After pushback from disability justice and privacy groups, Labour scrapped the Tories’ dystopian data protection and digital information (DPDI) bill, only to replace it with their own version – the data (use and access) bill. Far from being an improvement on what the Tories had planned, this new bill will massively expand the scope of automated decision-making. What’s more, Labour has also resurrected one of the most controversial parts of the DPDI in the form of the public authorities (fraud, error and recovery) bill, which will force banks to spy on all their customers in the interest of tackling welfare fraud.
Prime minister Keir Starmer has said he wants to “mainline AI” into the veins of government. Starmer’s AI fervour is encouraged by the Tony Blair Institute, which advocated for turning the DWP into an “AI exemplar” department in a July 2024 report. Labour is opening the floodgates to not just a digitised welfare system that treats all claimants as suspects simply because they need support – but a public sector where AI tools are being used to dictate our lives in ways that we aren’t necessarily aware of.
Biased and ineffective.
In documents released under the Freedom of Information Act at the end of last year, the DWP admitted to finding bias in an AI tool used to detect fraud in universal credit (UC) claims.
The machine learning tool – which focuses on claims for cash advances to cover the five-week waiting period while a UC application is processed – had been assessed for fairness by the DWP several times since at least July 2023, the documents revealed. Each analysis found that the algorithm and intervention process are more likely to incorrectly flag claimants with certain protected characteristics, to an extent researchers considered “statistically significant”. Essentially, the AI incorrectly assumed that some people were more likely to commit fraud based on factors including their age, nationality and whether or not they were married.
What’s more, the DWP’s own reports admit that the metrics it uses to assess fairness are incomplete. It fails to test for bias towards many marginalised and discriminated against cohorts – or for bias regarding intersectional vulnerabilities.
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It’s become clear that the Labour government is betting the house on AI as a magic formula for bolstering growth. In January, it published a 50-point AI opportunities action plan – essentially a notice of intent to procure services for AI development, allowing the government to “rapidly test, build or buy tools”.
Disability campaigners have warned that benefits claimants are merely guinea pigs in the government’s public sector AI plan – without their consent or even their awareness. The DWP has been using machine learning tools since at least 2020, but there is a serious lack of transparency around the identity of all AI tools used, their efficacy and what – if any – safeguards have been put in place to prevent bias or mitigate the impact of real-world harm.
Emissions are seen from a smoke stack at the Phillips 66 Refinery on February 6, 2024, in Linden, New Jersey. (Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
“This chaotic administration is obviously desperate to smash through every environmental guardrail that protects people or preserves wildlife, but steps like this will be laughed out of court,” said one advocate.
Numerous environmental protection groups were preparing to file lawsuits Friday after President Donald Trumpdirected federal agencies to repeal what he called “unlawful regulations” aimed at protecting the public from pollution, oil spills, and other harms—sharply curtailing the process through which rules are changed as he ordered agencies to “sunset” major regulations.
The order was issued a week-and-a-half before the deadline set by another presidential action in February, when Trump required agencies to identify “unconstitutional” and “unlawful” regulations for elimination or modification within 60 days.
Those restrictions, under Wednesday evening’s order, can be repealed without being subject to a typical notice-and-comment period.
Trump named the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement among several agencies affected by the order, and listed more than two dozen laws containing regulations that must incorporate a sunset provision for no later than September 30, 2025.
The laws include the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, suggested the order was Trump’s latest push to benefit corporate polluters.
The Trump corporate regime orders agencies to ‘sunset’ environmental protections, as part of an effort to make it easier for industry to pollute. thehill.com/policy/energ…
Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said it was “beyond delusional” for Trump to attempt to repeal “every environmental safeguard enacted over the past 50 years with an executive order.”
“Trump’s farcical directive aims to kill measures that protect endangered whales, prevent oil spills, and reduce the risk of a nuclear accident,” said Hartl. “This chaotic administration is obviously desperate to smash through every environmental guardrail that protects people or preserves wildlife, but steps like this will be laughed out of court.”
In a memo, the White House wrote that “in effectuating repeals of facially unlawful regulations, agency heads shall finalize rules without notice and comment, where doing so is consistent with the ‘good cause’ exception in the Administrative Procedure Act.”
“That exception allows agencies to dispense with notice-and-comment rulemaking when that process would be ‘impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest,'” said the White House.
As climate advocates scoffed at the suggestion that regulating nuclear power and pollution-causing energy infrastructure is “contrary to the public interest,” legal experts questioned the legality of Trump’s order.
“If this action were upheld, it would be a significant change to the way regulation is typically done, which is through notice and comment,” Roger Nober, director of George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center, toldGovernment Executive. “If the agencies determine that a rule is contrary to the Supreme Court’s current jurisprudence, then [this order says they] have good cause to remove it and [they] can get around notice and comment. That’s certainly an untested and untried way of implementing the Administrative Procedure Act.”
Georgetown University law professor William Buzbee toldThe Hill that the Supreme Court “has repeatedly reaffirmed that agencies seeking to change a policy set forth in a regulation have to go through a new notice-and-comment proceeding for each regulation, offer ‘good reasons’ for the change, and address changing facts and reliance interests developed in light of the earlier regulation.”
“Adding a sunset provision without going through a full notice-and-comment proceedings for each regulation to be newly subject to a sunset provision seems intended to skirt the vetting and public accountability required by consistency doctrine,” he said. “Like many other attempted regulatory shortcuts of the first and second Trump administration, this [executive order] seems likely to prompt legally vulnerable agency actions.”
Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert suggested that the executive order is the latest example of Trump’s push to govern the U.S. as “a king.”
“He cannot simply roll back regulations that protect the public without going through the legally required process,” Gilbert told Government Executive. “We will challenge this blatantly unlawful deregulatory effort at every step to ensure it doesn’t hurt workers, consumers, and families.”
Michael Wall, chief litigation officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the order “a blatant attempt to blow away hundreds of protections for the public and nature, giving polluters permission to ignore whatever is coming out of their smokestacks while developers disregard endangered species protections and Big Oil no longer heeds the reforms put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.”
“This executive order is illegal,” he said. “Congress passed these laws, and the president’s constitutional duty is to carry out those statutes; he has zero power to rewrite them.”
“There’s no magic wand the administration might wave to sweep away multiple rules on a White House whim,” Wall added. “Any changes to the rules the president wants rescinded would have to be justified, rule by rule, with facts, evidence, and analysis specific to that rule. He cannot do this by fiat.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
dizzy: There are other demands on my life dragging me away dear audience. There are always good articles at Common Dreams.
COSY CLUB: Akshata Murty has been appointed a trustee of the V&A by Starmer. Qualifications: being very, very rich — and married to Rishi Sunak
Why is the Labour government so addicted to giving government jobs to Tories when it spent so long trying to oust them? In the hope the favour is returned the next time the Tories return to power, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
THERE has been a small rush of Tory-linked appointments by the Labour government, showing Starmer’s ministers are pretty comfortable working with Conservatives. It all looks like a uniform, centrist “political class” are settling back in power, however we voted.
In March, Science Secretary Peter Kyle made former Tory science minister David Willetts chair of the Regulatory Innovation Office. A Labour science minister giving a government job to a former Tory science minister looks like “one hand washing another,” a political system where the “insiders” just give each other jobs.
At election time, the winning party promises “change,” and claims big ideological differences with the losers for the purpose of the election. After the votes, we get more of the same.
The Regulatory Innovation Office is supposed to stop regulators from getting in the way of new business innovations. Willetts is a veteran Thatcherite, who worked for Thatcher in her policy unit in the 1980s, so trying to reduce regulation is right up his street.
Willetts is an “intellectual” Tory nicknamed “two brains,” although both of these brains have backed policies like the Poll Tax, which are now viewed as disastrous.
Willetts was a firm backer of Thatcher’s policies during the miners’ strike, and as a minister upped students’ university tuition fees to £9,000 a year. If Labour members — or voters — were asked if they wanted Willetts, they would surely say “no.” Which is why they weren’t asked.
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. UK halts aid to UNRWA in Gaza over Israeli allegations that 12 staff from a total of 13,000 were involved in the 7 October 2024 attack on Israel.Keir Starmer says that his Labour Party is intensely relaxed about assaulting the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Contemporary Zionists deny human rights. They deserve to be locked up or worse.
Netaniahu, Starmer & Co (isn’t the cabinet to be held totally equally guilty)
Trump, Musk. Let’s fucking lock them up for being mass-murdering genocidal cunts just like the Nazis.
ed: Well come on, that’s exactly what they are. The UK government is supporting Israel’s genocide.
The Fascists of WW2 were different. The contemporary Fascists are Zionists. Yes, it’s difficult to understand in a historical way but current Zionists are very Fascist in the sense that they are racist and intolerant. [ed: They are the same in committing genocide. It is the responsibility of all of us to oppose and resist genocide.] ed: I don’t know about legality. We are all responsible to oppose and resist genocide, to hold those responsible to account. It’s a matter of humanity and common decency never mind anything more than that. Cnuts who are complicit or even less need to be punished.
ed: We have to oppose Fascism. I suggest that includes Netaniahu’s Israeli Neo-Fascism, UK Starmer’s Israel-supporting Fascism and US Trump (and Musk) Fascism. Fascism needs to be confronted and opposed.
03.27am GMT If nothing else, people in UK know that Starmer deserves to be hung, drawn and quartered or worse for complicity in genocide and these Labour Party cunts who support him deserve the same.
03.30a.m. Isn’t that what the law is? That genocide is illegal? yet Keir Starmer, David Lammy and the UK Labour Party, the UK military are complicit, active participants in genocide?
