Speeches by Madders.

“Can I just ask you about criterion 6? There have not been refusals for the previous few years, but one popped up in the report we received yesterday. Are you able to give us any more details on that particular refusal?”

“Let us look at criterion 7, which is the risk of diversion. You have all said quite a lot this morning that it is a really important one. There have been over 400 refusals on that criterion. You can double-count in terms of reasons for refusal, so it may be refused on other grounds, but that is by far the largest groun…”

“Sir Christopher, you have just helpfully set out the criteria that you operate under and what you described as discretionary criteria 5, 7 and 8. Why are they not mandatory? For example, surely criterion 5—the national security of the UK—ought to be a mandatory criterion.”

“Yes, but I thought I had better ask. Can I just ask a slightly broader question? There have been a number of high-profile convictions for export control breaches in the last few months. Is that indicative of greater activity, of greater awareness of enforcement or of more resources being put into it? Is this part of a …”

“I would just suggest that if you have a degree of discretion in some criteria, it is actually not going to be helpful for companies, because you may have inconsistent decisions. How do you establish whether using the discretionary criteria—”

“It is very welcome to see this Bill back in the Commons to complete its final stages, even though we all expected to see it on the statute book by now. While I understand why there have been frustrations and concerns about the last-minute nature of the Bill’s reintroduction, it is important that we do not let process t…”

“I join the Home Secretary and other Members in sending condolences to the family of Ann Widdecombe. May she rest in peace. I have concerns not just about Members of this place, but about our party members, councillors and council candidates. Every week, volunteers go knocking on doors in my constituency; most of the re…”

“I thank the Leader of the House for taking this action. I appreciate that these are not ideal circumstances, but much about the passage of the Bill has been less than ideal. Does he share my hope that tomorrow’s debate will be about the substance of the Bill and the important amendments, rather than the process?”

“I just want to follow up on that. I understand that the AI and future of work unit is the body looking at this. Unfortunately, apart from a press release in January, there has not been a great deal of information about what the unit has been doing. How many people are working in the unit? How often is it meeting? What …”

“Thinking about the five 2030 scenarios that Charlie has just mentioned, does the Department favour one of those? Is there going to be a different regulatory approach depending on which scenario we are aiming for?”

“This covers pay as well as general monitoring in the sense that we would understand it.”

“Can I just come to you, Ms Dearden? You gave a very positive view of the benefits to workers from AI, if it is done in a good way. We had some evidence from the first panel about some of the challenges, particularly with algorithmic decision making in terms of pay and the lack of transparency. It is pretty clear that t…”

“Do you think the minimum wage regulations are fit for purpose for this type of pay?”

“This is for you, Mr McDougall. We had your boss, the Secretary of State, in yesterday, giving us some quite vivid examples of his frustrations with getting investment through the door and some of the barriers particularly in the areas of AI and automation. As a Committee, we are trying to understand whether there need …”

“The Government’s approach to assessing this is to break down jobs into high exposure, low exposure, high complementarity and low complementarity, with my rough guess being that those that have high exposure but low complementarity are the sectors that are most at risk from job disruption. Would you say that approach is…”

“We have heard various reports about how AI is used in job applications to filter applicants and how algorithmic management is used to hand out tasks, sometimes to set pay rates in particular sectors, and possibly also in redundancy selection exercises. Do you feel that the current regulatory environment is sufficient t…”

“I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my membership of the GMB trade union. I am sorry to say that it beggars belief that the response of a Labour Government to a court judgment confirming workers’ rights should be to run in the opposite direction, in some perverse form of fi…”

“Could I just put a specific scenario to you to understand whether we are ready for the change? We know that driverless cars are happening across the world. We know that the Government are very keen to get trials under way. We can assume that that is going to be a feature of our economy in the not-too-distant future. We…”

“You have anticipated my question, Chair. An issue that has come up over recent years is the use of algorithms to set pay rates, particularly in the gig economy. The transparency issue is certainly part of that. What could we do in terms of regulation to give workers the information, never mind the bargaining power, to …”

“Good afternoon, everyone. I will say for the record that the Institute for the Future of Work clerks the APPG on the future of work. That is just to make that clear for the record.”