The hon. Member makes a good point. When it comes to AI, all workers need protections.
Research by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests that AI will be responsible for 46% of the UK’s long-term output growth. It promises job creation in sectors such as health, education, and science and technology. At the same time, it threatens devastating job losses in sectors such as manufacturing, transport and public administration. Some 7% of all UK jobs could be automated away within the next five years, and as many as 30% could disappear within 20 years.
The last time we experienced systemic economic displacement on anything like that scale was during the deindustrialisation of the 1980s and 1990s. The architects of that policy believed that nothing should be done to support those communities that carried the cost of the economic and social fallout, the legacy of which my
constituency of Birkenhead continues to live with to this day. They followed the ancient mantra that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. We must not repeat that mistake again. I have called today’s debate to make an urgent plea for a rights-based and people-focused approach to artificial intelligence, and for a process that puts the voices and interests of workers at its heart. In this new machine age, we must assert more than ever the fundamental right of all people to a basic level of economic security and dignity at work.