Minister Angela Eagle reveals that Whitehall’s environment department has examined the use of new tech for ‘comparative analysis between the UK and partner jurisdictions and to support briefing and correspondence’
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has explored the possibility of deploying artificial intelligence technology to support the work of officials drafting policy and legislation.
According to Dame Angela Eagle, minister for food security and rural affairs, AI tools are not currently being directly “used to draft legislation or policy at present” – but “the department has conducted exploratory initiatives for AI alongside other digital tools to assist drafters within legislation and policy domains”.
These investigations have included the examination of platforms that could help policy professionals with research, as well as supporting communication between officials and others.
“Defra has investigated AI opportunities to assist with statutory guidance and comparative analysis between the UK and partner jurisdictions,” Eagle said. “Further work has examined the potential of AI to support briefing and correspondence within technical policy areas. These tools are designed strictly to check and critique drafts, rather than replace expert drafters who maintain full responsibility and oversight.”
The consideration of how tech could assist those working on legislation and policy forms part of wider work to explore the possibilities of AI to support the department’s operations.
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“More generally, AI productivity tools have been deployed across Defra to assist in day-to-day tasks,” the minister added. “This is supported by cross-government guidance and training for civil servants supporting the safe and responsible use of AI, such as through the AI Knowledge Hub, Data & AI Ethics Framework and Model for Responsible Innovation.”
Eagle’s comments were made in response to a written parliamentary question from Conservative MP Sir John Hayes.
Last year government revealed that that two departments had taken part in an exercise to test and compare the performance of humans and generative AI tools in producing reports to support policymaking. The study found is that the AI-assisted review took 23% less time overall – with work completed in 90.5 hours, compared with 117.75 hours for the human-only exercise.
“We think AI has the potential to enhance the process of conducting rapid evidence reviews,” said the findings of the government research report. “It is not yet a game-changer – it still produces occasional, peculiar hallucinations and errors which mean its outputs require manual verification. [But it] is improving quickly, so these issues may soon be reduced. We therefore recommend that more work be undertaken to understand how and when AI can be implemented in evidence reviews.”
