Asked by: Dan Aldridge (Labour - Weston-super-Mare)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department plans to review the requirement of local authorities to provide capital funding for fixed speed cameras and that revenue generated from fixed speed camera enforcement is received by HM Treasury.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Department has no plans to review the current arrangements under which local authorities are responsible for meeting the capital costs of installing fixed speed cameras, as part of their wider capital expenditure responsibilities. Revenue raised through fixed‑penalty notices issued by speed‑camera enforcement is paid into the Consolidated Fund and therefore received by HM Treasury.
Asked by: Dan Aldridge (Labour - Weston-super-Mare)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department has considered allowing a proportion of speeding fine revenues to be ringfenced for local authorities for road safety purposes, including the funding of fixed speed cameras.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
The Government considers having fines and penalty receipts such as speeding fines being paid into the Consolidated Fund to be preferable to ring-fencing or hypothecating funds for specific spending. This avoids creating incentives to collect fines and penalty receipts for the sake of generating revenues, rather than for the purpose of enforcement and road safety. Additionally, calculating funding based on need provides more certainty than funding based on fluctuating fine and penalty receipts.
Asked by: Dan Aldridge (Labour - Weston-super-Mare)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to promote the use of content authentication technologies to help identify AI-generated content online; and if she will consider regulatory intervention to ensure provenance signals are preserved and visible to users.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Exploring solutions for enabling users and institutions to determine what media is real and what is AI-generated is a key part of tackling a wide range of AI risks. The government is examining the robustness of a range of such solutions in this space through the recent Deepfake Detection Challenge.
AI is a general-purpose technology with a wide range of applications, which is why the government believes that the vast majority of AI systems should be regulated at the point of use. In response to the AI Action Plan, the government committed to work with regulators to boost their capabilities. The government has been clear that we will legislate where needed but we will do so on the basis of evidence where any serious gaps are.