UK parliamentary hearing focuses on government blockchain applications

Rage Comment : Therefore, this week, the British House of Lords Committee will hold a hearing to discuss the public enterprise blockchain applications for the British government, the regulatory system, the digital currency issued by the central bank, and "what will happen if blockchain technology goes wrong". It is hoped that after this hearing, perfect measures can be formulated to allow blockchain to serve the British government.

Translation: Nicole

This week, the UK House of Lords Committee will hold a hearing, with participants including professional scholars and representatives from the blockchain industry.

Parliament announced today that the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee (the upper house of parliament) will discuss blockchain and potential applications for the UK government on July 19. The committee will specifically hear from Ben Broadbent, the deputy governor of monetary policy at the Bank of England, who gave a speech in March saying that a central bank-issued digital currency would have a huge impact on banks.

In addition to Broadbent, other speakers included Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset Holdings, Simon Taylor, co-founder and director of Blockchain, Dr. Catherine Mulligan of the Imperial College Centre for Digital Currency Research, Michael Mainelli, Professor of Trade at Gresham University, and Lord Spens, Head of Conversion and Assurance at PwC.

According to a parliamentary statement, the hearing focused on public enterprise blockchain applications for the UK government, which attracted the attention of a wide range of people inside and outside government.

Specifically, the hearing will examine whether blockchain technology can be “used to collect taxes or pay benefits,” a question raised following the UK Department of Work and Pensions’ experiment with blockchain benefits payments, which raised concerns about privacy, according to the Financial Times.

The hearing will focus on regulatory regimes, central bank-issued digital currencies and what the impact would be if blockchain technology went awry.

The hearing will begin at 15:05 UTC and a live stream of the hearing will be available here.