must reflect those realities. And in thinking about the wider reforms that we're in, gauged in, first of all, can I say that the objective here is not, at its heart simplification.

That would never be enough. And also, these are not the reforms of the former government, which were too narrow and didn't recognise vocational breadth, precisely the point made and recognised by my noble friend Baroness Gill. The priority for level three reform is a system which provides high quality options, whether you study better academically or want more applied learning and assessment. And the latter, of course, has not been well enough served within our education system with lower status, however high quality but lower status vocational qualifications and confusing routes for young people to where they want to get to in their lives.

And that's why in the future, young people will have three distinct level three routes. A-levels will remain the academic route. V-levels will become the vocational route, supporting broad study and progression. And I, and I think my noble friend Baroness Warwick was absolutely right in talking about the breadth of study that increasingly we need to provide for our young people. That's the reason why we have designed Vocational V-levels as a as the same size of a as of an A level, so that a young person can develop a broad vocational set of qualifications, including linking them and partnering them with academic A levels as well.

But T-levels will be the. It is right, I think, if somebody is choosing to take a large qualification, because that's the area that they really want to focus on, we have to make sure that that qualification is most likely to be able to deliver them. With the sort of progression that noble Lords have talked about this afternoon. That's why we believe that T-levels should be the large technical route for students who want to specialise in a particular occupational area, T-levels, which we are reforming.

As I will come to later on. And of course we are as well in this reform, taking a phased and careful approach to implementation. No qualifications will lose funding approval during academic year 2627. We will introduce new qualifications in the creative and design route for the first teach in September 2030, and there are no further plans for removal of funding for qualifications in art, creative and design until 2030. And the noble Lord Lord Vaizey questioned whether or not creative areas were at the back of the the queue.

But he also provided the answer they're not at the back of the queue. Recognising many of the points made in this debate today, we will take our time whilst maintaining the existing qualifications to get this right for young people and for the creative sector, and we will work closely with the sector to ensure that that change is manageable, supports stability and delivers what is needed. So I can say that with the Department for digital, culture, Media and Sport, we will work with the sector, taking into account their expert advice, and I have asked the department to convene a creative advisory group for qualifications reform, led by those with knowledge of what has worked for the sector, and we will bring that together in the autumn to be able to address many of the points raised today.

On the point about T levels, T levels are already delivering strong outcomes. Across the programme, 92% of students progressing to work or further study, and around two thirds progress into the same broad subject area as their course. More than a quarter of those entering employment do so with the organisation that hosted their industry placement. But we know that reform was needed, and one of the reasons relates to the point made by my noble friend Lord Watson and others about the levels of prior attainment that you needed in order to access T levels, and I am sure a noble Lords will therefore be reassured that young people with a range of prior attainment are accessing T levels.

In fact, now the grade split for students receiving T level results is very similar to those receiving results. For applied general qualifications, the proportion of T level students without falls or above in both GCSE English and maths has also increased each year, showing that T levels are becoming more accessible and given the challenge rightly from the noble Lord Lord Addington, we are also seeing an increasing proportion of students with special educational needs and disability taking T levels as well.

We already have T levels in media, broadcast and production and in craft and design. And here, whilst relatively small numbers, because this is the very first cohort, we will see them completing their qualifications and getting their results. This summer, the National Theatre supported the shaping and the rollout of the new creative T levels. They report that T levels are helping to engage a younger generation and strengthen talent pipelines into the into the sector, with flexible industry placement models providing hands on experience across departments and projects, and developing special specialist skills within the theatre such as lightning AV and Sound technology.

We're expanding T levels, though, so that more young people benefit from their progression opportunities and outcomes, and that's why we're considering further creative and design T levels in art and performing arts and visual effects subjects for introduction from 2029 or 30. As I have said, we will do that working closely with employers, providers and the creativity creative sector to ensure the content accurately reflects what employers want and what delivers what the sector and young people need. And that is why I think the noble Lord, Lord Effingham, was wrong to say that we are defunding prematurely because, as I've already pointed out, there will not be defunding up to the point at which those T levels and V levels are introduced.

I do take the point. I think my noble friend, Lord Knight does make a very important point in in the creative sector about the nature of the sector, the nature of the breadth necessary for those who are engaged with it. We recognise as well that many creative careers involve portfolio working, self-employment movement across multiple occupations throughout a career, and we know that the future qualification landscape must reflect that reality, and that's why we're in ongoing discussions with Skills England on occupational standard development, where there are gaps in future T level areas with a view to developing standards that are needed to support future skills pipelines.

It is also why, and my noble friend Lord Knight and my noble friend Baroness Kingsmill made the point, as did others. I think about the nature of assessment, whether or not in V-levels or in T levels. Of course, it cannot be right that there is only a traditional exam focus in courses that are precisely about more practical application and different styles of learning, and that's why we're already working on how we can develop new forms of assessment, and doing that carefully with Ofqual in order to ensure that those remain are high, high quality.

We. Sorry, I just want to make sure I do answer everybody's questions. I think there's also an important point about how we get the message out about new qualifications. Our network of over 1400 T-level ambassadors, champion champions, T-levels and industry placements across the business community, including the National Theatre, which acts as a T level ambassador for the creative industries. Quite rightly, several noble Lords, including my noble friend Baroness Kane, the noble Lady, Baroness Warwick, the noble Lady Baroness Gill, talked about the both the benefits and the challenges of developing sufficient industry placements for T levels.

That's the reason why we have. And we will introduce significant reforms to industry placement delivery. Already they are providing, I have to say, fantastic opportunities for students. Around 25% of students who progress into work get jobs actually with their industry placement employer. And I've already identified how the National Theatre, for example, speak very positively about the benefits of hosting T level students. But we recognise that a conventional placement could be challenging in the creative industries and reforms to industry placements already introduced will allow providers to better tailor provision to meet the needs of the sector, including more scope for remote placements, which help freelancers and SM employers.

And we will work with the Creative Sector Advisory Group that I am setting up to consider whether further adaptations for placements are needed for these. For these subjects, when it comes to V-levels, which will be the new flagship vocational qualification that supports young people who want more applied learning and practical assessment. We are in the early stages of the development of V-levels, and we are determined to do that. As my noble friend Baroness Gill noticed, on the basis of thinking about different routes and how we ensure that the system works together to provide pathways.

I am pleased that we have moved quickly to publish the national content for the first V-levels in accounting and finance, digital systems and data and in education on the 9th of July, and these V-levels will be taught next year. In September 2027. We are working with Ofqual who have consulted on assessments and grading for V-levels. Their proposals, as I have already suggested, aim to give students more opportunities to show what they know and can do through a mix of different types of assessment taken over the course of their studies.

We have already set out that we are exploring future V-levels in art and performing arts and in creative media and design, and I know that these won't necessarily be appropriate for those who want a large qualification. But as I've said, given the breadth of the creative sector, they may well be appropriate for people who want to put together a set of qualifications to recognise that breadth first teaching for these is planned for 2030, and the nationally set content there as well will be developed in partnership with partners with deep experience of the of the sector.

And importantly, once again, existing qualifications will continue to be funded until replacement qualifications are introduced. The noble Lord Lord Addington suggested that people do not know much about V-levels at the moment. It is a fair charge given the. The earliness of the development. But that's why to ensure providers are well supported through this transition, we have established a group of qualification pioneers providers who will play a vital role in supporting our work to support provider transition plans, share effective practice and advise on the support required to help providers successfully navigate this change.

It's why we've provided information, graphics and resources to schools and colleges, and to careers guidance to help to explain V-levels. It is also, of course, as as other noble Lords have pointed out, important to ensure that the curriculum pre 16 delivers in the areas of arts and music, what is necessary in order to create that pipeline. That's why there is considerable work going on as a result of the curriculum and assessment review. In order to ensure, for example, in in music that this is now from from the key stage one to key stage four, a, a rigorous but an equitable and inclusive curriculum that will support more people to be able to go on and take A-levels.

Because I understand my noble friend's concern about the fall off in the numbers, taking a level music. And of course, it will also be supported by continued investment in music hubs and the new National Centre for Arts and Music Education, which will help schools deliver new curriculum content effectively. A-levels. We have also touched on today what I can say there is that of course there are A-levels in art and design, dance, drama and theatre, music, music, technology, design and technology and film studies.

Whilst uptake varies between those creative subjects, entries have grown steadily in areas such as art and design and media and film. Since 2019. We will. Of course, whilst the The Curriculum and Assessment Review concluded that A levels are generally working well, we will certainly want to make updates where necessary to ensure that A-levels remain coherent, particularly with the revised GCSE qualifications, and we will be updating As and A levels ready for first teaching in 2031 and 2032. I will also say in relation to higher education, because I share the view that it's really important that new qualifications have good progression to higher education, that that remains central to our thinking.

Almost 200 higher education providers across Britain accept T levels for at least some courses, including the majority of Russell Group institutions and 81% of T level applicants, secured a higher education place in the 2025 admissions cycle. But we will continue to push high to recognise T levels and we will develop V-levels and V-level content with higher education in order to ensure progression and to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Effingham, to ensure that there is progression on to level four and five courses as well.

We cannot deliver this change. The noble Lady Baroness Barran is right. Without the workforce and capacity to deliver them. And that's why this government is significantly investing in relation to level three and further education. We've announced additional funding for this academic year of 120 million, rising to 365 million in the next academic year to help to support, particularly the workforce that we need. And together with wider post-16 funding increases, that means funding for 16 to 19 year old students have increased by more than 12% over two years.

At the same time, our increases in teacher pay are helping us to deliver that 6500 target for additional teachers that we have set out, and we will provide new technical and vocational subject specific professional development program to help to support our teachers to deliver the new qualifications. My Lords, we all share the same goal, ensuring that young people can develop their talents, pursue their ambitions and contribute to the continued success of our creative industries. The government is committed to a qualification system that is ambitious, coherent and responsive to the needs of learners, employers and the economy, and we recognise the strength of feeling across the creative sector about maintaining high quality progression routes.

That is why we are proceeding carefully, engaging closely with stakeholders and investing in the workforce, the creative sector, the qualifications and institutions that will support the next generation of creative talent. I again thank my noble friend Baroness Keeley for bringing this debate before the House and all noble Lords for their valuable contributions, and I look forward to continuing this important dialogue as we build a qualification system that serves both learners and the creative sector, as they deserve to be

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served today. No Lords, my Lords, I, I, I welcome the Minister's, my noble friend, the Minister's reappointment. And I was so glad to hear. Almost everybody else, I think, did mention that we are so think, did mention that we are so glad to see her back with us, and thank her for what she's just said. If I just reflect on for a moment or two on the on the debate, I mean, Lord Vaizey raised earlier on about Lord Vaizey raised earlier on about in Harmony scheme, which I haven't heard of, but that could be a good descriptor, I think, for this debate, because we have been very harmonious in our in what we said, we obviously think across the piece that the Brit school is wonderful and the creative industries are vital for the economy as as evidenced in successes in places like the Brit School and I.

I'll hazard, although I haven't been there, the in harmony scheme as well. I didn't know about the issues in City and guilds which the Baroness Gordon raised, but she did say. And it's quite important that we should have extreme caution about replacing qualifications which have stood the test of time. And absolutely. That has been echoed by very many noble Lords. My noble friend Lord Knight is illuminated us about his role in Oliver and founding a company with Sam Meadows Mendes, which is another theme he seems for today.

But he was very clear headed about the category error that T levels of technical and creative skills and careers are not as. As many others have said too, my noble friend Baroness Warwick. Had another theme that the creative industries are vital and so we can't afford to get it wrong. I think there's been very many contributions about that have made that point, and that we need people who can work with fluidity between disciplines. She made the point that arts and vocational qualifications have already been squeezed by earlier policy decisions, and I should congratulate Baroness Bennett on squeezing in a subject of first past the post and the and the Nuffield Report on the position of women working in the creative industries.

I think that was very creative in itself. I very much want to thank him for both Lord Isaac and Lord Knight for their work in. In gathering information that went into the briefing that was. That was very useful. But Lord Isaac made the point echoed by Lord John don't let this damage successful qualifications. Baroness King brought us a very extensive experience in the creative industries and particularly in screens. And so that one size fits all is the wrong approach. She asked.

And I think it's quite important. What does removing funding from existing qualifications mean for, for instance, the screen industries? And could it put regional clusters such as those developing in Birmingham at risk? And that's an important point, I think, for Baroness Gill. We heard about the project based reality of the film industry, and that has to be recognised and made the point that collaborative skills, deeply immersive craft skills are what's needed, and that single V-levels will not provide that fluidity which is needed.

Baroness Kingsmill. I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Baroness Kingsmill was a roommate of mine, but I. I didn't know that she had this fashion industry experience, but looking at her, not at all surprised, but the very important point was made about DCMS and DfE really need to jointly assess whether these qualifications are suitable. That's that's an important point, I think Lord Watson of Invergowrie, I, I congratulate him on on working on that Protect Student Choice campaign, which which clearly did do some good and meant that thousands, tens of thousands, probably of young people were able to do courses and that they weren't they weren't defunded.

And also asked what role will Utcs have? I think, which is an important point. And Baroness McIntosh also had a link to Sam Mendes, which has been an interesting aspect of this, but really made the point that creative industries are unique and they have never been about training for particular job roles. It's not one size fits all. So I very much welcome what the Minister has said. My noble friend the Minister said about the Creative Advisory Group. I would urge her to include the music industry in that, because they're very insistent that they want to be heard.

And. But I welcome the other points you made about. It's not just about simplifying qualifications. Final word is, you know, perhaps back to what I said earlier about that the. From the Brit school. Future qualifications should not move away from the characteristics that have made our vocational creative education so successful. And we don't want to narrow the pipeline of talent which we so value in our creative industries.

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This motion be agreed to as many as are that have been content to the contrary, not content. The

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contents have it. Well, my Lords. In writing to adjourn, I hope

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In writing to adjourn, I hope that the House will indulge me in just wishing all noble Lords, the just wishing all noble Lords, the clerks, the staff, especially the doorkeepers, everyone involved around the house. Very happy and

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around the house. Very happy and restful summer recess, my Lords, I beg to move the house. Do now adjourn. And can I echo that? Have a very well-earned rest that the House do
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