Dame Chi Onwurah
MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West · Labour · United Kingdom
“An extraordinary debate is going on right now inside and outside AI companies about whether the possibility of AI destroying humanity is more or less than 10%. The European Union is moving ahead with a comprehensive AI regulatory framework, but the UK continues to rely on existing regulation.”
“The Pope also highlighted how the billions of online digital twins constitute an unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of a small number of men. Among the many consequences of the 40 years of neoliberalism repeatedly called out by the Prime Minister is a libertarian attitude to technology.”
“But this stealth digital twinning violates the integrity, uniqueness and very personhood of our constituents and of all of us. Digital twins can take many forms, from content creation algorithms and deepfakes to chatbots that reflect aspects of our personalities back at us. It is particularly worrying when children are the target.”
“The automated version of our kids will grow with them, using the power of AI to target advertising and products at them, and worse. The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee has heard about some of the tragic consequences of online grooming by algorithms and chatbots—a vulnerable boy persuaded to kill himself; a vulnerable girl fed…”
“In the arts, entertainment and tech industries, many performers are agreeing to the creation and use of digital replicas as part of their work—think of ABBA Voyage. But performers increasingly encounter unauthorised digital replicas of themselves, which pose a threat to their career, livelihood and reputation.”
“Since then, deepfakes have proliferated. The hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) was shown crossing the Floor in Parliament to join Reform, to his constituents’ consternation and his own—it was a fake. Then there were the horrendous photos of naked women and girls that Elon Musk’s AI created on demand.”
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“I thank the Minister for her comments, particularly for that final reference, the spirit of which I wholeheartedly agree with. However, I do not find her arguments against the amendment compelling, and I would like to push it to a vote. Question put, That the amendment be made.”
“I thank the Minister for her comments. It is clear from this afternoon’s debate that clause 2 does not set out what ARIA will do or achieve, or what its real function will be, but we will not oppose it standing part. Question put and agreed to. Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Michael Tomlinson.)”
“We need reassurance that the UK and the EU will work closely together without interruption or confusion, confirmation that the Government will prioritise the wellbeing of the UK audiovisual sector, and robust and substantial regulatory legislation to protect us online.”
“The Minister’s Department has stated that the online safety Bill will supersede the regulations, but as that Bill will probably not become law for another year, we have another year of uncertainty. Has the Minister assessed the impact that such uncertainty is having on the audiovisual sector? Labour will not oppose the regulations because we do not believe that the Government can legislate quickly enough to address threats to online safety and jurisdiction concerns. However, we are greatly concerned about the holes in the UK’s regulatory framework and the path that the Government are taking with our future relationship with the European Union, which should be one of collaboration and co-operation on the key subject of online safety.”
“It is startling to think that from 2010, starting with the coalition, the Government have presided over dramatic changes in the role of the internet, the web and the online world in our lives, but we have yet to see any online safety legislation. It took them nearly two years to issue a full response to their own consultation on the matter, despite huge increases in online threats because of the pandemic. I raised the threat of child abuse, online scams and misinformation in November, when I think we all agreed that legislation was way overdue. Six months later, we still have nothing beyond the promise of a reference in the Queen’s Speech. I hope that the regulations are not a further sticking plaster to hide the Government’s delaying on such a vital issue and that further delays will not materialise.”
“Failure to ensure that reciprocity is a failure of Government, and it could have implications for the UK’s online safety relationship with the European Union, making us more vulnerable. I am concerned in particular that it may affect the information our regulator receives from friends and partner agencies in Europe. Will the Minister say a little about the future working relationship between UK regulators—Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office, for example—and European Union state regulators, particularly on reciprocity? Will she promise no regression in the sharing of information that may keep us safe online? I have already touched on the reason why this is so important: the UK lacks any robust online harms legislation. The online safety Bill has been a decade in the making.”
“I understand that that is because EU states are not mandated to inform Ofcom of a breach, so the Government have decided to remove Ofcom’s mandate to inform European Union states. I think we can all agree that we would be safer if breaches were reported globally: one of the challenges of regulation in the online world is that it requires global co-operation and collaboration. The decision to stop Ofcom reporting breaches to the European Union has been made because we cannot obtain a reciprocal agreement. Did the Government seek to ensure reciprocity on the sharing of data breaches and of breach data? Have they assessed the impact of the decision on the flow of information between regulators?”
“What are the Government doing to build the regulatory framework that will protect UK citizens online? What role will the draft regulations play in that? I am sure that the Minister will refer to the online safety Bill; we look forward to more details on the timetable of its passage. The Government may have left the UK without the regulatory framework that we need, but they have assigned it a regulator, as we heard from the Minister. We do not know how broad Ofcom’s regulatory responsibilities will be—presumably they will be fleshed out in the online safety Bill, which we have yet to see—but the draft regulations do tell us one thing: Ofcom will not have a duty to inform the European Union of breaches of the AVMSD, because its duty to inform has been scaled back to a power that it “may” exercise.”
“The draft regulations and the AVMSD fail to provide a level playing field for online and offline services: they do not protect UK citizens from harmful content, either specifically for VSPs that do not have a group undertaking in the UK or generally, whereas offline broadcast services in the UK are subject to UK regulation. A significant gap has opened up in online safety legislation. UK citizens and consumers are not adequately protected from harms under the current jurisprudence and regulatory regime, and the draft regulations do nothing to address that. Analysis commissioned by the Government shows that under the current rules-of-origin approach to jurisprudence, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Dailymotion and Twitter are all outside the UK’s regulatory scope.”
“However, it is clear from the draft regulations that the relationship with respect to the definition of European works is not reciprocal: the UK has adopted the European Union’s definition without the European Union being forced to reflect or adopt any changes that the UK could make; I am not sure that in this case it could make any. Back in November, I raised jurisprudence issues. Under the current rules, a VSP will come under UK jurisdiction if it has a fixed establishment in the UK and the centre of its economic activity relating to the relevant service is based in the UK, not in an EU member state. If the VSP is not established in the UK and no EU member state has jurisdiction over it, it will come under UK jurisdiction if it has a group undertaking established in the UK.”
“It highlights the fact that, although we are still using European Union definitions, we have no say in how those definitions evolve. What guarantees has she received from the European Union that future changes to the definition of European works will not lead to the UK being excluded? What assessment has she made of the impact of such an exclusion, should it happen? Will unilateral changes by the European Union to the definition of European works be addressed in the forthcoming online safety Bill, which we have heard so much about even though we have yet to see even a draft? I would hope that future negotiations between the European Union and the UK ensure ongoing agreement on this definition.”
“Should the European Union change the definition of European works to exclude audiovisual works created in third-party states and by signatories to the European convention on transfrontier television, I believe such a change would be automatically adopted into UK law, leaving UK audiovisual works outside the 30% quota. That could create a circumstance whereby UK audiovisual products are at a disadvantage and are not considered part of European works. Can the Minister confirm whether any changes made by the EU to the definition of European works will be automatically transposed into UK law? If such a circumstance occurred, how quickly and by what means would the Government act to ensure that UK products are not placed at a disadvantage?”
“My understanding is that UK productions currently qualify as European works because the UK continues to be a signatory to the European convention on transfrontier television, and I hope the Minister will confirm that. The changes made by the SI allow the definition of European works in UK law to adapt to and adopt unilateral changes to the definition of European works by the European Union. On the one hand, this allows flexibility and removes potential legislative barriers that may arise in the future, but on the other hand, it raises concerns over sovereignty, which I am sure the Minister remembers was a key issue in the Brexit debate.”
“As part of the AVMSD’s attempt to strengthen the competitiveness of the European audiovisual industry and to promote cultural diversity and heritage in Europe—I am sure they are ambitions that we all support—the European Union identified “European works”. Such works are both linear and on-demand audiovisual media products. Under the AVMSD, 30% of on-demand programming services must be European works, so the SI laid in November brought that quota into UK law. For a product to qualify as a European work, it must originate in a member state or third-party state, or have been co-produced within a framework of agreements between the EU and third countries.”
“As the Minister said, the AVMSD introduced three key requirements for VSPs: to take measures to protect minors from content that is harmful to those under 18; to take appropriate measures to protect the general public from harmful and illegal content; and to introduce standards on advertising. It is notable that we are dependent on the directive for regulation because we do not have online harms legislation, and I want to emphasise that AVMSD should not be used as a replacement for robust UK online safety legislation. As the Minister said, the SI makes technical changes to the definition of terms and to Ofcom’s duties as a regulator, and it could potentially impact on the UK-EU working relationship. The SI includes changes to the definition of “European works”.”
“Online audiovisual media services were nowhere near as widespread or important then as they have since become, and they have been especially critical during the pandemic. Video-sharing platforms, or VSPs, which are the core of the SI, have become a major presence in the lives of many people in this country—just look at TikTok or YouTube. The SI follows on from two SIs of the same name that were laid in November and September 2020 and which put the UK’s obligations in line with the European Union’s audiovisual media services directive—AVMSD— in preparation for the end of the transition period at the end of last year.”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Elliott, and I welcome the rest of the Committee to this important statutory instrument. I thank the Minister for her opening remarks—here we are again, talking about audiovisual regulation without there being any online safety Bill in statute or in sight. To begin with, I declare an interest: as the Minister is aware, before I entered Parliament I spent six years working for Ofcom as head of technology. As she mentioned, Ofcom has responsibility with regard to this SI. During my time there, it had responsibility for regulating broadcast audiovisual services and some responsibility for online audiovisual media services, which were beginning to grow in importance—although not always legally.”
“I thank the Minister for her comments, which are enlightening. Were there discussions around maintaining a mutual reciprocal duty to co-operate on this issue?”
“I thank the Minister for her comments. I also asked about European works and whether the definition of European works could be changed to exclude the UK at a future date.”
“Newcastle United fans have long suffered from the greed and self-interest that drive premiership owners, but this attempt to turn our national game into the cash cow of a narrow elite shows just how morally bankrupt the premiership has become and how little Government care. There seem to be more rules to prevent the removal of a window frame in a listed building than the wholesale destruction of this jewel of working-class culture. Can the Secretary of State believe that the owners of these six clubs meet the fit and proper person test?”
“Last month, I held an open meeting with students in my constituency. They raised issues including financial hardship—current funding is wholly inadequate—and mental wellbeing, lack of planning, tuition fees, rent, professional accreditation and digital exclusion. This is not a question of consumer rights, as the Minister suggests; it is a question of students’ futures after the pandemic. I have written to the Secretary of State, but what does the Minister say to students in Newcastle upon Tyne Central who feel wholly abandoned by this Government?”
“So, you have milestone payments on the basis of ability to solve problem A, B or C, or of demonstrating some traction in the market. They have other benefits as well, which go beyond the non-financial. You can use relatively smaller amounts of money in a challenge prize model because you might be building up a deal flow for investors, customers and other people who you want to crowd in and bring in additional funding. They are also quite high-profile because of the nature of the competition or the race towards solving x. That means that the publicity and the promotional opportunities for innovators can be quite significant, above and beyond just the financial reward.”
“On the role of challenge prizes, challenges get used quite loosely to mean a lot of things, but what we mean by them is outcome-based funding, where you use the combination of technology foresight and insight with some creativity and understanding of how markets evolve and develop, and what opportunities might exist in the future, in order to identify quite specific problems, where there is a real ability to push things forward in innovation but where it is unclear where the most promising innovation is going to come from. For ARIA, I think that this might be quite a useful tool, because, comparatively speaking, you are dealing with relatively small amounts of money, and outcome-based challenge funding gives you a degree of focus but also allows a degree of payment on results.”
“We do not think that there is a problem, but I guess that this does present, as Ottoline has said, an opportunity for a new, smaller, dynamic agency to add to the current ecosystem. We think the advantage of ARIA would be that, because it is smaller, it might be able to generate a culture that is a bit more nimble and a bit more agile, take some more risks, look at things about diversity of innovators, and engage with types of innovation and types of innovation funding that ordinarily might be perhaps a little too high risk. It can also be a little more focused and entrepreneurial, but—to consider the second part of the question—it can also look beyond just grants and R&D tax credits, which are overwhelmingly the main way of funding innovation in the UK.”
“There has, however, as I think the Government have recognised, been an overall need to increase funding in research and development, which is why the target of 2.4% and the promised increases in Government funding are so welcome. In that context, we think that there is an opportunity to explore new avenues and do things slightly differently. Some of the opportunities that that presents, both through ARIA and more generally, is around boosting the diversity of people involved in frontier technology and innovation and improving geographical reach. If we do have a long-standing problem in the UK, it is perhaps with that feed-in to commercialisation and the connection between university R&D and patenting and things that get picked up by the private sector, so that might be something to look at.”
“The people employed at ARIA will absolutely need to understand deeply what UKRI is doing and what the opportunities are across that research base in order to deliver their vision. I would expect a very close working relationship with ARIA to allow that to happen. Tris Dyson: I would agree with quite a bit of that. Nesta Challenges produced a report in the summer called “The Great Innovation Challenge”, which we should share with you. We looked at the funding ecosystem. The current funding ecosystem is pretty good and our main funding mechanisms work quite well. It is not wasted. It includes direct financial support through bodies such as UKRI and also the Small Business Research Initiative. It also includes research and development tax credits and the effect that has.”
“They should be able to experiment with different ways of funding research, including, for example, the challenge model, which Tris is such an expert on. There is a whole range of opportunities. That is how I see it working. It is a small, agile agency that will bring together these visionary individuals to add something on top of a very high-functioning system. It is not about fixing a problem; it is about adding something new at the edge of the edge to push forward those frontiers. I absolutely agree that it is very important that activity is properly rooted in the research base for which I and UKRI are responsible, because it will depend totally on that research base.”
“I hope that ARIA will do what you might call an extreme or particularly transformative, visionary version of that focus activity, so it will work in a different way from the way in which we typically work. Because of our incredibly broad responsibility for the system, we tend to work in a way that asks the system, in a very broad and open way, how it can best deliver the things that we think need to happen, whereas ARIA will work on the programme manager model, so it will identify a small cadre of visionary leaders who will have extraordinary ideas, we hope, to drive forward the edge of the edge, transformative, visionary ideas, and they will hopefully be empowered to work in very different, agile ways to take forward those kinds of ideas. That is quite experimental.”
“It is also our responsibility to fund the really important work that perhaps does not fall into that transformative, high-risk, high-reward category, but without which the benefits of that high-risk, high-reward research will not be realised and the foundations for the next transformative ideas will not be built. I also have to think about the connectivity in the system, how to join it up and make it all work effectively. Then I have to think about how we can take that and focus it on particular challenges that we face in the country. The work that UKRI does seeks to balance all of those needs and support all of them to create a really high-functioning system for the UK.”
“I have to think about the people—do we have the right kinds of people in the system, the right mix, the right diversity, the right set of skills, and the right career trajectories and pathways through the system? I have to think about infrastructures—do we have the right balance of institutes, universities, catapults and national facilities, as well as high-quality equipment within institutions and universities, for example? Are we funding the right mix of ideas, starting from the really high-risk, high-gain research, which will be the focus of ARIA?”
“Professor Leyser: I do not actually see ARIA as being about fixing a problem; I see it as adding something new and extra to an already very high-quality research and innovation system. As I have said, UKRI is the major public funder for research and innovation. We invest £8 billion of public money every year in research innovation, and we have a major responsibility to act as stewards for the whole system in the UK to ensure that it has the right capabilities and capacity to conduct the research and innovation that we need for the kind of inclusive and sustainable knowledge economy that is so important for our country. As CEO of UKRI, I have to think about all parts of the system.”
“Q Given that this is my first contribution, may I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey? I look forward to working with all members of the Committee on the Bill, which is important for our future research and prosperity. I welcome our two witnesses. I have one general question for both of you, given your broad range of experience in research and development: what is the problem that the Advanced Research and Invention Agency is fixing? Professor Dame Ottoline, do you have a clear understanding of the proposed working relationship between ARIA and UK Research and Innovation, and should that be put on a formal footing to provide clarity? Mr Dyson, Nesta Challenges is based on challenges, so what is the role of challenges and missions with regard to the work of ARIA in driving high-risk, high-reward research?”
“We get about 30 requests a month and we have a team who deal with those requests and also the other data access requests, and so on, that are part of our responsibility. I am happy to be able to do that. I think that is important for public money, and there is a judgment call about the burden of administration of that, relative to the benefits in transparent use of public funding.”
“Those programmes tend to operate on a slightly different basis in the more traditional open call route that Tris describes with grant applications and so on. Again, I would see ARIA as an additional small, agile, free agency that can creatively identify and capture those transformative opportunities that, indeed, are not necessarily thought about in the broader system, and reach parts of the system that our current system does not as successfully reach. It needs to be very experimental and I suppose from that point of view it is not the place where you invest the responsibility for delivering major national priorities. We are very committed to our freedom of information responsibilities.”
“The whole ability of this organisation to operate in this edge-of-the-edge really visionary way that we are all very excited about is critically dependent on those people; and they are in very short supply. So I think the idea of leaving it open to that team of people to decide their focus, to pick the projects that are at the edge of the edge, as it is described, is a really important element. I also view the notion of this small, agile additional agency as having that freedom in a very positive way. The needs of the country—the priorities that the Government and Ministers set to solve particular challenges for the nation—fall very much within the UKRI remit, and indeed we have very successful programmes doing exactly that, including in a challenge-led model.”
“That means that you need a combination of, obviously, people who understand frontier science and technology; but then you also need a degree of creativity and insight as to what the opportunities might be. You need people also who understand the strengths and abilities within the UK, in order to build on that. So, yes, we are significant advocates of the idea that you would have a small, dynamic, empowered team; but they will also need to be relatively ruthless to stop funding things that do not work quite early on, and stick with things that do. That will have to be a mindset, or a regimen, that is baked in from the start. Professor Leyser: I absolutely agree with what Tris has said. I think it is widely acknowledged that the success of ARIA—and in many ways the rate-limiting factor—is going to be finding those people.”
“When you ask people about the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the US Advanced Research Projects Agency and so on, you get quite different answers as to what they do—that is probably because they do so much—but one of the common responses is that they have very empowered programme managers who understand and know their fields and are able to pursue agendas with a degree of freedom. I think that has got to be a model that an agency like this—if it is going to be higher risk-taking and a bit more agile, and is going to look at funding innovation that you might ordinarily overlook—needs to be able to pursue, but it does mean that you need to get the right team in place and empower them appropriately.”
“How will that address our country’s research needs, and do you think that the Secretary of State should have responsibility for identifying the overarching missions that ARIA looks at? Dame Ottoline, there has been controversy with you over exempting ARIA from meeting freedom of information requests. UKRI meets freedom of information requests. Do you find them to be burdensome in going about your objectives, and what proportion of your budget is taken up by them? I will go to Tris first this time, if that is okay. Tris Dyson: I think that the question about leaving it up to the team that is put together at ARIA is a very good one.”
“Q Thank you very much for those responses. It is great to hear such support for our existing science base. A lot of the discussion around the Bill has been critical of the bureaucracy associated with current research, which has served us so well, particularly in this pandemic. Both of your responses referred to the role of ARIA in looking at new areas, particularly having new areas of focus that may have been missed and addressing them in different ways. The document of intent that the Secretary of State published leaves the choice of areas of research or the overall mission to the programme managers rather than the chief executive of ARIA, whoever that might be.”
“Those cannot be straightforwardly dictated. They are not to do with those outside requirements; they are to do with what the opportunities are. The smallness of the agency is to do with what proportion of your R&D spend you put into that activity, given that we have major national priorities that need substantial investment, where the target is driven by those national priorities. It is an opportunity—”
“Q There are two contradictions that I have spotted in what you are saying. Dame Ottoline, you talked about ARIA needing to deliver transformational research and outcomes, but at the same time you said that it is too small to be entrusted with society’s great challenges. Should not the public interest determine what that transformation is? Mr Dyson, you talked about ARIA having a new diversity of funders—regional as well—yet at the same time we hear that it has got to be people who know people and have lots of experience, and we do not have diversity in the base now. Twenty seconds each on those contradictions. Professor Leyser: I did not say that it would be too small. My point is that if it is really working on the edge of the edge, it is about capturing the extraordinary opportunities that these people see in the system.”
“If we do not have enough of a national debate on that, and if we do not have enough of a rethink in Government on things like procurement—the everyday of what Government does—and if we do not have strong systems underlying an ARIA, such as health and energy systems and so on, it will be really hard for this agency to be successful.”
“They were not saying, “Oh, we need a technology.” They needed to solve a problem. The problem at the time was getting the satellites to communicate, and the internet was a solution for that. There were also many other experiments being done at the time, some of which failed. It is about that kind of willingness to take risks, but those being purpose-driven and problem-oriented. The first question we should be asking in the UK is: what are the big problems? What questions are we asking that would even require an ARIA?”
“Again, that procurement side means that it is fundamentally linked to how Government works; it is not separate from Government. Thirdly, it has always been linked with a vision or mission of what is to be done. Again, in the wartime scenario, it is clear that the DARPA model was mainly about military goals, but the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, or ARPA-E, is about renewable energy and a green transition, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Health is about strengthening the health system and going after big health innovations. What questions are we asking in the UK that an ARPA-H and ARPA-E or an ARIA would actually resolve? If we think of one of the biggest successes of DARPA, which is of course the internet, they did not obsess about the internet.”
“It is precisely that kind of rare moment where you can do high-risk, high-bet research, very much linked between the basic and the applied; it is neither basic nor applied. Fundamentally, where it has been successful—let us not forget that other countries have also tried this and it has not always been successful—is when it is on the back of a strong system. For example, DARPA in the US would have failed miserably had there not also been a strong military and defence system. Secondly, it has to work across Government. DARPA in the US, for example, works with the small business innovation research programme, a procurement programme across all the different Departments, which set aside about 3% of their budgets to do purpose-driven research that brings in, for example, small and medium-sized enterprises.”
“Similarly, Professor Wilsdon and Professor Bond, based on your work on research and innovation systems—particularly in a UK context—what benefits will ARIA bring and what needs to change in order to improve it? Professor Mazzucato: Thank you so much for the question and for inviting me to give evidence. Without going into the history of the DARPA model—I am sure you have done that already—I think the really important thing is to ask what it is about the UK system that an ARIA could give benefit to. We need to remember that the whole point of having a DARPA or ARIA-type institution is actually to provide that kind of purpose-driven approach to innovation. It is not a replacement for blue-sky research, funded in the United States by the National Science Foundation or in the UK by the research councils.”
“Q I thank our witnesses for taking the time to join us today and bringing us the benefit of your considerable expertise and experience. Professor Mazzucato, you wrote the groundbreaking book “The Entrepreneurial State” and the more recent “Mission Economy”—perhaps there is a clue in the title, in terms of the emphasis on the benefits that mission-orientated research can bring. Indeed, many thought that this new agency, ARIA, was based on some of your work, yet at the same time it does not seem to reflect some of the important context that you set out for it. Can you tell us whether it will achieve the benefits that you set out in your work? What needs to change? What should the Bill Committee look at changing in order to ensure that that can happen?”
“I do not have a particular vision to sell you, but those visions map on to the prize and the things that you would expect the CBI or the Royal Academy of Engineering to argue for. If you set something up without resolving that first, you are moving it to the site of the leadership. It is a recipe for capture by particular interests in the system, which I think would be regrettable and quite distorting of the role that this thing is supposed to play, which is to be added to existing things. I worry generally about the process, as someone who is perfectly happy to support the idea. I don’t think it is being executed in an optimal way to achieve the outcomes that the Government wish to see.”
“The final point I would make is that in relying on appointing the leadership as the route to answering the question, all you do is move the source of the problem. If the Government have not been able to resolve the question of what it is for, how do we identify who the right leaders are? We have not yet decided what this thing is for and where it operates in terms of the scale of basic to applied. Does it have domain focuses? I don’t see how you can find the right people. If you do find people, how do you avoid it simply becoming a tool, a plaything, of their prior interests and priorities? In today’s line-up of witnesses, you are going to hear a number of compelling visions from different people for what this thing could do.”
“I agree with Mariana that the role of Government in setting up a new agency is surely to undertake and co-ordinate with the public and wider society a discussion of what this would be for—what big priorities we have as UK society to which a new agency can be directed. I am fully in favour of a new agency. I think there are lots of arguments, as we have heard already from Ottoline Leyser and Tris Dyson, that in a system that is expanding and doubling its budget over a short period of time, there is definitely scope in the budget to do new things, and I would be wholly in favour of that. Without that clarity, we essentially run the risk of setting it up and then there being a delayed period before it actually does anything very effective.”