My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. There are a number of different elements to this group.
The one bright spot in the White Paper consultation is the ATRS. That was what the initial amendments in this group were designed to give a fair wind to. As the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said, this is designed to assist in the adoption of the ATRS, and I am grateful for his support on that.
2.45 pm
I was intrigued by the way the Minister described the adoption of the ATRS in government. He said that it will be phased in with increasing degrees of mandation, which is interesting because it sounds like gradually turning the screw in some way. I do not know who will turn the screw. It would be awfully interesting to know who will be responsible for that screw because my contention throughout has been that there is no clear, if any, compliance mechanism for the ATRS, however desirable it may be to see it put into effect. That is why this kind of legislation is so important. Like the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, said. It is not good enough just to say it; we need to have the standard and make sure that it is understandable to the ordinary citizen. If you read GitHub or something for pleasure, you will not find it very transparent. Something much simpler by way of explanation is needed, and the private sector needs this as well as the public sector.
That brings me to the difference in philosophy that we have here. We keep butting up against the philosophy set out in the White Paper and its consultation: “We do not need this, not now”. It is the St Augustine approach to regulation: “We’ll have regulation but not now. It’s too early. We don’t know what the risks are”. We know what the risks are in many ways, and nowhere is that illustrated more clearly than in the field of children.
I very much hope that the Minister will come to my book launch. I have spent some time—there are 200 pages there—saying why we need regulation. Perhaps, after he has read it—over the Easter break, possibly—the Minister will change his views on this issue. There is hope yet.
I was very taken by what the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, said. AI is as big as the wheel or electricity. It will have the same impact; if anything, it will have a bigger impact. This means that we cannot rely on the AADC. We are in new territory here. The noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Harding, absolutely made the case for revising. Again, I took some comfort from what the Minister had to say about being sympathetic to the idea of an upgrade to the AADC to take account of the circumstances of generative AI more than anything else. That could be a real game-changer for child protection if it were done. I very much hope that, in the way mentioned by the
noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, the Minister will come back later on in the course of this Bill and give us some greater comfort because we have a number of amendments coming down the track that will raise these issues again and again.
I come back to the open address issue, I am grateful for what the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Harding, had to say on this subject. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, was absolutely right to credit the PAF campaigners for their work on this matter. There are many different ways in which the Government can do this—as the noble Baroness said, we are not predicating exactly how they will go about it—so it was rather disappointing to hear what the Minister had to say, given that the Government extol the virtues of data and growth being linked. This is a clear example of where growth and business are being held back. It sounds as though the Government do not want to take on the cost of making sure that this data is freely available; that could be the bottom line here. I am sure that they will keep up the pressure to find a solution in this area; I very much hope that they will do that. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 74.