Dawn Butler
MP for Brent East · Labour · United Kingdom
“I will call Michelle Welsh to move the motion; I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other hon. Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and from the Minister.”
“The Prime Minister has hit the road running and is running into issues where action is long overdue. Following my six-year campaign to scrap “aim to permit”, I thank the Prime Minister for making that announcement over the summer.”
“He had been working for the council for 40 years and was looking forward to his retirement, but when it was time for retirement, he was told that because he was not legally here, he would not have access to his pension. I was absolutely stunned by that.”
“That has a profound effect, and the fact that it is not considered is unacceptable. People were sacked from their jobs and they did not get their promotions. Some people could not find places to live or to rent, and as I have mentioned, they did not get their pensions. All of this is unacceptable.”
“He was offered £10,000, but then was told that giving him that amount of money was a mistake, which has retraumatised him, and he is now showing signs of dementia. There are problems with requests for updates, and there is a lack of transparency and a lack of care. All of this is unacceptable. As my hon.”
“It is an absolute and wonderful pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and her beautiful tribute to the Windrush generation and her constituents.”
The complete record
Every one of 602 lines we hold for Dawn Butler, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 9 of 13.
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a shame that the Deputy Prime Minister has left, because this point of order refers to his appearance in the Chamber on 7 June, when he claimed that my party’s plan to invest £28 billion a year in green energy would add £1,000 a year “to everyone’s mortgage”. He made that claim a day after the Daily Mail reported that figure and said that it came from Treasury analysis. However, the Treasury has admitted that the statistic does not come from official analysis. It was forced to make that admission to the UK Statistics Authority after that organisation demanded to know where the figure had come from. The UKSA told LBC that despite investigation, it had been unable to find any official source for the figure.”
“How am I being told repeatedly from the Dispatch Box that that is not the case, when that is what Government lawyers are saying themselves?” She said, “please do not repeat that this does not change anything when the Government lawyers themselves say it does.” —[ Official Report , 3 July 2023; Vol. 735, c. 656.] Conservative Members seem to have been informed that the Bill could breach international law, while Government Ministers state the opposite. I am minded to believe the hon. Lady, but could you advise me, Madam Deputy Speaker, on what I can do to ensure that the Government place all their legal advice in the Library, so that we can all have a read and discover who is telling the truth?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. My dad, God rest his soul, said to me that there are not many levers to tackle injustices, but boycotting is one of them. That is why I could not vote for the Government’s Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill yesterday, which Ministers and lawyers have said would likely place the United Kingdom in breach of international law obligations. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns)—I have informed her that I will be mentioning her—said in an intervention on the Minister: “The Foreign Office’s own legal advice states that the Bill could breach UNSC 2334.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that we have worked hard to ensure that we are not antisemitic, and that for the Minister to display what he has done in the Chamber does no good to our democracy? This is a very badly written Bill—it is not a good Bill—and the Minister’s suggestion that anyone who votes against it is antisemitic is just a disgrace and something he should withdraw.”
“The hon. Member is making an important speech. Is he aware of the AI system that, in identifying potential company chief executive officers, would identify only male CEOs because of the data that had been input? Even though there is existing legislation, we have to be mindful of the data that is going into new technology and AI systems.”
“In evidence to the Committee—of which I am a member— the Met said that there was no bias in its facial recognition system, whereas its own report states that there is bias in the system, and a bias with regard to identifying black and Asian women. In fact, the results are 86% incorrect. There are lots of ways of selling the benefits of facial recognition. Other countries across Europe have banned certain facial recognition, while the UK has not. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that we need to look a lot more deeply into current applications of facial recognition?”
“It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, of which I am a member. I congratulate the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) on securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee on allowing it. I used to be a computer programmer, so I like tech— I need to put that out there. This debate on AI follows the categories of three types of people. I compare those three types of people to some friends that I used to go out partying with. One would get completely wasted; one would just sit in the corner and not want to get involved; and I would be the driver, so I would stay sober but enjoy the party. In this debate I like to think that I am staying sober, enjoying the party and making sure that everyone, myself included, gets home safely.”
“I had a meeting with Mark Rowley the other day and, to be honest, he did not really understand the implications, which is a worry. Like many people, I could easily get carried away and get drunk with this AI debate, but I am the driver. I need to stay sober to make sure everyone gets home safely.”
“When we received evidence from a representative from the Met police, she said that she has nothing to hide so what is the problem, for instance, in having the fingerprint, if you like, of her face everywhere that she goes? I am sure that we all have either curtains or blinds in our houses. If we are not doing anything illegal, why have curtains or blinds? Why not just let everyone look into our house? Most abuse happens in the home so, by the same argument, surely allowing everyone to look into each other’s houses would eliminate a lot of abuse. In our country we have the right to privacy, and people should have that right. Our digital fingerprints should not be taken without our consent, as we have policing by consent. The Met’s use of live facial recognition and retrospective facial recognition is worrying.”
“All these things have been put in place piecemeal to ensure that personal data is protected. If we lower the protection in the definition of what is personal data, that will mean that any company can use our personal data for anything it wants and we will have very limited recourse to stop that. At the end of the day, our personal data is ultimately what powers many AI systems, and it will be left ripe for exploitation and abuse. The proposals are woefully inadequate. The scale of the challenge is vast, but instead of reining in this technology, the Government’s approach is to let it off the leash, and that is problematic.”
“Government’s first job is to protect their citizens, so we should protect citizens now from the dangers of AI. Harms are already arising from AI. The Government’s recently published White Paper takes the view that strong, clear protections are simply not needed. I think the Government are wrong on that. Strong, clear protections are most definitely needed—and needed now. Even if the Government just catch up with what is happening in Europe and the US, that would be more than we are doing at the moment. We need new, legally binding regulations. The White Paper currently has plans to water down data rights and data protection. The Data Protection and Digital Information (No. 2) Bill paints an alarming picture. It will redefine what counts as personal data.”
“It is not a good thing and there is an apparent trade-off between progress and safety. I think we should always err on the side of safety and ethics. Progress will always happen; we cannot stop progress. Companies will always invest in AI. It is the future, so we do not have to worry about that—people will run away with that. What we have to do is ensure that we protect people’s safety, because otherwise, instead of being industry leaders in the UK, we will be known as the country that has shoddy or poor practices. Nobody really wants that. There are countries that are outlawing how facial recognition is used, for instance, but we are not doing that in the UK, so we are increasingly looking like the outlier in this discussion and protection around AI.”
“I believe that we need a digital Bill of Rights that would outlaw the most dangerous uses of AI, which should have no place in a real democracy. The Government should commit to strengthening the rights of the public so that they know what is AI-generated or whether facial recognition—the digital imprint of their face—is being used in any way. We know, for instance, that the Met police have on file millions of people’s images—innocent people—that should not be there. Those images should be taken off the police database. If an innocent person’s face is on the database and, at some point, that is put on a watch list, the domino effect means that they could be accused of doing something they have not done. The UK’s approach to AI currently diverges from that of our closest trading partners, and I find that quite strange.”
“At the beginning, I thought it reasonable for the Government to say, “We will just expand legislation that we already have,” but when the Committee was taking evidence, I realised that we need to go a great deal further—that we need something like a digital Bill of Rights so that people understand and know their rights, and so that those rights are protected. At the moment, that is not the case. There was a really stark example when we heard some information in regard to musicians, music and our voices. Our voices are currently not protected, so with the advancements of deepfake, anybody in this House can have their voice attached to something using deepfake and we would have no legal recourse, because at the moment our voices are not protected.”
“It will become so easy just to accept what the system is telling us, and people who are already marginalised will become further marginalised. Many, if not most, AI-powered systems have been shown to contain bias, whether against people of colour, women, people with disabilities or those with other protected characteristics. For instance, in the case of passport applications, the system keeps on saying that a person’s eyes are closed when in fact they have a disability. We must ensure that we measure the impact on the public’s rights and freedoms alongside the advances in AI. We cannot become too carried away—or drunk—with all the benefits, without thinking about everything else.”
“We should be worried about this, because in 10 or 20 years’ time it will be too late to explain that BMI was always discriminatory against women, Asian men and black people. It is important for us to get this right now. I recognise the huge benefits that AI can have, but I want to stress the need to stay sober and recognise the huge risks as well. When we ask certain organisations where they get their data from, the response is very opaque: they do not tell us where they are getting their data from. I understand that some of them get their mass data scraping from sites such as Reddit, which is not really where people would go to become informed on many things. If we do not take this seriously, we will be automating discrimination.”
“However, as I said when evidence was being given to the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, even something as simple as body mass index, which is used in the medical world, is a flawed measurement. The use of BMI in the building of AI will integrate that bias into anything that the AI produces. Members may not be aware that the BMI scale was created not by a doctor but by an astronomer and mathematician in the 1800s. What he was trying to do was identify l’homme moyen—the average man—in statistical terms. The scale was never meant to be used in the medical world in the way that it is. People can be prevented from having certain medical procedures if their BMI is too high. The Committee was given no evidence that we would rule out, or mitigate, a flawed system such as BMI in the medical profession and the medical world.”
“The UK government has been actively engaging with the tech industry, academia, and civil society to understand the implications of AI and develop a regulatory framework that promotes innovation while safeguarding human rights and values.” That, to me, is an illustration of the fact that even AI itself recognises that there are some issues with AI. It shows that we need clear regulation, which we do not quite have at the moment. There is still time for the Government’s White Paper to change that, and I hope that debates of this kind will enable change to happen. Many Members have referred to the use of AI for medical advances, and quantum computers will certainly enable medicines and medical solutions to be found much more quickly.”
“While this technology has shown tremendous potential in various fields, including language translation, chatbots, and content creation, it also presents significant ethical, social, and legal challenges. One of the main concerns about large language model AI is its potential to perpetuate biases and discrimination. If the data used to train these models are biased, the AI will learn and replicate those biases in its output, leading to harmful outcomes. Moreover, these models have the ability to generate highly realistic but entirely fake text, which could be used to spread disinformation, manipulate public opinion, and even harm individuals. Therefore, I believe that the regulation and governance of large language model AI are essential to ensure that it is used ethically and responsibly.”
“I do not think my friend would look kindly on me if I said their name. I always made sure they got home safely—that is the main thing. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) told me the other day that she asked ChatGPT to write a letter from her to constituents on the dangers of AI. This is what ChatGPT churned out: “Dear [Constituent], Thank you for reaching out to me with your concerns about large language model AI. I share your worries about the potential risks that this technology poses and I appreciate the opportunity to address them. As you may be aware, large language model AI is an advanced form of artificial intelligence that can generate human-like text by training on vast amounts of data.”
“The hon. Lady is absolutely right on these concerns, especially as regards the Home Office. Big Brother Watch’s “Biometric Britain” report spoke about how much money the Home Office is paying to companies, but we do not know who they are. If we do not know who these companies are, we will not then know how they gather, develop and use their data. Does she think it is important that we know who is getting money for what?”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: AI does not create; it generates. It generates from the data that is being inputted. The simplified version is “rubbish in, rubbish out”—it is more complex than that, but that is the simplest way of saying it. If we do not sort out the biases before we put in the data, the data will be biased.”
“I thank the Leader of the House and all Members for their warm words about the Windrush generation. Actions speak louder than words, and as the right hon. Lady said, the personal impact that Government policies have on individuals can be forgotten. With 74% of claims not being resolved, more people are likely to die before their claims are resolved. Will the Leader of the House not just speak to, but work with the Home Secretary to simplify and accelerate the Windrush compensation scheme?”
“Maya Angelou said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” The Home Secretary has showed us who she is time and again. Just 9% of stop and searches yield offensive weapons or items linked to burglary. No other organisation would ramp up something that yielded a result of only 9%. Scotland was the knife capital of the UK. It reduced its knife crime by 69% by using a public health approach. Why is the Home Secretary not using a public health approach?”
“Johnson knew he was lying. We all knew he was lying, and he knew we knew he was lying, but the system protected him. We have got to change the system, so that the system does not protect the liar or the lies, but protects Parliament and our democracy.”
“It is ironic that two years ago I was thrown out of Parliament for calling Johnson a liar, when if he was not such a weasel and had not resigned, he would have been thrown out of this place for 90 days for lying. Okay, yeah, it would have made me a little bit happy to see him thrown out of the House, but ultimately, it is not about that; it is about our system in this place, and we have to do better. It was not easy breaking the conventions of the House. I got a lot of abuse from some Members on the Government Benches, saying, “How dare she? Bleurgh bleurgh bleurgh.” [Laughter.] That was a Jacob Rees-Mogg impression. I talk about the aftermath of what that was like in my book, “A Purposeful Life”. Sometimes I wonder what the purpose of Parliament is if we cannot hold Ministers to account and if we are just going to allow them to lie.”
“We must be honest with ourselves and say, “We have got to challenge the rules of this House if they are not working.” We have to challenge the system of this House if it is not working. It is a nonsense that in this House we cannot call somebody a liar if they are lying. People say, “It will degrade the House and everyone will be calling each other a liar.” If people do not want to be called a liar, do not lie—tell the truth. That is the solution to the problem. The truth must prevail and integrity must be restored. All Members of this House are guardians of our democracy, and I am sorry, but we are not doing a good job; we must do much better, and this report does bring some of that back to us.”
“We sit here time and time again and see Ministers coming to the Dispatch Box. We all stand up and say, “That is not true, that is not true”, and we are told that we are not allowed to say that. We have to say, “They have inadvertently misled the House and they will have to come back to the House to correct the record”, but they never come back. They tell a lie, they sit down with a goofy grin on their face, they walk out and they never come back to correct the record, and that is a problem for our democracy. This House must be able to speak truth to power. Honourable Members of this House must be able to stand up and say, “That is incorrect”, otherwise what is the point or the purpose? We must also not be so obsessed with the archaic rules of this House.”
“The way we do that is by demanding transparency, honesty and integrity from those who hold positions of power and those who stand at the Dispatch Box. The Leader of the House gave an impassioned speech saying just that. We must not tolerate the casual disregard for truth that has become the hallmark of this Government. It should shame us all. We are honourable Members of Parliament. It is not just a title, but something we should hold dear. We should be honourable in what we do in this place. We should be honourable to the people we serve, because they have elected us. Democracy demands honourable conduct, and we have not seen much of that over the past few years. If we allow lies to go unchecked and deceit to become the norm, our democracy begins to crumble, and that is what has been happening.”
“We all owe a debt of gratitude to the Privileges Committee and its Chair, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who has had to sit through some of the strangest speeches I have heard in this House. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for mentioning Mina Smallman, who is an amazing woman who continues to fight to keep the memory of her daughters alive and to change the system, whether that be the police or other systems. This debate is all about democracy. The trust that should exist between the Government and those who are governed has been badly damaged. The question to every single Member of this House must be: how do we repair that damage?”
“I have re-tabled my early-day motion on that, which I first tabled in 2021, when it got 105 signatures. I hope more Members will sign that re-tabled early-day motion about how we talk about the ministerial code of conduct. To end, the parliamentary record shows that I was asked to withdraw from Parliament for calling Johnson a liar. I will be writing to the House asking whether that can be expunged, or whether some kind of amendment or addendum can go beside it to say that it was actually correct and he was a liar. I will do that, and I put that on record. I will end on Winston Churchill, who I understand is Boris Johnson’s favourite politician and who said: “There can be no democracy without truth.””
“Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), is no longer in her place, but she said that as a Prime Minister it was difficult to make decisions about friends. I understand that, because a Prime Minister might make a decision about somebody, then find themselves standing with them in the queue in the Tea Room and feeling bad about it. I completely understand where the former Prime Minister was coming from. The solution should be that we take that responsibility away from the Prime Minister and make it the responsibility of the House to decide when somebody breaks the ministerial code, because we cannot have, as we did, the Prime Minister deciding who is lying and who is not lying, when he was the chief liar himself. That responsibility should become the House’s responsibility.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Some people’s privilege extends beyond this House. When they lie in this House, they also have the privilege of their mates in the newspapers and the media then protecting that lie and that privilege. They put that coat of protection around them. Our democracy needs to be strong enough to stop that happening and to expose it. As we get ever closer to a general election, Ministers will try to whip up moral panic and begin to spread further lies. They will push this fake culture war, some of which we have seen on display today. We cannot wait two years for a Privileges Committee to find them guilty of lying or misleading the House, because that would be too late. The question has to be: what do we do, where do we go and who will stand up for democracy and truth? The former Prime Minister, the right hon.”
“I agree with the hon. Member that we have had firm foundations in the UK. I think that we were ranked as No. 3 in the list of LGBTQI+ friendly countries, but we have fallen down that list quite considerably. Can she think of any possible reason why that might be?”
“My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Yesterday, I hosted the Albert Kennedy Trust in Parliament. The trust recalled the tragic circumstance that 80% of people referred to it have been sleeping homeless and been kicked out since the Government started their culture war. Does he agree that things need to get better?”
“It is deeply concerning to see the blatant could-be politicisation of policies and organisations intended to ensure the fairness and security of our democratic process. A recent report by Omnisis for Byline Times indicated that the new rules may have deterred up to 2 million people from voting in the May elections. The justification for the policy was to combat voter fraud. It seems to me that there is a real possibility that the only fraud could be this Government. Can you advise me, Madam Deputy Speaker, whether I should report the matter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the police?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am deeply troubled by the recent admissions by the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), regarding the introduction of mandatory voter ID, which have raised the prospect that Ministers may have misled the country about the intentions of the voter ID policy in the Elections Act 2022. Yesterday, the former Minister admitted that the proposal was a deliberate attempt to manipulate electoral outcomes in favour of the Conservative party, a strategy he termed gerrymandering —in other words, the deliberate bending of electoral rules or boundaries for partisan gain—although he said that it had backfired in the recent local elections.”
“Yes, I have notified him; I informed him I was raising the issue based on comments that he made yesterday at the National Conservatism conference.”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) asked the Prime Minister to correct the record as he misled the House last week— [ Interruption. ]”
“Okay, he inadvertently or unintentionally misled the House last week. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister has inadvertently misled the House this week when he claimed that the former Tory Prime Minister built more houses than the current Labour Mayor. Official statistics are not open to interpretation. Last year, the number of new homes in London was up 22% compared with the Tory Mayor’s final year. More than 23,000 new City Hall-funded council homes have been started since 2018, with more than 10,000 in the last year alone. Latest figures show that London started more than double the number of council homes last year than the whole of the rest of England, and Sadiq, the Labour Mayor of London, has delivered more than 10 times the number of the previous Tory Mayor— [ Interruption. ]”
“Why is the Home Secretary not taking any responsibility in her role in the Met? If she does not want the responsibility, for goodness’ sake, will she just stand down?”
“I am struggling to establish the point of the Home Secretary when it comes to the Met. With this hands-off approach, it is as though nothing is the her responsibility. When the Mayor of London got rid of the last commissioner, the Home Secretary continually attacked the Mayor of London’s correct decision. We have heard about all the other reports, including the 1981 Scarman report on the Brixton riots, the 1999 Stephen Lawrence report, the 2021 IOPC report on Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, and the 2021 report on Daniel Morgan, which found that the police were institutionally corrupt. The IOPC report on the Stephen Port murders found that the police were homophobic, and some of them are still working in Barking. Operation Hotton made 15 recommendations; those recommendations have still not been implemented in the Met.”
“Will the Chancellor work closely with London Councils and with me as chair of the London parliamentary Labour party to ensure that we broaden the balance of revenue-raising powers available to councils in the longer term, to improve financial resilience and reduce reliance on any single funding stream? Some Government Members have said today that they are sometimes confused about what we on the Opposition side of the House stand for: I want to reassure them by reaffirming that the Labour party and London Labour members stand for a moral crusade for making our country better. I do hope the Government will take some of my points on board.”
“Is there money, too, to provide additional investment for the refurbishment of existing housing stock to treat damp and mould and address fire and building safety issues? Last time Labour came into government it had to put a lot of money into making social housing right. It is especially important in London to remove all restrictions on how councils can use right to buy receipts, to sustain affordable housing delivery without placing additional demands on the public purse. These are all things that could be done if we had a bit of imagination from the Government. London’s devolution settlement is over 20 years old. The Government’s commitment to deepen devolution should apply equally to London as elsewhere, to enable London boroughs and the Mayor of London to tackle the 21st-century problems facing the capital.”
“Because of the pandemic and the current cost of living crisis, local authorities will have to make savings of at least £100 million next year to balance their budgets. That is not sustainable for local authorities such as mine in Brent. We have a homelessness problem, too. Shelter recently reported that 1 in 58 Londoners are homeless. Will the Chancellor increase the local housing allowance rates, which have been frozen since 2020, to help tackle homelessness, and also increase discretionary housing payment allocations? These are all steps the Chancellor could have taken if he was really interested in investing in growth in our country, because local authorities can only do so much.”
“London’s businesses are struggling in the face of increasing labour and energy costs and sustained high inflation. Will the Chancellor commit to keeping the energy bill relief scheme under review and materially improving the discount for businesses, and will he reform the apprenticeship levy to make it easier and cheaper for employers to recruit and retain talent? As we have heard, many employers are buying equipment rather than investing in people. As the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, we should reintroduce the VAT retail export scheme too, to make London and other UK destinations more competitive for overseas shoppers. That would add a net gain to the public purse.”
“I know the devil will be in the detail, but the pension announcement, as far as I can make out, is for the wealthy—those who can afford to put away £60,000 a year. It also seems like the only permanent tax cut in the Budget is for those who are very wealthy. The Chancellor could have stopped all the strikes if he had only made an announcement on public sector workers’ pay today, but he chose not to do that. As we have heard from other Opposition Members, there was also nothing on capital gains tax or income tax. That is very strange. The UK economy cannot be improved without London’s contribution. London Councils has five key priorities: housing and homelessness; health and care; supporting businesses; helping London deliver net zero; and greater devolution to local government.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken), and I actually agree with something that she said about VAT. While I am in a positive mood, I thank the Chancellor for his announcement on prepayment meters, because I have been championing that campaign for the past seven years. I feel like there is a lot missed in this Budget. At the moment we are facing a profit crisis, while many people are struggling. The Office for Budget Responsibility has stated that real household income is due to fall by 5.7% in the next two years, which is the largest two-year fall since records began. It will be lower than pre-pandemic levels. The Chancellor has missed a huge trick here.”
“When I was a teenager, I used to question why there are so many ways to tell the relationship status of a woman—Mrs, Miss, Ms—but there is just a Mr. I am still wondering that as a grown woman. Articles always include the age of the woman after her name, but only sometimes the age of the man. Why is that? Our laws and language are designed to keep women vulnerable and exposed in a particular way.”
“Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) read out those names today and that list never gets shorter. This is an epidemic.”