Artificial Intelligence: Public Services

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness. This is an incredibly important point. As the noble Baroness rightly says, the AI training datasets are often not on the right things, and this is an example where there is a need for training of models in different languages and dialects. It will be very important as part of public service improvements. I thank the noble Baroness for raising this issue—and yes, it is something that is being looked at.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

This Parliament and our Governments have a chequered history of procurement of software to be used in various government departments. Can the Minister kindly confirm that we will be more rigorous whenever we are procuring services to assist us in the deployment of AI in the public service?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

As I mentioned, there are three AI exemplars being used at the moment. They are: future customer experience; citizen AI agents —so starting with an AI agent to help young people to find a job or an education pathway; and the government efficiency accelerator. In all these examples, procurement is exactly one of the things that needs to be looked at. I have mentioned previously in this House that AI assurance services are part of this as well. The point raised, which is that it is easy to get the wrong thing, is right, and we need to look very carefully at this.