Department for Science, Information and Technology: Abolition
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(6 days, 15 hours ago)
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Lord Clement-Jones
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the abolition of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the merging of its functions with other departments and; the implications of this on the future operation of (1) the AI Safety Institute, (2) the Sovereign AI Fund, (3) the Government Digital Service and (4) UK Research and Innovation.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, science and AI are having an increasingly large impact on all areas of government policy and economic growth. We should not see science and technology as an isolated issue. That is why the Prime Minister has announced a bold restructuring, including the elevation of AI to the Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. That will provide a more coherent, agile and effective government framework to deliver on our national priorities. A WMS has been tabled today in the name of my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal outlining these changes.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, many of us welcomed the creation of DSIT and the focus that it brought on science and technology, but with the very regrettable resignation of the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, who will be greatly missed, and the understandable concerns expressed by Sir Paul Nurse, the president of the Royal Society, and many university and tech leaders, what assurance do we have that that focus will be retained, particularly in developing UK digital sovereignty? Which single department will own AI safety and regulation?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
The noble Lord raises a series of very important issues. First, I put on record my absolute thanks for the work done by my noble friend Lord Vallance, who it has been a pleasure and privilege to work with. Noble Lords will appreciate—there have been many comments in your Lordships’ House today—that there are ongoing appointments in government, so I cannot possibly talk about any further roles and appointments that are being made, including my own. We will deal with those as they emerge.
On the substance of the Question, the noble Lord raises an important point but the Government have decided that having science and AI sit separate and away from the rest of government means that other departments have not treated them in the way they should be. Noble Lords will appreciate that a month has not passed when I have not been asked about the impact of AI on the Cabinet Office, and every member of the Front Bench has been asked how AI is affecting the Government’s work. It is right that we are putting both science and AI at the heart of government, which is why we have the new Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to make sure that it is at the centre, as well as having a new specialist Minister for AI attending Cabinet.
Democratic Institutions: Threats
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire for securing this debate and for his excellent introduction, which was both forensic and alarming. He has certainly elicited a range of views in today’s debate. My view is that we are at a critical point for our democratic institutions, facing threats that have grown exponentially in sophistication and scale, and which successive Governments have been far too slow to address. I am grateful for the opportunity to disagree with the view of the noble Lords, Lord Hannan, Lord Frost and Lord Jackson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that the right to freedom of expression gives some sort of licence to spread disinformation with impunity.
My noble friend reported that the Electoral Commission’s most recent survey found that only 14% of people trust politicians. The National Centre for Social Research reports record low levels of trust in how Britain is governed, with only 12% of the public trusting Governments to put the country’s interests before their party’s. That collapse does not exist in a vacuum. It is being actively engineered, and technology has become the primary instrument of that engineering.
In 2020, Lord Puttnam’s Select Committee described a “pandemic of misinformation” and disinformation that would result in the collapse of public trust. Six years on, the failure of successive Governments to act on the bulk of those 45 recommendations has had predictable consequences. The World Economic Forum now ranks misinformation and disinformation as the second most severe short-term risk facing the world, ahead of extreme weather events and state-based armed conflict.
That pandemic has been supercharged by AI. The Rycroft report, referred to by my noble friend and sadly derided by the noble Lord, Lord Frost, concluded that
“our defences are worryingly weak”
and we are
“already experiencing ‘information warfare’”.
The Rycroft review was triggered by the sentencing of Nathan Gill, a former MEP, for accepting bribes linked to the Russian state. His case is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of the systematic campaign. Transparency International’s research finds that one in 10 political donations already originates from unknown or dubious sources, a vulnerability made worse by the complete absence of any cap on political donations in the UK. His case is one that the strategic defence review characterises as a sub-threshold attack, falling beneath the threshold of war but an act of aggression none the less.
The Alan Turing Institute’s Centre for Emerging Technology and Security has monitored AI disinformation across more than 100 national elections. Domestic political actors created significant portions of misleading AI content. Threat actors embedded features of verified news sources to make fabrication harder to debunk. The tools get cheaper and faster with every cycle. Full Fact Report 2026 identifies the most insidious development: confusion has become the strategy—not one false claim, but sufficient uncertainty that trust in all information breaks down and citizens disengage from the ballot box entirely.
In this environment, the value of the BBC has never been clearer, as my noble friend Lord Wallace and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, have said. It remains one of the most trusted news sources in the world, precisely because it is subject to obligations of impartiality and public accountability that no social media algorithm is required to meet. Contrary to what has been said in the debate today, it can be held to account to deliver on that duty. Undermining it, whether through funding pressure or through interference with board appointments, would hand a significant victory to those seeking to diminish or subvert our democracy. The charter renewal process gives us a direct opportunity to support it.
The Government’s own media Green Paper, published just this week, acknowledges that fewer than half of adults now feel confident judging whether a news source is truthful. It proposes new BBC responsibilities to counter disinformation and requiring platforms to make public service media news content prominent during elections and crises. I welcome both proposals.
The Social Market Foundation’s new report, No News is Bad News, quantifies what we have long feared. Over 4 million people now live in what is called a news desert, with 320 local publications closed since 2009. Areas with no local news have nearly three times the level of misinformation as those with a healthy press. These are not abstract statistics; they describe the conditions in which the next general election will be fought.
Briefly, what do we need? We need statutory cross-sector AI regulation, including mandatory AI watermarking of synthetic content. Voters cannot exercise informed judgment if they cannot distinguish real from fabricated. We need comprehensive electoral reform. Although the Elections Act 2022 introduced digital imprints, we still lack statutory advert libraries, and there are no rules whatever on deepfakes in political campaigning. The Representation of the People Bill must fill those gaps.
We must invest seriously in digital and media literacy. Internet Matters tells us that only half of young people feel confident assessing whether political information online is true. Over 60% simply ignore what politicians say online because they cannot trust what they see. That is not apathy but a rational response to a systematically untrustworthy environment. With the voting age set to fall to 16 and curriculum reforms not reaching classrooms until September 2028, the next general election will arrive before a single child benefits. We need interim support for schools now.
Shoshana Zuboff captured it precisely, and Lord Puttnam’s committee cited her in 2020:
“It’s down to lawmakers to protect democracy in an age of surveillance … That is the work of the next decade”.
That decade is now. The collapse of public trust we are debating is not a mystery but the predictable consequence of allowing technology to run ahead of accountability, and allowing foreign states to exploit that gap with impunity. We must treat our democratic information environment as the critical infrastructure it is and legislate accordingly. The time for voluntary codes and piecemeal adjustments has definitively passed.
Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation. I warmly thank the most reverend Primate for initiating this debate and for her very comprehensive, thought provoking and—in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley—empathetic introduction.
This really has been a stimulating and thoughtful debate. I never expected it to range from the Pope to Star Trek, but nevertheless, it has been extremely wide ranging. I very much welcome the Church’s continuing involvement in AI policy. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford was a member of the original House of Lords AI Select Committee, which I had the honour of chairing. It was he who proposed the ethical framework of five principles that the committee adopted in its 2018 report. Those principles—that AI should serve the common good, operate with intelligibility and fairness, respect data rights and privacy, be accompanied by universal AI education and never be given the autonomous power to hurt, destroy or deceive human beings—have since found their way, in substance, into the G20 AI principles, the OECD AI principles and a succession of international declarations. The right reverend Prelate planted those seeds in 2018.
As a liberal humanist, I come to these questions from a different angle from the most reverend Primate and the right reverend Prelate. But this debate has demonstrated, as many noble Lords have mentioned, a convergence of values that goes beyond well beyond any single set of beliefs. Pope Leo’s Magnifica Humanitas encyclical, mentioned by so many noble Lords today, deserves attention well beyond the 1.3 billion Catholics it formally addresses. It is an alliance, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth said. What is most compelling is the encyclical’s insistence that no person can be reduced to productivity, cognitive performance or mere data, and that every human being bears a freedom and value no machine can replace or block. I would express that in the language of liberal rights rather than theology, but the substance is identical.
A number of noble Lords—including, I think, most recently the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson—described the benefits of AI. We have also talked about some of the risks, in particular hidden risks such as the threat to resilience and the deskilling of curiosity: “offloading”, as the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, described it. Those risks have been extremely cogently articulated today.
This means that the questions that the most reverend Primate asked in this context are entirely apposite. Just because we can, should we be developing these AI models? What direction do we want to go in, while we still have the choice? The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in that context raised the very important question of alignment. What kind of AI are we content to see being developed? As she said, technology is not neutral; we have choices.
The noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, raised the statistics about the extent of the use of AI in society. Ofcom data published last month shows that just over half of UK adults now use generative AI, rising to 79% for 16 to 24 year-olds. Of those users, 12% report using AI as a friend or as someone to talk to. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, this is the simulation of intimacy. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, referred to “relational cues”. In the United States, therapy and companionship is already the number one use of generative AI, and that is where we are heading. We heard the warnings from the most reverend Primate, the noble Lords, Lord Rook and Lord Hastings, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and many others.
I readily acknowledge that AI companions can offer a safe space for neurodivergent users to rehearse social interactions. Well-designed AI can encourage care and consideration. The question is whether it is governed in the interests of those who use it, especially the young and vulnerable. Children’s exposure to these AI chatbots demands the strongest safeguards. As the noble Lord, Lord Rook, said, they should not face it alone. The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, said that we should not be outsourcing childhood.
The encyclical speaks of algorithms blocking access to healthcare, employment and security on the basis of data tainted by prejudice, and of the silence of those who have no voice when such decisions are made. This is exactly the power issue that was raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Helic. It argues explicitly that algorithmic processes must
“not be imposed from above in an opaque and unilateral manner”,
and that communities need transparency, accountability and meaningful avenues for recourse. That is precisely what the Horizon scandal, referred to by my noble friend Lady Teather and the Dutch case raised by the noble Lord, Lord Raval, taught us. It is precisely why mandatory algorithmic impact assessments and clear accountability and transparency principles are moral necessities, not just some sort of regulatory red tape.
As my noble friend Lord McNally and the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, mentioned, AI models scraping creative content without consent, which produces deepfakes and synthetic information, are creating a huge threat to our creative industries, which has 2 million workers and is worth £145 billion per annum to the UK economy. They are also corroding public trust and causing creative and democratic harm, as described by my noble friend and the noble Baronesses, Lady Prashar and Lady Helic.
The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that AI could materially impact 40% of the UK labour force over the next 10 years, with administrative, secretarial sales and customer service roles most exposed. This potentially creates societies susceptible to political as well as economic dislocation and, in the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, affects the very fabric of society. These issues must urgently be addressed.
Sir Tony Blair is right that AI represents an epochal change. Where we part company is whether the right response is acceptance or governance. The decisions made in the coming years will shape AI’s trajectory for decades, and those decisions require democratic oversight, not deference to whoever controls the infrastructure. There is also the environmental dimension, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor.
Sir Alan Milburn’s interim report was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, and a number of other noble Lords. Published last week, it tells us that young people now make up to close to one in nine workers, with 1.25 million at risk of becoming NEET within five years, at a cost of £125 billion a year to the economy. Six in 10 of those young people have never had a job. Sir Alan describes their experience of recruitment as
“applications disappearing into a void, interviews followed by silence, and recruitment processes that felt designed to deter rather than select”.
This is the algorithmic hiring gatekeeper that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, mentioned, for jobseekers. We need to reckon with an AI-transformed labour market. Fifty years ago, Ralf Dahrendorf, whose philosophy underpins my values, argued that real freedom is not just freedom from interference; it is freedom to build a life and to have genuine life chances. Sir Alan’s lost generation risks having neither.
Noble Lords have mentioned a National Education Union survey, published in April, which found that two-thirds of secondary teachers believed that pupils’ critical thinking had declined due to AI usage, but these are the crucial skills for the future. As the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Marylebone, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, mentioned, judgment is the antithesis of cognitive offloading. Most strikingly, half of all schools have no policy on AI use by staff or students. This is not a technology problem; it is a governance failure.
We have heard about Sir Anthony Seldon’s work relating to human flourishing. The OECD’s Education for Human Flourishing framework is very similar. It argues that:
“In the age of AI, education must strengthen human agency, human meaning and human security”.
It prioritises distinctive human intelligence as the capacity to know and understand others and understand oneself as a learner. We can look to other models—we can look to Finland as one of the answers—to prepare our children for an uncertain world, but we have not yet done so.
Many questions have been asked today on online safety, AI safety, ethical balance and the potential governance of superintelligent systems. I simply ask the Minister: when the values of liberal humanism, the Church of England and the Catholic Church, the public, AI experts, the international institutions and the Government’s own manifesto all point in the same direction, what are the Government waiting for? Why are we not putting in the kind of regulatory framework that so many noble Lords have asked for today?
Decisions in the coming year will shape AI’s trajectory for generations. Regulation and innovation are not in opposition, as a number of noble Lords have said. My noble friend Lord Alderdice used the analogy of the motor vehicle, and that is a perfectly respectable precedent. Whether or not this technology becomes our servant or master, the kind of partnership that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, called for, the sharing called for by the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, and the serving of humanity described by the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, will be determined not by the technology itself but by whether those of us in positions of responsibility had the courage to act in time. We must not be the rabbits in the headlight mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Cashman; as the most reverend Primate said, we must put people ahead of profit and technology. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Amazon Web Services
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(9 months ago)
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Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, in respect of the noble Viscount’s point about cost, this happened just yesterday so, of course, we are still working it through; it will take us some time to evaluate how much it will cost the economy. I am sure that economists will be kept very busy for some time working out the costs and the impact on productivity.
We are already taking steps to strengthen the resilience of the UK’s digital infrastructure. Through the national cyber strategy and the national resilience framework, we are working with the National Cyber Security Centre to treat major cloud service providers as part of our critical national infrastructure. This includes measures to ensure that they have robust redundancy back-up and incident response capabilities in place. At the same time, we are consulting with industry on enhanced incident reporting and transparency requirements so that the Government can be alerted immediately to any service disruption that could have national impact.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, at the very least, this should be a wake-up call for the Government. It is clear that the Government have been overdependent on two US cloud service providers, which, as the Competition and Markets Authority says, have 70% to 90% of the market, and restrictive practices impede competition. Of course, there is now a sovereign AI unit within DSIT. Will government procurement policy now change to encourage UK cloud service providers, which would then help to deliver sovereign AI? Will the Government also encourage the CMA to act rapidly, given this lack of competition?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for those points. The Government are aware and are taking cybersecurity seriously. That is why we have published a number of strategies and are working with the National Cyber Security Centre, as I mentioned earlier. The noble Lord also mentioned procurement and the service providers. The three providers I just mentioned—Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud—probably have something like 60% of the market share. Yes, we have other small, independent providers as well but, at the same time, procurement is dependent on government departments: on how they want to procure their services and from where. The basic point is that, going forward, we have to ensure that it is safe and resilient.
Global IT Outage
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I think we all have huge sympathy for those affected. As the noble Lord rightly says, thousands of people were affected on the day. However, compensation is a matter for the individual operators and subject to consumer rules, which would cover any entitlement to compensation or refunds.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, in the light of recent events, we are clearly talking not just about bad actors. Does the Minister agree that there needs to be a rethink about critical national infrastructure and our dependence on a few overly dominant major tech companies for cloud services and software, which are now effectively essential public utilities? Will the Government reconsider how we are wholesale replacing reliable analogue communications with digital systems without any back-up?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The noble Lord raises critical issues, a number of which will be covered by the cybersecurity and resilience Bill. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues with him further.
Ministers: Legal Costs
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Clement-Jones
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of taxpayer-funded legal costs incurred by Government Ministers, following the recent libel settlement funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville- Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, in line with established practice under multiple Administrations of all political colours, Ministers are provided with legal support and representation where matters relate to their conduct and responsibilities as a Minister. As set out in Chapter 6 of the Cabinet Manual, Ministers are
“indemnified by the Crown for any actions taken against them for things done or decisions made in the course of their ministerial duties. The indemnity will cover the cost of defending the proceedings, as well as any costs or damages awarded against the minister”.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. The Prime Minister put it rather differently. He said
“it is a long-standing convention stretching back many years … that the government will fund those legal disputes when it relates to government ministers doing their work”.
How can making party-political libel posts on X on Friday at midnight constitute “Ministers doing their work”? Why should this settlement come out of the public purse? Is this not a breach of the Ministerial Code, after all?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
As I said, it is long-standing practice. Indeed, the Secretary of State concerned made a statement this morning at the Lords Science and Technology Committee and explained the circumstances in full, including how she was engaged in official work and got support from officials on the disputed letter.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I do not see it that way. The Secretary of State gave evidence this morning to the Lords Science and Technology Committee. There was a brief discussion of this matter. They then moved on to discuss important points about science, which she and this Government are extremely supportive of and have done so much to make sure that the UK is one of the leaders in the world in science and technology matters.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, is this not another case of the Government marking their own homework? What is the Government’s ethics adviser saying about this? Have the Government taken a proper view from the ethics adviser?
Digital Government (Disclosure of Information) (Identity Verification Services) Regulations 2023
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, and others, and I echo what he said about our constructive discussions in 2014-16. I am also pleased to see my noble friend Lord Camrose championing intellectual property, as we try to do, and to see him accompanied by my noble friend Lord Evans of Rainow in his new position as Cabinet Office Whip.
The Digital Government (Disclosure of Information) (Identity Verification Services) Regulations 2023 are an important part of this Government’s commitment to strengthen the use of data and information across the public sector. We are bringing these forward so we can deliver better and more joined-up services and, in turn, improve outcomes for our citizens.
The regulations aim to allow information sharing between named bodies for the specific purpose of supporting cross-government identity checking when it is needed. Verifying a user’s identity—ensuring that a person is who they say they are—is a key part of delivering many government services. The draft regulations enable this by establishing a new data-sharing objective under Section 35 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 and by setting out which public bodies may use the new objective. This will create a legislative gateway, enabling us to use existing data sets, which public bodies already hold, to help as many people as possible to access the government services that they need online. It is therefore central to the development of more inclusive and accessible systems.
Specifically, the proposed objective would unlock the full benefits of the new cross-government digital system known as GOV.UK One Login. This is now live; users are able to set up an account, log in and prove their identity in order to access an initial set of 24 government services, with more being added all the time. However, at the moment, users must have photographic documentation, such as a passport or driving licence. This will change following the introduction of the new objective, as it will unlock new ways for people without photo ID to prove who they are, opening up the system to more users.
The delivery of One Login is a step change in simple joined-up access to government services online. This, in turn, delivers substantial cost and time savings for the Government and users by reducing duplication and providing enhanced capability to identify and stop fraudsters. In summary, the proposed objective will, first, enable checks against existing government-held information, such as PAYE and benefits data, to build confidence in the user’s identity, which will be particularly key where service users do not have a passport or driving licence. Secondly, it will provide a specific legal framework for checks against documents currently used in identity verification, such as driving licences. Thirdly, it will enable the sharing of the results of identity checks performed by one named body with another, so that users need to prove their identity only once.
The draft regulations set out which of the bodies already listed in Schedule 4 to the Digital Economy Act can use the new identity-verification data-sharing power, such as HM Revenue & Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions. They also add four new public bodies to the schedule that will be able to use the power: the Cabinet Office, the Department for Transport, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Disclosure and Barring Service.
The public bodies listed in the regulations are either bodies that hold information that could be used in support of proving that someone is whom they say they are or those that own and manage services that people need to access, which they therefore need to receive the results of identity checks. Of course, some public bodies do both.
The territorial extent of the draft regulations is England, Wales and Scotland. The Information Commissioner’s Office and the devolved Administrations support the draft regulations, and indeed the Scottish and Welsh Administrations have requested that certain Scottish and Welsh bodies be included in the draft regulations to enable them to use the new data-sharing power—so it is devolved friendly.
I am sure noble Lords will be pleased to know that these draft regulations have been subject to the standard rigorous processes of internal and external review. In the first instance, the objective has been subject to scrutiny by the Public Service Delivery Review Board, as set out in the underpinning code of practice on public service delivery, debt and fraud of the Digital Economy Act 2017. The board recommended that Ministers take forward these draft regulations since they meet the required criteria of supporting the improvement, or targeting, of public services to individuals in order to enhance their well-being.
Furthermore, the objective has been subject to a public consultation, which received more than 66,000 responses. Some respondents recognised the benefits to individuals of improved and more inclusive services. Some mistakenly expressed concern that this was a back-door route to identity cards. Therefore, in response to the consultation, the Government confirmed that they have no plans to introduce mandatory digital ID or identity cards. We also published additional information on how GOV.UK One Login will operate within these regulations and within the overall data protection framework. We extended the time between the regulations being approved and coming into force, and we amended some of the wording to reflect that of the Act. Of course, the Government understand that people want to protect their personal information and this is central to our approach. The draft regulations relate to using data only for the purpose of identity verification.
Part 5 of the 2017 Act gives the Government powers to share personal information across organisational boundaries to improve public services. It lays down what data can be shared and for which purposes. Data sharing must also have regard to the accompanying statutory code of practice on public service delivery, debt and fraud, which sets out how the power must be operated, including how any data shared must be processed lawfully, securely and proportionately in compliance with data protection legislation and UK GDPR.
The Digital Economy Act statutory code of practice on public service delivery, debt and fraud also requires information-sharing agreements to be listed on a public register of information-sharing activity under the powers. The framework for data sharing under the DEA provides a supportive background to help organisations to share data in ways that benefit the public, as confirmed by the Information Commissioner’s Office in its recent review. It includes robust safeguards that ensure that organisations share data responsibly and in alignment with data protection principles, while also safeguarding people’s rights.
I think these regulations are relatively straightforward and important, and I hope that colleagues will join me in supporting them.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, it is good to see the Minister move seamlessly from intellectual property to digital and data, but both can sometimes create their own questions. Since this is the first time we have debated One Login in the Lords, I hope that the Minister will not mind if she gets a large number of questions about the scheme. As I understand it, the goal of the One Login programme is to create a log-in database owned by the Government and containing the verified names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and email addresses of everyone who uses—eventually—all Government-owned digital services, which is likely to be everyone in the country.
Perhaps unfairly, I have always thought of One Login with some scepticism, as the son or daughter of Verify, and not in a good way. The cost of the failed Verify scheme was over £200 million. It would be very useful as part of this debate to hear the cost of OneLogin so far and how much more is budgeted to be spent on its rollout. It does seem strange that the Government are having another crack at a single verification system, given the many other trustworthy existing systems that could be adopted.
First, I think it worth mentioning what the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee said in its 55th report in October. I think it was rather baffled and scathing at the same time:
“This is a classic example of an Explanatory Memorandum … with too narrow a focus”.
I think it felt it was being bounced to some extent, without the context in which One Login was going to be designed to work. It said:
“We therefore request that the Cabinet Office revises its”
Explanatory Memorandum
“to include sufficient background information to enable any reader to understand the legislation’s practical effects”.
I suppose I am lucky in that I followed the gory progress of Verify through to One Login and the current date. I have some idea of the purpose behind One Login. As I understand it, the principal effect of these regulations is to allow the Government to share data for the purposes of identification. The SI does not restrict those flows of data; data can flow into the Cabinet Office as envisaged but identity data can also flow from the Cabinet Office to any other listed department. I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that.
Will the Government allow population databases to be copied, whether openly or not? The revised Explanatory Memorandum is silent on this, and it is unclear if this assurance from the Government’s consultation response will be delivered. The response said:
“In particular, information will set out which departmental services are using identity verification services to support delivery and which will provide data to help departments establish who a person is”.
Will that actually happen? Will there be that level of transparency? There are apparently no safeguards on sharing bulk data if the Government want to share for this purpose across government. What transparency will there be if and when this takes place?
There is then the question of for whose benefit One Login really is. Is this a “better login to government” project, which many people might applaud, or is it a “one identity to government” project? The answer at the moment appears to be the latter. I say this because medConfidential, which I thank for its briefing, reports that a
“meeting held during the consultation was told that the Government’s intent is to actively prevent individuals from having multiple login accounts. A person may be able to have multiple email addresses— indeed, they may already do—but Government would attach them to a single ‘identity’. This regulation allows that database to be shared in bulk”.
Not to put too fine a point on it, that turns One Login into a tool of a centralising state—with implications for the privacy of the citizen—which the Government have previously assured us many times they were not building. I would therefore be extremely grateful if the Minister described the reality of One Login, as well as its purpose and operation.
At a roundtable on the consultation, the Government Digital Service apparently said that the regulation’s “first use is One Login”, which suggests there will be a second use. It is unclear to us to what extent the DWP will embrace One Login for government, for universal credit, for HMRC’s services, or indeed for the MoJ’s digital courts. What commitment from government departments and agencies is there? I can see that they are all listed, but Verify fell down precisely because of the lack of commitment from many government departments. What about the identities, too, of public servants? Will they be able to have multiple identities as both citizen and employee? What is the reality of that?
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
Let me understand this. In effect, data is being shared across departments so it is not simply a way of having a wallet, if you like, within the Cabinet Office that then gives you a clear identity for the purposes of accessing government services across government; it is a question of sharing that identity data across government departments. It is data sharing in bulk across government departments.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
It is data sharing for the purposes of digital identity. Ultimately, by April 2025, we hope to have approximately 145 central government services that can be accessed via One Login. It is a mistake to think that this is somehow going to be used in the bulk way that the noble Lord describes. It is about identity checking, not collecting huge amounts of data for use in a Big Brother sort of way; the noble Lord may have misunderstood this. Users can delete their account at any time. I think that the noble Lord’s concern is perhaps misplaced.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
While I am on the subject of benefits to the individual, there is an example that I would like to share with the committee; it reflects a question that I asked. Sometimes, married women have two different names. I am in that lucky, or unfortunate, position. We understand that some users will need or want to use multiple accounts, so users can already set up multiple accounts on One Login using different email addresses that can relate to different names. From next year, we plan to allow users to link accounts under the same verified identity. The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, asked us to look through the eyes of the individual. This is one of the things we have been trying to do in this programme, learning from the past.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
The difference is that, at the moment, you tend to have to provide a passport. It is difficult to log in to some of these services without a passport or a driving licence. In future, as I made clear in my introductory remarks, it will be possible to use different sorts of identity data and to have a system within government that allows us to do that. That will have the effect of making it easier for more people who are finding establishing their identity difficult without encouraging a lot of identity fraud, which is obviously another concern that one has to take account of in putting these systems together.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
I entirely appreciate the Minister taking the trouble to talk us through this. The question is: for whose benefit is this? Is this so that government departments can identify somebody right across the board, so that you can have only one identity in government and so that the Home Office will share data with universal credit and every other department that interfaces with an individual? Is that the idea of this One Login? Or is it possible to have more than one digital identity?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
One obvious benefit is that more and more government departments are using digital. The technology is transforming our lives, after all. Once you have this single digital identity, you will then be able to use it to access services and opportunities from other government departments as well. That is the point: the digital identity will be used across the board. That is helpful to individuals. I should add that a document is published on GOV.UK outlining what data is being used by One Login. I think it is worth noble Lords looking at that.
The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, rightly asked a question about cost—something we always used to ask about in our previous debates. The One Login programme’s total budget for 2022-23 to 2024-25 is £305.4 million. Of this, the programme forecasts expenditure of £132.7 million on the development and rollout of the system by the end of the current financial year.
The noble Lord mentioned the Explanatory Memorandum. We did indeed make some changes, as he acknowledged, to the Explanatory Memorandum, which was made available to the SLSC, to provide a clearer explanation of which part of the law the instrument is changing and why. He mentioned that the revised Explanatory Memorandum was laid on 2 November, and provided more contextual information. In particular, it explained that the SI provides the statutory basis for specified public bodies to share data in order to verify an individual’s identity in a safe and secure way so that they can access public services online, and that duplicative systems are being replaced with a single account. This is an obvious benefit.
The SI will also enable the GOV.UK One Login to draw on a broader range of government-held data sources when users need to verify their identity. That is an important point, because it is difficult for people who do not have a passport or a driving licence under the current system.
We are committed to being open and transparent by making information about data shared under the Digital Economy Act easily available for all to find and understand in the public register of data-sharing agreements. That was one of the safeguards laid down in that Act, so we have obviously taken that on board. That is an important point of transparency.
This is also underpinned by a robust code of practice—I have read it—which was created by Section 43 of the DEA. That sets out how the power must be operated, and includes setting out how any data shared under this power must be processed lawfully, securely and proportionately, in line with data protection legislation. We therefore have the DEA and data protection legislation coming together to allow us to implement this, hopefully life-changing, bit of technology in a way that protects the citizen. Obviously, the Cabinet Office is responsible for maintaining that register, and the Public Service Delivery Review Board is overseeing strategic consistency.
We have not seen that many regulations made under this Act—I think there was one on social care before—but we can see the value of the Act and the safeguards that Parliament added to it coming through.
On voter registration, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, raised a very good point, to my mind. I will have to follow up in writing. Fundamentally, as she said, these regulations will enhance the user experience. Despite many improvements over the last few years, today’s experience of interacting with government is too fragmented. We have multiple logins, and we are repeatedly asked the same information, which sometimes one has recorded on the phone—and sometimes recorded wrongly, as I know from my own experience. This is the same for everyone trying to access government. One Login will replace this with one system; we are used to this on our phones and so on, and there is a lot to be said for this new arrangement. We will have better data sharing to help those people without traditional forms of ID to access the services online that they need.
I hope noble Lords, having heard the benefits of the regulation—
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the Minister as she comes to the final furlong, but the question of oversight raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and by me, and the standards that will apply to this system, are extremely important.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
Given the time, I will take that away, along with the voting point, if I may. I drew attention to the code of practice and the parent Act; we have every intention of following the principles, but the point about review and oversight is well made by the noble Lord, as always. I will come back to him on that point.
I am sorry that I have not been able to answer every question on the login area. I can introduce noble Lords to my honourable friend in the other place, Alex Burghart, who has spent a great deal of time developing these regulations. The point is that these narrow regulations before us today are a necessary enabler for this major change for the citizen. I hope that noble Lords, having heard the benefits, will join me in supporting the draft regulations. I commend them to the Committee.
Emergency Alert System: Fujitsu
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My noble friend and I agree that the impact of the Horizon scandal on postmasters and their families is utterly horrendous; we used to work together on this when I was on the Back Benches. That is why the Government have set up an inquiry, much encouraged by my noble friend, to get to the bottom of what went wrong and ensure that it can never happen again, as well as providing compensation for those affected.
All government contracts are awarded in line with procurement regulations and transparency guidelines, and that goes for the contract on the alerts. As noble Lords would expect, robust security measures are in place as part of the procurement process.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, for his relentless campaigning over a period of 13 years. Otherwise, the sub-postmasters would not have received any form of justice. Fujitsu’s track record is quite appalling; the noble Lord mentioned that it has never apologised. It was described as giving unsatisfactory and inaccurate evidence in the case brought by the sub-postmasters. The NHS terminated two contracts with it back in 2008-09, then Fujitsu sued the NHS for £700 million and did not settle for 10 years. On exactly what basis do the Government judge Fujitsu to be fit and proper to hold this contract?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I will make one preliminary point: Fujitsu has been fully co-operating with the postmasters inquiry. I also emphasise that there is no link between the small amount of work that Fujitsu has done for DCMS and the Cabinet Office and the work done for the Post Office.
Security of Government Devices
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I did ask someone earlier what TikTok is—I thought I was a modern person, but clearly not.
Can the Minister tell us whether this sort of interpretation is going to involve a change in the Ministerial Code? A Minister may not think sharing a draft Written Ministerial Statement on personal email qualifies either as substantive business or as a security risk, but the Home Secretary was of course temporarily forced out after sending such material to the wrong people. Oliver Dowden also talked about the granting of exemptions for operational reasons. Can the Minister provide an example of why a banned app may be deemed necessary? If she cannot today, could she write with such an example?
This debate takes place in the context of wider concerns about some forms of Chinese-made technology, including CCTV camera systems. On 2 February, my noble friend Lord Bassam of Brighton asked when the Government would commence important product security provisions under the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act, which is intended to protect users of smart products such as CCTV doorbells. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, was unable to provide any date. I hope the Minister can do so today. The Government said they intended to bring the first half of that Act into force as soon as practicable, so why are we still waiting?
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, as a long-standing deputy chair of the all-party China group, I welcomed the proportionate approach taken in the Government’s statements in the integrated review refresh about relations with China. In the face of the current human rights position in Xinjiang and the situation in Hong Kong, however, this should not change any time soon.
On these Benches, we are in strong agreement with those who consider that the Government could and should have been a great deal more strategic about relationships with sensitive Chinese suppliers—whether internet or data based, hardware or software related—in the run-up to this Statement. This is a one-off Statement about TikTok, a social media company. It would be good to see the assessment and the evidence of potential cybersecurity issues which the Government have not yet—as far as I know—produced.
However, when it comes to makers of surveillance cameras, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, the Government appear far more reluctant to act. The Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Professor Fraser Sampson, has been very clear in his warnings, in particular about Hikvision and Dahua cameras, which, as far as we know, are used extensively in Xinjiang for surveillance purposes and pose security risks here, even when live facial recognition is not enabled.
Just last week, we saw Tesco lead the way in the private sector and order the removal of these cameras from its stores. The Government have simply ceased to install them. Why are they not directing their removal, particularly in police forces? Have they mapped exactly where on the government estate and in other spaces these cameras remain?
Regarding TikTok, why act so late when the EU and US, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, mentioned, acted earlier? Presumably they have the same security information. When did the evidence emerge that has led to this ban? Will the Government publish the review by cybersecurity experts which assesses the risks posed by these third-party apps on government devices?
As the noble Lord, Lord Collins, also mentioned, why are private devices used by government Ministers not covered? I note that Oliver Dowden repeated that position last week. After all, we know there has been extensive use of private devices by Ministers, particularly —dare I say—among former Health Ministers. What assessment of this aspect has been made? Which government departments and public bodies are actually covered? What is the process for drawing up the promised approved list of apps? What criteria will be used?
As many said in the Commons, this looks like whack-a-mole; the Statement is no substitute for a coherent cross-government strategy. Why do the Government not now move, for instance, to include the capture of biometric data in the definition of “critical national infrastructure”? Questions have been raised recently about Chinese cellular internet of things modules—CIMs—which are imbedded in many devices. What is the Government’s approach to this? Are they even aware of what CIMs are?
Finally, if the Government are concerned about information being harvested by social media and other apps, why is the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, now before the Commons, widening the circumstances in which research data can be used for commercial purposes? Is this not a typical example of this Government’s incoherence and lack of co-ordination on issues such as this?
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the welcome for the Statement made by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster last week. By way of background, I should explain that the Government commissioned a review by our cybersecurity experts of the risks posed by third-party applications, including TikTok. As a result, the review concluded that we needed further security measures to protect the data.
There is obviously a limit to what I can say due to the sensitive nature of the Government’s work, but we are taking what we believe is proportionate, considered action to strengthen the security of government devices, and we are doing that in two ways. First, as is already the case in many departments—and that includes my own, the Cabinet Office—all government departments will now move to a system where only the third-party mobile apps available on their devices are those which have been pre-approved for inclusion on a departmental “allow list”.
Secondly, as a precautionary measure, all government departments are now required to take action to prohibit TikTok on their devices with immediate effect. It is a prudent, proportionate step, and more broadly, we are absolutely committed to bolstering national security, of which this is an example. As I explained to the House about 10 days ago, new guidance on the use of non-corporate communications will be issued very shortly and will bear on some of the questions that have been raised.
I was asked about TikTok on Ministers’ personal devices. The Secretary for State for Energy Security and Net Zero, who has been quoted, supports our policy and has been very clear that he has never used TikTok on his government devices. On personal devices, it is more of a personal choice. As I have explained before, all Ministers are carefully trained in security when they are appointed, and they have a briefing from time to time to keep that up to date.
To answer the question about exemptions, the business justification for having TikTok on government phones is to my mind very limited, but there are a small number of cases where it is necessary. Examples would include security and law enforcement. I know that some of my colleagues who are involved in security may need to use TikTok to make observations. Marketing would be another area—I think that the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Grant Shapps, comes into that category. We need to have common sense and proportionality. Departments will be able to make exemptions on a case-by-case basis through a departmental approval process, but with ministerial clearance as appropriate and risk mitigation in place.
Regarding Chinese security cameras, we have acted— we have discussed this in this House many times. We are also strengthening the powers in our Procurement Bill, and suppliers will be considered for addition to the debarment list on the basis of a rigorous and fair policy. This policy is under development, so it is too early to say, but regarding the action we have taken, we are now working with departments to make sure that Hikvision cameras are phased out.
The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, talked on a more strategic level about China, about which we need to be sober and realistic. Obviously, we do not dispute the importance of China, but it has become more authoritarian at home and more assertive overseas, which is of concern to the UK—our policies need to reflect that. In the integrated review refresh, which was published last week and is well worth a read—the noble Lord referenced it—the Prime Minister set out clearly the overall direction across government for a consistent, coherent and robust approach to China, rooted in the UK’s national interest and aligned with our allies. A proper, and properly resourced, approach to security is an important part of that.
I repeat that the Prime Minister set up a new department, and the Budget included a substantial pledge—£3.5 billion by 2030—to support the Government’s ambitions to make the UK a scientific and technology superpower. This is one of the Prime Minister’s five priorities. So we should take the steps we need to take for security, but we also need to be careful to encourage the positives of new technology, whether that is AI, quantum technologies or engineering biology. We seek an important balance here.
Civil Service: Digital Skills
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Clement-Jones
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they intend to take in response to the Global Government Forum report UK civil service digital skills, published on 29 November 2022.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are already taking action to build digital skills at scale and have a clear road map, set out in the Transforming for a Digital Future strategy, which we published in June 2022. The road map has set a target to upskill at least 90% of senior civil servants in digital and data by 2025 and to strengthen the attraction and retention of digital talent by bolstering the Government’s recruitment brand and pay offer for specialist skills.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, the Government claim that their 2022-25 digital and data road map will usher in a
“new era of digital transformation”
for public service improvement, yet Civil Service skills are clearly inadequate to deliver it. As the NAO has pointed out, there has been
“a consistent pattern of underperformance”
in public services for many years. What will be different this time? Is not the road map another example of this Government’s wishful thinking?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
It is important to have an ambition and a road map if you are going to move things forward. We have a Prime Minister who regards the digital and data area as very important. We have set out our digital future strategy, which includes, on the point that the noble Lord is concerned about, that 90% of senior civil servants will be upskilled in digital and data through that programme. Digital professionals will also have top-up training every year. We are moving to recruit a lot more civil servants in the digital and data area; we have 4,000 vacancies, which is too many, but we are doing everything that we can to attract more people. This includes a capability-based pay scheme and much more focus on the regions, where we believe that we can get more digital talent out of the universities, often working away from London in centres such as Cardiff and Darlington.