UK Politics

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailKen Clarke served as health secretary at pivotal moments in the infected blood scandal, which saw 30,000 patients infected with HIV and hepatitis and more than 3,000 deaths to date.The Tory grandee, who was a key figure in Margaret Thatcher’s government, was handed a peerage by Boris Johnson in 2020. Campaigners including the Haemophilia Society at the time called for the honour to be put on hold until the public inquiry had reported its findings.Now, after the official inquiry concluded he had misled the public in an “indefensible” way, Lord Clarke is facing calls to be kicked out of the House of Lords.Lord Ken Clarke gave evidence during the Infected Blood Inquiry (Infected Blood Inquiry/PA) More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailA “precedent for global standards on AI safety” has been established after 16 AI tech companies committed to a set of safety outcomes at a major summit, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said.The development comes on the opening day of the AI Seoul Summit, with companies from the US, China, Europe and the Middle East agreeing to each publish safety frameworks on how they will measure risks of their frontier AI models, such as examining the risk of misuse of the technology by bad actors.The frameworks will also outline when severe risks, unless adequately mitigated, would be “deemed intolerable” and what companies will do to ensure thresholds are not surpassed.In the most extreme circumstances, the companies have also committed to “not develop or deploy a model or system at all” if mitigations cannot keep risks below the thresholds.Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta and Open AI are among the companies which have signed up to the Frontier AI Safety Commitments.Mr Sunak said: “It’s a world first to have so many leading AI companies from so many different parts of the globe all agreeing to the same commitments on AI safety.“These commitments ensure the world’s leading AI companies will provide transparency and accountability on their plans to develop safe AI.“It sets a precedent for global standards on AI safety that will unlock the benefits of this transformative technology.”The two-day summit follows the first such gathering at Bletchley Park, the home of the UK’s Second World War codebreakers, in November.Mr Sunak added: “The UK’s Bletchley summit was a great success and together with the Republic of Korea we are continuing that success by delivering concrete progress at the AI Seoul Summit.”Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan, who is in Seoul for the summit focused on AI safety, sustainability and resilience, said: “The true potential of AI will only be unleashed if we’re able to grip the risks.“It is on all of us to make sure AI is developed safely and today’s agreement means we now have bolstered commitments from AI companies and better representation across the globe.” More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailAndy Burnham has called for a Hillsborough law to be introduced putting a duty of candour on public servants to avoid future cover-ups such as the infected blood scandal.The former health secretary and now Greater Manchester mayor said such a law is the only way to break the cycle that has led to “Whitehall cover-ups” including the Post Office scandal, the Hillsborough disaster, the Grenfell tragedy and the infected blood scandal.As paymaster John Glen prepares to set out a £10bn compensation package for victims and their families, Mr Bunham said a legal duty of candour for public servants was needed for “full restitution” to be delivered. “We need now to make sure there is a Hillsborough law on the statute books, a duty of candour on all public servants, that is the only way we can break this cycle and have a situation where people tell the truth at the first time of asking,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.Infected blood scandal greatest injustice country has seen, claims Andy Burnham. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailCharities have long called for an end to the two-child benefit cap, and with the issue hitting the headlines again we want to know your views.On Sunday, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting came to the defence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, after he criticised the cap as “cruel.”The policy sees families claiming benefits who have a third or subsequent child after April 2017 denied more than £3,000 compared with families whose kids were born sooner.Justin Welby said the limit was neither “moral nor necessary” and it fell short of “our values as a society”.The prime minister has pledged to keep the policy if the Tories remain in power and labour leader Keir Starmer has so far resisted calls to dump it.While Tory MPs hit out at church leaders for intervening in politics, Mr Streeting welcomed the comments.“The two-child limit falls short of our values as a society. It denies the truth that all children are of equal and immeasurable worth, and will have an impact on their long-term health, wellbeing and educational outcomes,” the Archbishop told The Observer.Do you agree with Justin Welby’s comments? Or do you think the cap is justified?Share your thoughts by adding them in the comments – we’ll highlight the most insightful ones as they come in.All you have to do is sign up and register your details – then you can then take part in the discussion. You can also sign up by clicking ‘log in’ on the top right-hand corner of the screen.Make sure you adhere to our community guidelines, which can be found here. For a full guide on how to comment click here.Join the conversation with other Independent readers below. More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailMichael Gove will today warn that the rise of antisemitism in Britain is a sign that the country is “descending into darkness”.The communities secretary is set to speak to the Jewish community in London amid huge concerns at the way there has been a 147 per cent increase in antisemitic incidents since 2022. The number has risen from 1,662 in 2022 to 2,699 incidents in the UK during the period on or after 7 October 2023 – the day when Hamas terrorists slaughtered and kidnapped hundreds of Jews in Israel.Mr Gove’s hard-hitting speech will come on the same day as Lord Walney publishes a landmark report on political violence and disruption, and ahead of the publication of the government’s Counter Extremism Action Plan in the coming weeks.The senior minister will identify three forms of extremism of Islamism, the far right and hard left as “all sharing a common thread” of antisemitism. Communities secretary Michael Gove is set to speak about antisemitism today More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailSome of the world’s leading AI scientists have called for stronger action on AI risk from world leaders, as the AI Seoul Summit begins on Tuesday, warning that progress has been insufficient since the first AI Safety Summit in the UK six months ago.Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will co-host a virtual meeting of world leaders with South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday to open the summit, where he will say that managing the risks posed by artificial intelligence is “one of the most profound responsibilities” faced by governments.However, in a new expert consensus paper published in the journal Science, 25 of the world’s leading scientists in the technology say governments are moving too slowly to regulate the rapidly evolving technology and there has not been enough progress since the previous summit.They argue that world leaders must take seriously the possibility that more powerful general use AI systems – which are capable of regularly outperforming humans – will be developed in the current decade or next, and respond accordingly.Professor Philip Torr, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, and co-author on the paper, said: “The world agreed during the last AI summit that we needed action, but now it is time to go from vague proposals to concrete commitments.“This paper provides many important recommendations for what companies and governments should commit to do.”In the paper, the experts say rapid-response institutions for AI oversight must be established, with far greater funding that many governments currently plan, while also mandating more rigorous risk assessments with enforceable consequences, rather than the current model of voluntary, unspecified evaluations.The experts include Turing award winners, Nobel laureates, and authors of standard AI textbooks, and hail from major AI powerbases including the UK, US, China and the EU.Stuart Russell, professor of computer science at the University of California at Berkeley, and author of a textbook on AI, said: “This is a consensus paper by leading experts, and it calls for strict regulation by governments, not voluntary codes of conduct written by industry.“It’s time to get serious about advanced AI systems. These are not toys. Increasing their capabilities before we understand how to make them safe is utterly reckless.“Companies will complain that it’s too hard to satisfy regulations — that ‘regulation stifles innovation’. That’s ridiculous. There are more regulations on sandwich shops than there are on AI companies.”Ahead of the summit, the first iteration of a new scientific report on AI safety – the first of its kind and commissioned at the AI Safety Summit in November – found the experts involved to be uncertain on the technology’s future.They said that while AI could boost wellbeing, prosperity and scientific research in the future, it could also be used to power widespread disinformation and fraud, disrupt jobs and reinforce inequality.As well as highlighting the potential benefits and risks, it warns there is not universal agreement among experts on a range of topics around AI, including the state of current AI capabilities and how those could evolve over time, and the likelihood of extreme risks – such as losing control over the technology – occurring.The interim report is set to be used as a starting point for discussions among world leaders, industry experts, researchers and tech giants at the latest two-day summit in Seoul.It comes as the pace of innovation in the sector shows no sign of slowing down, with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Google and Microsoft all announcing swathes of new AI-powered tools and products in the days ahead of the summit.And another heavyweight in the tech industry, Apple, is due to make its own AI announcements in early June. More

Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UKSign up to our Brexit email for the latest insightDavid Cameron has admitted that the plan is for EU Frontex border guards to police the entry into Gibraltar in a deal to allow “a fluid border” between the Rock and Spain.The foreign secretary was giving evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee which has raised serious concerns over the impact on UK sovereignty with the proposed treaty.The row has broken out because of a need for Gibraltar to come to a longer border solution with the EU as a result of Brexit.Had the UK voted to remain in the EU, the free travel provisions would not have been a problem but with 15,000 crossings a day, the Gibraltan and UK governments are seeking a solution. Gibraltar opposed Brexit with 96 per cent voting Remain.Lord David Cameron discussed Gibraltar More

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inboxGet our free View from Westminster emailLabour will build a new generation of towns in a bid to tackle the housing crisis, Angela Rayner will say in an attempt to impress the house-building sector.The deputy Labour leader has said the “foundations of our past” are the inspiration for the proposals, pointing to her party’s record in government following the Second World War, when towns like Stevenage and Basildon were built.Speaking at the UK Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum (UKREiiF), a property industry conference, Ms Rayner is expected to say Labour will back “developers who deliver” if it wins power.Ms Rayner, who is also the shadow housing secretary, will tell the conference a Labour government would set high standards on design, quality, affordable homes, green spaces and infrastructure.New towns will be a crucial part of Labour’s plans to grasp the ongoing housing crisis across Britain, she is expected to say.Labour will build a new generation of towns in a bid to tackle the housing crisis, Angela Rayner will say More