Baroness Brinton (LD)

My Lords, I have two brief points on Amendment 61, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for tabling it. It is really wrong that computers or systems have ever been deemed to be reliable, let alone infallible. My husband is a research and design engineer who has worked in Cambridge Science Park for well over 40 years. He and his friends have a phrase that they use among themselves and about themselves: “Garbage in, garbage out”. When we started hearing about the Post Office Horizon scandal and Fujitsu, the first thing he said to me was, “Garbage in, garbage out”. The problem we have is that too many people, the courts and the court of public opinion believe that computer systems are infallible. I also want to touch very briefly on AI because we are seeing cases in the courts now. Facial recognition cases are coming up. Big Brother Watch reported on one last June. I notice that not quite weekly, but quite frequently, an individual is arrested as they go into a store and are accused of taking something very small and then evidence is produced of them on a facial recognition watch list. It then transpires some time later that they are not that individual. One particular firm’s name keeps coming up—I will not go into that —but the reaction of the shop is exactly that: it is infallible. I support the amendment, and I urge the Minister and the Government not to pause on this at all. It is needed, not just for the legacy of Post Office Horizon, but for cases in our courts right now.