YouSaid · the spoken record
Dawn Butler
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On the record 2005–2026
hansard
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“Q10. I thank the Prime Minister for meeting my constituent Noam. It has been 40 days since his mum, Ada Sagi, was kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October. We all condemn Hamas’s actions and fight for the return of all hostages. Noam wants the language of love to be louder than the language of hate. Some 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, more than 4,000 of them children. International law is important. Does the Prime Minister agree that we can support Israel but also call out breaches of international law?”
House of Commons15 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In his reply, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston), failed to provide a substantive and specific answer to my specific question. It is not acceptable for Ministers to reply with obfuscation and avoidance, and I am increasingly concerned that that is becoming the norm in response to parliamentary questions. I seek your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker, on how Members can ensure that in future we get clear, concise and correct responses from the Government.”
House of Commons15 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It has recently come to light that a Conservative donor’s firm has been awarded an £11.5 million contract to supply schools affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete with temporary classrooms. David Wernick of Wernick Buildings Ltd, a Tory councillor and previous chair of a Conservative association, has donated £71,000 to the Tories and won Government contracts with a combined total of £20 million. I wish I could say it shocks me, Madam Deputy Speaker, but given this Government’s record, it does not. On 5 September, I asked a written question to the Department for Education, asking specifically for details of the portacabin providers it had contracted to provide that temporary accommodation. I stated clearly that I wanted the names of the firms contracted.”
House of Commons15 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I thank the Minister for that response. If he could please provide information on whether any competition took place before the award of the contract, that would be useful.”
House of Commons15 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Noam Sagi, his wife Michal and their son are here today to watch you give your statement, Prime Minister. Ada Sagi, Noam’s mum, was taken hostage from her home by Hamas on Saturday 7 October, and is currently being held hostage in Gaza. Ada booked a ticket to the UK to celebrate her 75th birthday. Noam has written to the Prime Minister to ask for his immediate intervention and assistance. Joe Biden has made personal calls to his citizens. I ask the Prime Minister if he will please—remember, the family are watching—spare just five minutes to have a quick conversation with them.”
House of Commons16 October 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a related point, Mr Deputy Speaker, do you also agree it is important that Members co-operate fully with any research into parliamentarians’ links to the transatlantic slave trade?”
House of Commons4 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is important to note that anything said in this House is noted by Hansard in perpetuity. Can you please clarify whether it is in order for Members of Parliament to ask for their family history to be forgotten? The family of former MP for Eddisbury Antoinette Sandbach were deeply involved in the slave trade and amassed wealth as a result of this brutality. The former Member has threatened the University of Cambridge with legal action after an historian spoke of her ancestors’ role in the slave trade. While her recent public apology for their role is welcome and necessary, those who sit in this House should not use their position to silence those who shine a light on the horrors of the past.”
House of Commons4 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Baroness Lawrence said: “Not a single police officer lost his job, or will lose his pension, or pay a fine or spend a day behind bars whilst I will continue to grieve the loss of my son. This CPS decision has caused me immense distress and little thought has been given to me as a mother who has lost her son. This is a disgrace.” Justice delayed is justice denied. It is time that justice is delivered.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is almost like somebody did not want to offend the murderer or hold them to account, so they waited till they were dead before admitting that they were involved in the murder of Stephen Lawrence. It is as insulting as it is offensive. To think that nothing will be done about it—we cannot allow that, especially not in this place. I will end on some words from Baroness Lawrence. In her unique, dignified way—it is incredible—she said that she has been left “bitterly disappointed” by the fact that four former Metropolitan police officers will not face charges of misconduct in public life over their handling of the initial six weeks of the 1993 investigation. One report said that they are old. I do not care how old they are; they should stand trial and be accountable for what they did. They should not be living on a fat police pension.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What may have been considered speculation during the early years of the investigation can now be classed as fact. When people were saying that the Lawrences were being surveilled, the police said that was not true. When people were saying that the police were being racist, we were told that was not true. Now we know it is all fact. The catalogue of errors is a testament to the failed institution of the Metropolitan police, which has been resistant to well-overdue reform. There are too many errors for it to be just an error; it is institutional. Just imagine: as we have heard, information about one of the key suspects was not followed up until two decades later, when he was dead.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is not to say that all police officers are corrupt, racist, homophobic or misogynistic—they are not—but the institution is. If we want to make the police service better for the good police officers, we have to change the institution. We also have to change all the institutions that surround the justice system and are underpinned by it, including the courts and the IOPC. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham said, it is now patently evident that those who were tasked with carrying out a public duty of great importance and significance following Stephen’s murder failed gravely to meet the standards that anyone would have expected. In no way do the years that have passed dull the desire to delve deeper into what now seems to be the very murky culture that pervaded the Metropolitan police at the time of Stephen’s murder.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To be honest, if the police were a bank account, they would be in severe deficit. We are policed by consent. With every interaction with a citizen they either add to the bank account or withdraw, and the Met police are in debt. My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) said that perhaps the Met police should be dismantled. I think the work that needs to be done on the Met cannot be done by anybody who has served in the Met. Cressida Dick was not a good commissioner, and Mark Rowley is slowly losing my confidence. The work that needs to be done is so deep that it needs an independent person from outside who will not be scared by the threats against them by members of the police service who want to keep the status quo.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If you can’t name it, you can’t fix it. The Government’s determination to have a fake war and say that there is no such thing as institutional racism is a disgrace. The Government’s first job should be to protect its citizens—all citizens—and they fail to do that time and again. Let me be clear: it is a matter of national importance that our public institutions are held to account in order to meet and maintain the highest standards and to continue to be held in esteem. It is not just, “Well, that’s the Metropolitan police.” Some people feel protected; some are over-policed, under-protected and underserved. The Lawrence family are an exemplar family, but it has taken its toll. Because they were not able to shame them in any way, it is still continuing. The police talk about their reputation.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If we cannot highlight what is wrong with society and get it changed, what is the point? Thirty years later, the Casey report has highlighted that the Metropolitan police is still institutionally racist. The current commissioner does not like that term. Well, I do not like the term, but I also do not like what it does. I do not like the effects of institutional racism and its consequences for the black community. I do not like the fact that black people are discriminated against more than any other group because of institutional racism. I do not like the fact that black people are five times more likely to die in police custody than their white counterparts. I do not like the fact that black people get convicted at a higher rate than their white counterparts for comparable offences. That is institutional racism.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They were cocky, and they were cocksure, because they knew they were protected by the Metropolitan police—the people that should have protected the innocent, all of us. Those murderers were protected and they knew it; they showed it. I did not realise how I would feel on that day, but if I had had eggs in my hand I would have thrown them and whatever else I had. Having to witness that undeserved arrogance and privilege was shocking and heartbreaking. It was absolutely palpable in the air, and that is why it kicked off. As we stand here, 30 years since Stephen’s life was brutally taken, his memory and legacy live on through the work of the Stephen Lawrence trust and the work of the Lawrence family, and so does the ongoing fight for justice for him and his family. We are in this place not for show but to make society better.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As I put them forward to go in the book, the publisher said, “That’s enough now, Dawn; you need to stop.” She then came back and apologised because, she said, “I realised that’s your lived experience.” I went to Elephant and Castle. I never told my parents that I was there. I travelled alone; I did not go with any friends. I wanted to show my support to the Lawrence family. I also wanted to show the police that we were going to stand up to all the racism and we were not going to be scared. We were told when we were standing there—there was a slope—to be calm and dignified like the Lawrence family. And we were quite calm in the beginning, but when the murderers came out of the building, they had a swagger.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I remember that moment in 1999, some six years after Stephen was murdered, when the public inquiry launched by the Labour Government concluded with the publishing of the Macpherson report. The words “institutionally racist” were indelibly stamped on the public consciousness. Stephen’s tragic murder and the subsequent bungling of its investigation by the Met police revealed to the rest of the country what many of us already knew, and some of us had the misfortune to recognise it from first-hand experience. That includes me, my brothers, my sister and my cousins. I have just written a book, and I have journeyed back through lots of incidents that have happened in my life.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Just imagine that the police were working so hard to discredit a black family grieving the loss of their eldest son and their brother. They worked harder trying to discredit a black family than they did trying to convict the murderers. One of the murderer’s dads was already in prison. These murderers did not come from the perfect family. They were known as the Krays of Eltham, and they revelled in that, but the police spent time trying to discredit Baroness Lawrence and her family. Every single time a new report comes out or the police fail to act or the IOPC fails to act, it traumatises the Lawrence family and the community, because justice delayed is justice denied.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Baroness Lawrence and Neville Lawrence fought a really hard campaign to get justice for their son Stephen. Even though they were fighting a system built on racism and white supremacy, they continued fighting. They were fighting not knowing that they were being spied on. They had full surveillance on them. They were being tracked by the police, so that the police could try to find something on them. Just imagine how clean and law-abiding the Lawrence family are for the police not to have found anything on them. If the police had found something on the Lawrence family, it would have been in the papers and the press, and they would have highlighted it, because that is how the establishment and institutional racism works. They wanted to sow the seed of doubt, but there was no seed of doubt to be sown, because they found nothing.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I found it difficult to sleep last night, thinking about this debate. Knowing that Baroness Lawrence is here today makes the debate very difficult for me. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) for highlighting all the mistakes and the corruption, some of which will be new to people who have not heard about it, and for his work to try to secure justice over a number of years. The murder of Stephen Lawrence was brutal, and he was murdered by white racist thugs. I remember feeling quite sickened at the thought that a teenager who was just like me and my siblings, with a very similar background, had been murdered while he was waiting for a bus. It made us feel in the community that if he was not safe, none of us was safe. I remember those years.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“With regard to sanctions, is the hon. Member surprised, like me, that if a police officer fails their vetting, they can still work in the police, and nothing happens to them? What we need—I hope the Minister is listening—is independent vetting and psychological testing for every single serving police officer.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Daniel Morgan inquiry said that the police were institutionally corrupt; indeed, Cressida Dick was named in that report as somebody who stopped the investigation from continuing. Does my hon. Friend agree that every single report on the Met highlights another area of discrimination that needs to be tackled?”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Mina Smallman, the mother of Bibaa and Nicole, is absolutely phenomenal. Is it not also the case that mothers who have lost their children in such tragic circumstances should not need to be so graceful or dignified to get justice for their children? But they often need to be.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not know whether you are as shocked as I am, but the Deputy Prime Minister had the opportunity to correct the record today after he misled the House on 7 June. He failed to do so.”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Mr Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister inadvertently misled the House, but did not come to correct the record, even though we had made it clear that he had done so. I refer to the idea of £28 billion costing mortgage payers £1,000 a year. The only place that that appeared was in the Daily Mail. He is disrespecting you, Mr Speaker. He is disrespecting Parliament and the House and, according to the ministerial code, he should now resign. Mr Speaker, can you advise me on this? He is in breach of the ministerial code—how can I ensure that he resigns?”
House of Commons12 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister says that the other place put forward wrecking amendments, but is it not true that the other place proposed amendments that ensure that we honour treaties, respect our judiciary and ensure that the Home Office is acting within the law?”
House of Commons11 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Its spokesperson stated: “We spoke to HMT and they have informed us the figure quoted is not based on any analysis produced by Treasury officials.” The ministerial code, by which all Government Ministers must abide, states: “It is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.” Mr Speaker, I would be grateful if you advised me how we can get the Deputy Prime Minister—who will be back next week—to correct the record.”
House of Commons5 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons5 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons4 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons4 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons3 July 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons22 June 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗