Lord Clement-Jones (LD)

My Lords, the Bill is part of a wider debate that, as was the case with the previous Private Member’s Bill today, from the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, we had as part of the Data (Use and Access) Bill. The Government have now published their vision for digital public service and their State of Digital Government Review. For the Government Digital Service, we are now told that a new chapter begins. All this is, apparently, designed to improve productivity and services in the public sector. But how citizen-centred will the new technology be? How transparent and accountable will it be? To improve algorithmic and automated decision-making in the public sector, there needs to be an increase in transparency, fairness, accountability and the implementation of robust safeguards and human oversight mechanisms. We obviously welcome the promise of an ICO code of conduct for automated decisions in the public and private sectors, as well as the algorithmic transparency recording standard of course. But that in itself lacks a number of elements: a human oversight requirement; impact assessments; a transparency register; and the prohibition of non-scrutinisable systems. There are considerable gaps in that standard. It does not cover local authorities, police forces and other public services. I simply predict that this will become a bigger issue as government starts to implement its plans for the adoption of AI in the public sector. The Government will find themselves well behind the curve of public opinion on this.