Speeches by Onwurah.

“I will take that as a kind of yes.”

“One of the things that my Committee called for was greater transparency and access to the algorithm. Finally, do you accept that if there were political bias in X’s algorithm, that would represent support for a political party or a political movement, which would be an interference in our electoral process?”

“Pay per use? You have to pay for it?”

“I have two quick follow-up questions. I think it is unrealistic to expect that hundreds of millions of individuals will all try to reverse-engineer the algorithm to rid it of whatever biases may be there. Do you test for bias, and is it possible for others—outside parties, researchers and so on—to have APIs into the al…”

“Do you test for political bias?”

“I understand that, but do you test to see if someone is more likely to receive content from certain political parties or origins and so on. Do you do any testing like that for bias?”

“You said that you have published some of the code around your algorithm. Do you test the algorithm to see if there is potential bias in the ranking of content?”

“The 5% could be significant. Okay, thank you very much. Dr Fernández.”

“That all takes time.”

“We have gone through the process a few times. I do not think that you are addressing the point about whether more engaging content is more likely to be amplified.”

“I just want to understand this perfectly, because one of the issues that came up in our inquiry was that inaccurate information about the attacker in the horrendous Southport murders case was put in the “For You” part of TikTok and thus drove misinformation about who the attacker was. Are you saying that that would not…”

“I do not want to interrupt you, but you have talked about that already. These things happen very quickly, so does the algorithm make it more likely that engaging content will be amplified before your fact checkers have been able to check their facts?”

“So does that mean that the individual has to have some kind of digital ID, or can they use their passport—existing documentation?”

“No. That is right. Currently, it is mandatory for employers to check the right to work digitally, but the individual does not have a duty to prove anything digitally.”

“Thank you very much, Chair. It is a great pleasure to have you here, Chief Secretary and Minister. I have two quick questions or points of clarification. I think, Chief Secretary, you said that it was currently mandatory for people to prove their right to work digitally.”

“By the employer.”

“Right. That was a digital transformation of one existing system in one Department. You are rolling digital ID across all Departments.”

“I am struck by the fact that you identified the passport as the example of excellence, rather than a digital system for what is going to be a digital transformation. We have heard about some of the challenges experienced in the public sector. Is there an example of a digital transformation or service across this Govern…”

“By Government, do you mean the Cabinet Office?”

“That is very helpful, Chief Secretary. The services to be onboarded will not only be national Government services; they might be local government services as well. How will you decide or who will decide what services come on board?”