What I’d like to see in party manifestos
Only a few days back, Rishi Sunak surprised the nation by announcing that he’d requested that the King dissolve Parliament in advance of a General Election to be held on 4th July. The United Kingdom has known that an election is around the corner for some time, but it’s fair to say this timeline is a little sooner than many expected.
As the main parties make their bids to the British public, each will be compiling a manifesto of their key pledges to the electorate. While governments are by no means limited by them in what they can deliver, election manifestos are the best way to ensure that some of one’s key pledges are given an explicit mandate from the electorate.
At Redeeming Technology, we’re all about people. We want people to thrive as the valuable, vulnerable, dignified and creative human beings that God has made us to be. What’s more, we think that technology can help us to do that well. But that it can also make living well a lot harder - even impossible - if we don’t get it right.
So this short post outlines a few key priorities I have for what I’d like to see the main UK political parties offer in their manifestos to address some of our most pressing challenges relating to life in our tech-saturated world.
Smartphone-free childhood
The evidence that smartphones, and social media in particular, are contributing in a significant way to the negative experiences (anxiety, loneliness, fragility, coping mechanisms, lack of confidence etc) which many young people battle with in childhood is growing considerably. In my experience, the majority of parents would now like to restrict access to their children’s smartphones until their late teenage years but feel unable to go against the grain to make it happen. In addition to the Online Safety Bill 2023, I think there’s a lot more that government can, and must, do here to give our kids a smartphone-free childhood, including:
Banning social media for under 16s.
Require social media and pornography companies to properly authenticate users to validate their age.
Banning smartphones in schools, in law.
Providing comprehensive guidance and medical advice to parents of the risks of smartphones for under 14s.
Incentivising schools and local communities to offer a more risk-tolerant approach to play, adventure, active learning and getting outdoors for young people - what Jonathan Haidt calls ‘free-range kids’.
Government-as-a-platform
The cost of running the basic functions of government is inordinate and the UK’s Civil Service has largely failed to deliver improvements to its productivity over the past 20-30 years. I’d like to see a wholesale commitment to investing in implementing Government Digital Service (GDS), off-the-shelf and open—source technologies, including the use of large-language models and other AI capabilities, to deliver automated processes, communication, financial transactions, and to improve work-based productivity for public-sector employees. This includes:
Delivering an integrated data management system across the NHS, with a view to becoming completely paperless (and free from fax machines and Windows XP) by 2030.
Aim to ensure all processes within and between government departments and with users are paperless - and where possible, automated - by 2030.
Make government APIs accessible across government and with third parties where possible to accelerate innovation, collaboration and integration.
Ensure all new hires into the civil service adhere to baseline standards of critical thinking, digital skills and analytical reasoning.
Protect civil liberties
There are a plethora of risks to individual autonomy which arise as a result of digital technology. Many of these arise by virtue of the power of governments to wield influence over our lives. But far more influence - arguably - is held by companies who have an incentive to exploit our personal data for their own financial gain by manipulating our state-of-mind, belief systems and emotional wellbeing. This is a phenomenon laid out brilliantly by Shoshana Zuboff in her book ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ and was portrayed powerfully in Netflix’s 2020 documentary ‘The Social Dilemma’.
In order to protect the time, choices, awareness, truth-seeking capacities, resilience, joy and adventure of the human experience, we need to take a long, hard look at this challenge and respond in a commensurate way. This, for example, could include:
Make a clear commitment that the government will only block content that is illegal, rather than simply unpopular or controversial.
Put digital, cyber security and online safety skills first, ensuring every child leaves school aware of the risks to their mental health and freedoms which technology can present, but the skills to use technology effectively.
Teach basic financial literacy in schools (such as compound interest and basic asset allocation), giving more people the awareness that they can benefit from the economic growth which AI and technology will deliver this decade.
Put personal data back in the hands of the individual, giving them persistent access and control over health information, and requiring companies to be more transparent about how they use personal data to select ads and personalise their user experience. I think we should even consult on the option of banning the use of AI in generating and selecting personalised ads.
Commission a comprehensive portfolio of research to understand the effect that social media has on the health of our democracy, such as by exploring polarisation, free speech, echo chambers, mis/dis-information and generative AI, and responding robustly with legislation to protect the health and integrity of our collective social contract.
In no particular cluster, I’d also like to see the following tech-related issues addressed in this parliament:
Reforming health warnings on food packaging to target UPFs using the NOVA scale, rather than macronutrients, which do little to indicate health merits of food (see Chris van Tulleken’s ‘Ultra-Processed People’ for the context on this).
Leveraging AI to improve sustainable farming practices, such as using AI monitoring to measure ‘symbiotic farming’.
Delivering significant volumes of new clean energy from nuclear.
There’s a huge amount more that could be said, but these are three areas which I believe are a million miles away from being adequately addressed, but which are absolutely vital to our mental, spiritual, physical and relational health as a nation. It will only be a matter of days before we hear about what the UKs political parties will be promising in this respect, and I sure hope we see substantial promises to deliver proportionate responses to these challenges.
