Public Services: Online Communications
Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Leong
Lord Markham (Con)
I am a big believer in the use of AI and digital communications to improve public services for everyone, in the NHS and elsewhere. At the same time, I am aware that groups with learning difficulties are in danger of being left behind. But the way to square the circle is to make sure that they are involved every step of the way in the design of services, whether analogue or digital, and to use things such as AI to have voice-activated conversations. The Netherlands ministry of health is probably the number one player in involving people with learning difficulties every step of the way. Can we make sure that we do the same with our services?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that. It is not only in the Netherlands but in other countries in Europe—for example, Estonia as well. Let us not forget that the UK Government are committed to ensuring that our adoption of AI across the public sector is ethical, safe and responsible. The Government Digital Service suite of responsible data and AI tools, such as the data and AI ethics framework, helps teams across government to build and display AI in the right way. Our ambition is really for AI to benefit working people directly by improving their health, care and education, as well as how citizens interact with the Government, while opening up new opportunities, as the noble Lord mentioned, rather than just threatening our traditional patterns of work.
Space Debris
Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Leong
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that point. As it stands, DSIT is playing a major role in developing UK space surveillance. This covers debris and satellites. Through the space clusters and the infra- structure fund, we are backing new ground-based observatories and analytics platforms. We are also co-ordinating with the UK Space Agency, academia and the defence sector to integrate civil and military space surveillance assets into a national capability, thereby reducing dependence on foreign data and supporting strategic autonomy.
Lord Markham (Con)
My Lords, I will attempt to boldly follow the line of questioning of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, around the US building into its licensing requirements that commercial operators take this into account. It has a regulation that there is five years for the de-orbiting of low earth orbit satellites. We do not do that: we work on a 25-year basis. Surely it is about time we tried to catch up in this area.
Lord Leong (Lab)
The noble Lord makes a good point. We have to work with international partners, whether the US, Japan or the European Space Agency. Currently, the Government are developing space sustainable standards with commercial space sector investors and insurers as part of our wider regulatory reforms. We must bear in mind that reforms have to be outcome-based and have clarity and certainty. This is why we are attracting a lot of foreign-based companies that are establishing operations in the UK, such as Astroscale, which I mentioned earlier.
Amazon Web Services
Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Leong(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, the departments impacted were HMRC, the Home Office, the DVLA and the DWP. I am not aware that the Ministry of Defence was impacted, but I will write to the noble Lord if it was.
Lord Markham (Con)
Unfortunately, as Health Minister I saw at first hand instances of lack of resilience in the health systems, not just in the NHS but among a lot of its suppliers. Many noble Lords will recall the cyberattacks on the blood testing services in summer 2024. I did not quite hear in the noble Lord’s response to the question from the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, that we will make sure we can really understand the costs and the lessons learned from all this. Given the nature of these sorts of incidents, is the Minister willing to do this?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for reminding me. Yes, of course we have learned from what happened last year with CrowdStrike. As we know, in July 2024 the Government committed to a review of the lessons learned from the CrowdStrike incident, which was co-drafted between DSIT and the Cabinet Office. The Government have made a number of changes since that incident, including announcing a forthcoming cybersecurity and resilience Bill and bringing the Government Digital Service, including the newly formed government cyber unit, into DSIT as part of the digital centre of government.