The political party conference season has been busy for BCS, with our policy team, senior managers and Fellows heading to Bournemouth, Liverpool and Manchester to engage with the Liberal Democrats, Conservative and Labour parties.
Like any charity, BCS has to remain politically neutral. Yet, to fulfil our Royal Charter's mission to ensure technology is used for the benefit of society and the individual, we engage across the political spectrum to inform debate. In the BCS team's conversations with senior politicians and other stakeholders, the dominant topics were Artificial Intelligence (AI), bridging the skills gap, fixing the digital divide, improving diversity and inclusion and the need for competent, ethical tech professionals.
Top-level conversations
First up was the Liberal Democrats Party conference. BCS Head of Policy and Public Affairs, Dan Aldridge and BCS Fellow Vic Baines, Professor of Information Technology at Gresham College, met Lord Clement-Jones – a leading voice on AI in the House of Lords. Their discussion revolved around the critical importance of clarifying international standards and regulations around AI. In a recent address to the House of Lords, he said while the Government's diagnosis of the risks and opportunities of AI were correct, there was a pressing need to address public trust in AI, equip people with the digital skills they needed, and to develop 'clear central co-ordination and oversight, not a patchwork of regulation'.
Next up was the Conservative Party Conference, where our MD of Education and Public Benefit, Julia Adamson, spoke to Michelle Donelan MP, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, to discuss how computing education and digital skills would form part of the agenda of the upcoming AI Safety Summit, along with a strand looking at AI and the public good.
Michelle Donelan later announced an £8 million increase in backing for AI scholarships, funding 800 new places to research AI safety. This subject is close to the heart of the BCS policy team, which worked closely with the Government to establish the original conversion master courses across England to teach practical AI and data science skills. This new funding builds on over 1800 scholarships delivered over the last three years with £18M government funding.
Achieving Net-Zero
Our CEO, Rashik Parmar, chaired a National Engineering Policy Centre panel on how engineering can get the UK to Net Zero. He was joined by the Scottish MP David Duguid, a leading parliamentary voice on energy policy; Dr Stephanie Baxter, the Innovation and Skills Lead for the Institute of Engineering and Technology; Dr Edwin Barker, Chartered Civil Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers; Charlotte Wilkes an apprentice mechanical engineer at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and Dr Jen Baxter, an expert in sustainability, environment, energy system development and infrastructure.
The panel discussed the challenge of getting young people into STEM, the engineering skills gap, the importance of government strategy and leadership to ensure engineers could transfer their skills from declining industries to green jobs and why 'greening' the electricity grid mattered.
Inspiring careers in tech
At the Labour Party Conference, the team spoke with Chris Bryant, Shadow Minister for Creative Industries and Digital, who said he wanted to see more career inspiration and industry participation in schools. Julia Adamson MBE and BCS MD, Institute, Holly Porter spoke with Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Birmingham and Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, about the importance of teaching digital skills in schools and how BCS can help nurture professional ecosystems in cities and regions. BCS Fellow Adam Leon Smith also appeared on an OpenUK panel with the Shadow Minister for Tech and Digital Economy, Alex Davies-Jones, chaired by Amanda Brock CEO of OpenUK.
Labour Party roundtable
Our Labour highlight was our roundtable addressing the diversity gap in AI in partnership with Labour: Women in Tech and Labour Digital. The impressive list of attendees included politicians such as Shadow Minister for AI, Matt Rodda MP, Baroness Thornton, Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, as well as parliamentary candidates Kanishka Narayan and Samantha Niblett, who also founded Labour: Women in Tech; the CEO of Stemettes, Dr Anne Marie Imafidon MBE, Justine Roberts, Founder and CEO of Mumsnet, Charlotte Holloway, Head of Government Relations at Zoom, Pauline Norstrom, CEO, Anekanta AI and Polly Curtis, CEO of Demos.
In his introduction, Dan Aldridge spelt out the challenge that exists to bridge the diversity gap in tech:
- 94% of girls drop computer science as a subject at GCSE.
- Women make up 22% of the UK IT workforce, and black women account for only 0.7%.
- Eleven million people in the UK are still digitally excluded.
Reacting to the statistics, Baroness Thornton described it as 'heartbreaking' that despite our digital world and her aptitude, her granddaughter instinctively decided against coding lessons at school. She added that coming to our session was vital because it felt the most relevant to her post and her ability to advocate for women and girls regarding AI.
Mary Towers from the TUC, who leads their work on AI in employment relations, said unions and their work provide a "ready-made vehicle for the democratic expression of worker interests in the AI value chain."
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Samantha Niblett said the one thing that hadn't changed in all her time in the tech sector was the lack of women. As the mother of a teenage daughter, she wanted a different world, and that was one of the motivations for setting up Labour: Women in Tech. She said getting women into tech and STEM is both a moral obligation and an economic no-brainer, transforming individual life chances and driving economic growth. The problem was, she said, the systemic changes needed to close the diversity gap in tech required a government able and willing to make it happen.
This was echoed by the Shadow Minister for AI and IP, Matt Rodda MP, who spoke about the need to create more flexibility in the workplace and to reform levers such as the apprenticeship levy to help women returners get jobs in tech. He also made a positive case for AI and how it already delivers transformative health and climate management results. He said after a long period of low economic growth, AI could help boost the economy and public services.
Dr Anne Marie Imafidon, CEO of Stemettes and trustee of the Institute for the Future of Work (IFOW), said her suggestions were threefold. The first was to make the 'herstory' of tech more visible, showcasing tech's "rich and diverse" story to include the "names we don't get to see." She said the IFOW's Good Work Charter enshrined what good looks like, adding the deployment of technology like AI had to be intentional so it empowers people and looks after their well-being and dignity whilst at work. Her last point was about incentivising and rewarding people to engage with lifelong learning. She said this year's hot topic is AI; next year, it would be something else, which underlined the importance of agility in our skills ecosystem.
Tech benefits
The message from Labour on AI was pro innovation, business and technology whilst ensuring the ecosystem has government support to deliver for all communities, regions and nations across the UK.
In his conference speech, Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer said: "AI can reduce workload and raise productivity", in a nod to the Party's interest in reforming workers' rights in an AI age. BCS has a role in this as part of the TUC's AI Taskforce, making sure the voice of the profession is at the centre of political decisions on the future of AI.
