The Lord Bishop of Hereford

My Lords, I join a number of noble Lords who have raised the issue of deepfakes in electoral campaigning. I am pleased to be supported in this by my right reverend friend the Bishop of Leicester, who is, unfortunately, unable to be here today. It is regrettable that the Bill does not address the growing challenge to our democracy posed by deepfakes. Democracy depends not only upon the integrity of our electoral processes but upon the integrity of the information environment in which those processes operate, as the noble Lord, Lord Sahota, powerfully reminded us. Voters must be able to know when political content has been generated or materially altered by artificial intelligence. Without that assurance, it becomes harder for citizens to distinguish truth from fabrication, and easier for bad actors to manipulate democratic debate. Deepfakes pose a distinct challenge to our democracy because they erode the trust on which democratic life depends. They diminish confidence in what voters see and hear, weakening our shared basis for public deliberative discourse. Ofcom research from 2024 found that 57% of respondents were concerned about the impact of deepfakes during the general election; almost half reported that they did not know if they had seen one in the previous week, and a quarter reported that they had. The Christian and Jewish scriptures forbid the bearing of false witness against one’s neighbour, and we have already seen this played out within our own politics. In 2025, a deepfake falsely depicting George Freeman MP defecting to Reform UK circulated widely online yet reportedly did not meet the threshold for any criminal offence. Noble Members of this House have also been subject to deepfake imagery calling their character into question in a most disgraceful way. It is imperative that the law prohibits the creation or distribution of content that falsely purports to be a candidate or to speak on their behalf with the intention of deceiving voters, while of course at the same time the law must continue to safeguard satire, parody and legitimate political expression. All AI-generated content should therefore carry clear imprints indicating that it is synthetic media. However, we should go further. AI-generated political content should be ineligible for monetisation, and platforms should be required to provide regular reports to Ofcom detailing monetised political content and enforcement actions taken against offenders. We should also take seriously the recommendation of the Communications and Digital Committee in 2025 to establish a levy on UK profits from online platforms to provide sustainable funding for media literacy initiatives. As I close, I wish to add my thanks to my right reverend friend the Bishop of Lichfield for his contributions both today and in his time in this House. He has a gift for offering understated but remarkably shrewd insights to our deliberations here, and has ministered faithfully in this place through his pastoral relationship with staff across the House. He will be greatly missed, and not least for his example of taking significantly less than the speech limit in this debate. It is fitting that my right reverend friend has ended his time in the Chamber as he began, advocating for the importance of strong British democracy. The omission of any consideration of deepfakes in this Bill is a missed opportunity to safeguard and strengthen this democracy further.