Technology Sovereignty

Tuesday 10th March 2026 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Dame Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered technology sovereignty.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. We are four years into the Ukraine war and 10 days into the latest Iran-Israel-US conflict. At the start of this year, the US seized the President of Venezuela. A few weeks later, President Trump was demanding Greenland from Denmark. The world has never felt more insecure and unsecure.

For the first time since I was elected as an MP, global insecurity is an issue on the doorstep in Newcastle. As if that were not enough, we are also undergoing two technology revolutions: one in data and the other in AI automation. Add to that the geopolitical restructuring across different dimensions—Europe and the US, the global south and Russia/China, Europe and Russia, and Iran and the Gulf states—and a green industrial revolution that is driving competition for knowledge, resources, land and people. Is it any wonder that people are feeling insecure?

In the face of those challenges, we must be honest with our constituents about what we can and cannot control, and about the implications for our industrial, civil and defence policy. Technology sovereignty is a key part of that and a placeholder for larger fears. Too often, people feel that big tech is controlling, not empowering, their lives. Techno-feudalism and techno-serfdom may not be commonly discussed in the pubs and playgrounds of Newcastle, but they are a fear that many have.

The previous Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hove and Portslade (Peter Kyle), said that big tech needs to be treated as a state, not as companies. If so, who are their citizens? Us? We certainly did not elect them, so are we just their serfs? What should the relationship be between those companies and states?

Technology sovereignty matters, but what is it? The current Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology told the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee:

“Sovereign capability is about ensuring the UK has what it needs to become a global leader in AI.”

The Digital Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), told the Committee:

“Sovereignty is a huge issue that we always discuss. Security, safety and resilience are all parts of that, and the digital spending controls that DSIT puts in on behalf of Government, which examines individual contracts on that basis, very much examines these issues as well.”

He also said:

“It is about building those capabilities and supply chains here.”

[Will Stone (Swindon North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has advanced a very powerful vision of the global events affecting the country right now. When I talk to defence tech companies, I see that they reach the point of scaling up, but they are unable to access finance. Does my hon. Friend agree that this Government should support defence tech companies to scale up, so that we can have true sovereign capability, as opposed to letting them fly off to America?

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right, and that support should take the form of access to investment, but also procurement and procurement decisions, which I will discuss in more detail.

The Digital Minister also told the Committee:

“There is no single internationally recognised definition of digital sovereignty”

and:

“DSIT is working to develop a comprehensive definition that can be used across the UK”.

We have not received an update, but yesterday, the Government launched the AI sovereignty unit with £500 million, so it is to be hoped that we know what we are spending our money on.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

I cannot help but give way to the hon. Member.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady is terribly kind and it is always a pleasure to come to a debate that she has secured. Recent studies indicate that AI-powered tools have already been used in phishing, ransomware, and social engineering attacks, making breaches faster, more targeted and harder to detect. The National Cyber Security Centre has repeatedly warned that the sophistication and scale of cyber-threats are increasing, and that AI could amplify those risks exponentially. Does the hon. Lady therefore agree that we have a critical gap in investment, expertise and the co-ordinated strategy in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to defend against AI-enabled attacks? The Government must focus on being able to combat those in future—does she agree?

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

I certainly agree that we need to be able to defend ourselves against AI attacks.

[Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Lady and Chair of my Select Committee for giving way. Does she agree that a definition of sovereign tech is something that a foreign power could not switch off, so that the systems on which we rely could not be pulled out from under our feet, much as the Microsoft ones were for the International Criminal Court?

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

My fellow member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee makes a very important point about the definition of sovereignty. I do not want to get too bogged down in the actual definition, but I agree that control matters, and I will say a little more about that.

I will raise the definition of digital sovereignty cited in the House of Commons Library briefing, which accompanies this debate, which is

“the agency and capacity of any organisation to make intelligent, informed choices to shape its digital future by design.”

On that basis, choosing between Amazon Web Services and Microsoft for our data centre is technology sovereignty. I also think that if British sovereignty depends on our leaders’ ability to make intelligent choices, they spent a lot of our history not having sovereignty.

The Library definition came from a global consultancy called Public Digital. Emily Middleton, the interim director for digital transformation in DSIT, was previously a partner at Public Digital. It rules out digital independence and says that our goal should be intelligent dependence. Can the Minister say whether he is aiming for intelligent dependence?

The definition I like best, however, is that sovereignty is whatever a sovereign power says it is—that is what sovereignty means. The UK has extraordinary technological human capital resources, particularly in AI, where we are probably third in the world, but also in clean energy, quantum synthetic biology and much more. Our human capital means that we are not just any mid-sized country; we can aim higher than intelligent dependence. Elon Musk chose to turn off Ukraine’s Starlink capacity at a critical time in Ukraine’s defence of its sovereignty against Putin’s illegal aggression. None of us wants the UK to be in such a position of dependence.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

The hon. Lady mentions Britain’s extraordinary human capital. In my role as my party’s Europe spokesperson, of late I have been speaking to very large international defence firms, which thrive in the UK intellectual environment. They have great links with universities, but they say to me that they are increasingly looking to move some of the start-ups that have been created in the UK into Europe, so that they can assemble rapidly the kinds of teams that they need to take those initial ideas and scale them up. Does she agree that having a closer working relationship with our European partners and colleagues, allowing that freedom of movement to return, could be an enormous benefit—counterintuitively perhaps—to our sovereign capacity?

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

The level of interest shows just what an important issue this is. I will come on to discuss some aspects of collaboration as it relates to sovereignty, but I observe that the last time our sovereignty as a mid-sized power was seriously debated was during Brexit, and the slogan “Take back control” reflected the sense that too much sovereignty had been ceded to the European Union without an honest debate with the British people. As a member of the Labour party, I know that we are stronger together and that that can require some loss of autonomy to deliver results, which actually make people more secure, but that must not be done without an honest debate.

Let us look at the four specific sovereignty challenges, the first of which is critical infrastructure and cloud data dependency. The Competition and Markets Authority found that cloud services in Britain are dominated by AWS at 40% to 50%, and Microsoft at 30%. Crown Hosting is meant to be our sovereign hosting capability, but it only hosts 4% of Government legacy services. Both Amazon Web Services and Oracle claim to offer a sovereign cloud—they do say to deal with the difficult part in the title!

The second issue I want to look at is the hot topic of AI. There is no Brit large language model but there is the ambition to transform our public services and industry through AI. The AI opportunities action plan repeatedly references sovereign AI and sovereign compute without defining them. The major AI companies Google, Anthropic, OpenEye, Microsoft and DeepSeek are all headquartered abroad. DeepMind formed Google’s AI capability and was founded right here in the UK before being bought. What capability does the UK now have in AI? What minimum capability does the Minister think we need? How do we respond to the EU Cloud and AI Development Act, which may exclude UK companies?

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. When it comes to AI, an enormous amount of investment is needed. There are many discussions at the moment about the impact of that huge investment in AI. It is very difficult for a smaller country such as the UK to compete in that regard. Does she agree that we need to work with like-minded countries on these issues, including those in the EU? Does she agree that we need to make sure that this is one of the key topics when President Macron visits the UK later this year?

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

I agree with my right hon. Friend that we certainly need to work with like-minded countries.

The third area is cyber-security and data governance. Some argue that we are already at war in the cyber-sphere. Last year’s strategic defence review emphasised cyber and electromagnetic domains, and established a new UK cyber and electromagnetic command to enhance that, with £1 billion in new funding for homeland air missile defence and cyber-security initiatives. Should these be British suppliers? Should they be European? Should they be exclusively NATO suppliers?

On data governance, the foreign direct product rule allows the United States to restrict access to advanced computing chips and AI-related software. By adding UK companies to the entity list, the US can immediately cut them off from cloud services, software and AI tools, while the Cloud and Patriot Acts expand data access powers to compel US companies to hand over data even if held overseas—that is, in the UK. Has the Minister discussed those powers with Microsoft, AWS and Palantir?

Fourthly and finally, we have the UK’s reliance on global supply chains. Critical minerals are an obvious example, but because I am a bit of a geek I want to mention the common information models that enable the things in the internet of things to talk to each other. By 2030, there will be 6 billion CIM connections globally. China controls 70% of the market, creating a huge possibility for the disruption of everything from traffic systems to energy grid operations.

That is a really quick canter through just a few of the technology sovereignty issues. I want to look at two specific examples in more detail. First, the NHS has the largest and most comprehensive longitudinal and structured patient level datasets in the world. I support the push for digital integration as we transition the NHS from analogue to digital, with interoperability and standardisation bringing faster access and better analytics, yet a growing share of NHS data flows through US companies.

The federated data platform contract places core NHS data operations on Palantir’s proprietary systems. Why? There have been numerous reports of irregularities in the way the contract was awarded. In addition—this, for me, is a key point of sovereignty—Palantir’s founder and controlling stakeholder, Peter Thiel, has a political worldview which is at odds with British values. The same is true of Elon Musk. It does our constituents’ sense of agency no good to see their Government so dependent on these companies. Nearly half of adults say that they would opt out of NHS data sharing if the platform was operated by a private foreign provider.

The second example is also to do with Palantir. Its recent defence contract also raised many questions. The strategic defence review emphasised AI as a core enabler of military capability. Reports suggest that Palantir serves primarily as a vehicle for integrating Anthropic’s AI models. The US has just declared Anthropic a supply chain risk for US companies, so will Palantir break UK workflows that are using Anthropic? I am certain that President Trump would not allow British companies to control US defence datasets, so why are we allowing American ones to control ours?

I could go on about civil nuclear, telecoms infrastructure, subsea cables, quantum, space and drones, but I will stop there, and finish by looking at possible solutions. Technology sovereignty was a big theme at the Munich security conference, and the US-Europe trust gap was a yawning chasm following the shock realisation that we could not always count on the US as an ally. Technology sovereignty solutions that focus on technological leadership, such as in the Secretary of State’s definition, reflect the basic idea that if the UK leads on, say, protein folding then Google may be less inclined to switch off ChatGPT if we side with Denmark when the US tries to seize Greenland.

Whether I agree with that approach or not, it certainly resonates with the evidence that the Committee heard from witnesses in so many domains regarding how important it is for the science and business community to understand where the Government are seeking to lead, so that resources can be focused and skills built there. Can the Minister say whether the Government plan to decide which aspects of AI, quantum, space or bioengineering we will seek to lead in? AI is often thought of as having three layers: infrastructure, data and applications. Can the Minister tell us where in the AI stack we are aiming for control, leadership, sovereignty or whatever we want to call it? Also, does he agree that weak competition in the AI and digital sectors, caused by giant incumbents, reduces our ability to lead?

Open source is often cited as at least part of the solution to sovereignty. I am a huge advocate for open source, open interfaces, transparent code and standard protocols, which can reduce or minimise dependence. Despite the policy ambitions, three quarters of NHS trusts’ development teams do not use open source approaches. None of the AI models currently being deployed within the public sector is an open ecosystem; all are proprietary in nature. The Minister’s Department has sign-off on all significant IT procurement. Is open source a requirement of it?

Finally, can science diplomacy help us to negotiate technology sovereignty? A number of Members have raised the issue of collaboration. Can we build on our human capital strengths by collaborating and working with partners who have respect for our values, take collaborative approaches, and can share with us the financial capital needed to make our sovereign objectives a reality? Are we happy to share leadership, and perhaps sovereignty, with our allies?

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important speech on an important topic. She is right to talk about how the US and China dominate on technological sovereignty, and part of the reason it is very difficult for the UK to compete with them is, of course, the scale of those countries. Does she agree that the way we can compete is by co-operating with reform in Europe, and that we should view our strategy not in terms of how the UK can outcompete Europe but in terms of how Europe, with the UK at its heart, can outcompete the US and China?

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

It is an important question. I am not in a position to choose our allies, but I agree in principle that we should be working with the European Union. I do not think it should be a choice between the European Union and the US, though they may make that the choice. I certainly think that we should be working with our European allies in order to form a large market for secure and ethical technology, which is in the interests of everyone.

Finally, we need to monitor the future sovereignty implications of current research, so that that can influence our investment and mergers and acquisitions policy, and so that key technologies and companies are not easily allowed to go abroad.

This debate has attracted a large amount of interest, so I have tried to be as brief as possible. I have asked the Minister many questions; if he cannot answer them all, he can write to me. In summary, we need to understand what we can own, control or lead on ourselves, what we can access that is in the hands of allies we trust, and how we can manage the things we must get from those we do not trust. We must always remember that how we develop and deploy our human capital will be critical to our ability to achieve any kind of technological sovereignty. I urge the Minister to be honest about where we are. We do not want to sleepwalk into technological serfdom and/or some kind of techxit—a technology Brexit.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

Order. Please stay standing if you want to speak. We are very tight on time, because I hope to take the wind-ups at eight minutes past 5. If we have a rough time limit of two minutes, everyone will get in. I call Daniel Zeichner.

16:50

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah).

I have three quick anecdotal points and then a question for the Minister. Data sovereignty has been part of my life. I started my career as a trainee computer programmer at Shire Hall in Cambridge. My prime job was to carry the punch cards to the punch room to make sure that payroll ran properly. Anyone who dropped them was the least popular person in the entire institution, and at that time, the idea that that could be triggered by someone from elsewhere in the world would have seemed fanciful.

A decade later, I was working for a major insurance company. We were struggling to deal with multiple records for the same clients, and we brought in the Americans. They were big people from Texas—really big people. When they went to the coffee machine, they came back with two coffees and two bags of crisps. But they could not solve the essential problem, and the question still remained: who was in control of the data?

Fast-forward two further decades, and I am MP for Cambridge. A major American software provider came to talk to me about the cloud, and the same question arose again. I asked, “Where is the data?” They said they would build more data centres in the UK. I know that it is more complicated than that, but the question of sovereignty and independence is also partly about people. We have to maintain our own workforce.

Let me quickly raise with the Minister an issue that has been coming up very strongly to the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee: funding changes at UK Research and Innovation. I think that this is an unfortunate unintended consequence of a laudable attempt by the new regime to implement the goal, set up a decade ago, to use resources more rationally. UKRI has fallen foul of the existing research council structures, meaning that even though the Government are putting more money in overall, people in the particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics sector are facing 30% cuts. That cannot be UKRI’s intention. I hope that the Minister can confirm that it is not the Government’s intention, and that he will use his influence to get a rethink. Our technological sovereignty will not be secured if we are closing doors to future researchers and putting a key part of our research sector at risk.

16:53

[Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah) on securing the debate.

Ensuring that we have a strong and secure technological landscape in the UK is vital not only to our growth and development but to our national security. As we move at pace, we must also move with precision. That brings me to the £500 million sovereign AI fund. It is a very welcome commitment, but the impact will depend entirely on how it is used. I therefore ask the Minister for assurance and clarity on how the new funding will genuinely break from past initiatives and deliver real, measurable impact. That means being transparent about who will receive support, what priorities will shape those choices, how we will ensure true diversity—not only in the people and organisations involved, but in the problems we choose to tackle—and what value judgments we employ in the decision-making process.

If we want innovation to flourish rather than stall, we must ensure that smaller British and diverse organisations are actively supported to grow and scale. I warn against being dazzled by big promises with big tech, particularly from those who are not British. I am pleased to see the Government’s commitment to building AI infrastructure, data security and compute power, which we see in data centres, AI growth zones and supercomputers, as well as the AI sovereign fund mentioned earlier. However, how can we be assured that such investment happens and has impact? What oversight will the Government have to ensure that funds are used as intended, outcomes are audited, and impact is recognised? Governance of funding beyond product timeframe is vital.

I want to mention again the issue of definitions. We must be clear about what we are supporting. Often the terms “technology”, “digital” and “AI” are used interchangeably as though they describe the same thing, but digital is not the same as technology, and neither is synonymous with artificial intelligence. If we are to build a coherent national strategy, we must be absolutely clear about what we are talking about, what we are funding and what we are trying to secure.

16:55

[Mr Bayo Alaba (Southend East and Rochford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah) for securing this timely and vital debate.

In a world that is increasingly reliant on secure and stable access to digital technology, whether that is artificial intelligence or semiconductors, the ability to control those technologies must be a Government priority. Securing technology sovereignty in the United Kingdom should not be a difficult undertaking. We have world-class universities, industry-leading research institutions and the manufacturing capabilities to turn ideas into marketable products. However, world-class research is only half of the solution to achieving control over the innovative technologies created in the UK.

When the UK university spin-out or research group is forced to trade its intellectual property for Silicon Valley venture capital, we lose more than just the business; we lose our grip on national security. I welcome the Government’s plans to streamline the Intellectual Property Office, but there are lessons we can learn from our intellectual counterparts, where strong links between universities, research groups and industry have given rise to countless pioneering companies. There is no reason the UK could not support universities to own their own intellectual property, and nurture their growth by encouraging partnerships with private enterprise.

Closer collaboration between Government, businesses and research bodies will not only protect our national interests but bolster the financial situation of universities and higher education institutions, where funding shortfalls are already leading to lay-offs and even partial closures. Take the decision of the University of Essex to close its Southend campus, where dozens of my constituents face imminent redundancy and hundreds of students are searching for certainty regarding the future of their courses. The university’s senior leadership has pointed to an unsustainable funding model as a reason behind that devastating decision.

I am grateful that the issue of technological sovereignty is getting the attention it deserves, and I hope the debate prompts further consideration of the benefits of IP capitalisation for our world-class universities.

16:57

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I am grateful to be able to contribute to this important debate on tech sovereignty in the UK. There is something rather poignant about having this debate on the very day the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister has announced a consultation on plans to give people access to their Government data through a bespoke digital wallet built in-house. In many ways, that is the ultimate expression of tech sovereignty, but there is much more to do and we must do it now.

For me, growing instability, geopolitically and globally, has shone a light on just how reliant we are on digital infrastructure—the systems that enable our communication, support our health service and help to keep our country safe. The Financial Times recently reported concerns about Iran targeting United States AI data centres, which is a way to undermine neighbouring economies and damage US interests. As AI becomes embedded across both the public and private sectors, we must recognise the risks posed by concentrated powers in the hands of a small number of overseas tech companies.

At its most basic, sovereignty means the ability to make deliberate choices in our own interests, according to our shared values, so it is concerning that so many public sector contracts continue to go to overseas tech giants. In November ’22, Palantir was awarded a three-year Ministry of Defence contract worth £75.2 million, followed by, in December ’25, a further three-year contract worth £240.6 million, both without a formal competitive tender. I would love to see more of those major contracts going to home-grown innovators—companies based in the UK paying taxes here and helping to grow our economy. That is why I am really pleased to hear about the commitment to have a sovereign AI venture fund of £500 million to foster AI development. I would welcome seeing how much of that goes to female founders.

The UK is by no means the little guy in this fight. Our start-up ecosystem is the third largest in the world. We have a real opportunity to grow. If we get this right, tech sovereignty can mean high-quality jobs across our regions, and it can ensure that we become the most trusted and safest country in the world for technology.

16:59

[Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I want to speak about technological sovereignty from an east midlands perspective. Too often, Westminster debates are focused on venture capital or high-level digital strategy and so forth while the real foundations of our tech capability lie in specific industrial regions.

The east midlands already has the capabilities to anchor British technological sovereignty. Derbyshire, and particularly Derby, is one of Europe’s most important aerospace hubs. Nottingham is home to two world-class universities, driving innovation in materials science, data science and advanced manufacturing. For Nottinghamshire and my constituency, this is about linking university research directly to local production; strategic public investment in sectors such as advanced manufacturing, with a focus on export focused technologies in particular; encouraging pension funds and public investment programmes to support domestic capital, rather than sending wealth abroad; and restoring political and economic confidence in post-industrial communities in the midlands like my constituency.

Technological sovereignty is not just a slogan; it is a matter of real practical capacity and of the technologies that will shape the future being designed and built in this country rather than elsewhere. The east midlands already contains many of the pieces needed to secure that sovereignty. The task is to recognise them, back them and build a new national political economy that puts production, skills and regional industrial strength at the centre of Britain’s future.

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

We have two more speakers, and as I said, I will start calling the Front-Bench spokespeople at 5.08 pm. Your kind colleagues have given you a little extra time, Emily Darlington.

17:02

[Emily Darlington (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)]

I thank my kind colleagues. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. This is such a big debate. It is because we are all passionate about UK AI and the growth of the sector in the UK that it is so important, because the growing monopolies that are coming into our country are not actually helping our growth. I know that is quite a controversial statement, but it is not controversial if one thinks about how these industries are developing: they are buying up and squishing out UK inventions, growth and companies.

What is sovereignty? That was the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah). For me, it is UK ideas, it is UK inventors and it is UK based, but it is also about UK values. It is about using our own data protection laws and our own BSI standards, and it is about making sure that UK ideas can be sold to the world without foreign interference.

I do not say that lightly. Recently, Peter Girnus, the AI security expert for Palantir, said:

“The lesson was the speed: the market for military AI does not pause for ethics. It pauses for nothing.”

That is a problem: Ministry of Defence contracts are going to such companies, which think that international law should be ignored in warfare. For that very reason, we have to be very sceptical about going into business with Palantir and with the many other companies that feel that they are too big to follow national law.

On the Floor of the House, I raised the fallacy of Starlink being a safe emergency protocol. Why is it a fallacy? Because it can be turned off, and Elon Musk has said he hates our Prime Minister. What if there is an emergency and Musk wants to create chaos, as he has already done through his contributions to various marches in this country and through his support for that one-man band? I cannot remember what it is called now— Restore or something like that; it starts with an R.

Growth comes from the development of our UK ideas, from tech that supports the UK economy, and from making sure that we see the monopoly that I referred to as a threat to our growth and not as something that we need to bow down or curtsy to. I ask the Minister: what is next? We have a great fund, but what are we investing in? Are we making sure that quantum technologies will be developed here, and will serve the UK people and the UK economy? Are we making sure that we are providing opportunities for UK firms to get the amazing contracts to work with us to make this Government the first digital Government that the UK has ever seen?

17:05

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to take part in a debate with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah) for securing this debate. In my best Geordie, I will say that she’s done a geet canny job again. [Laughter.] That is the end of my Geordie—don’t worry.

Much like my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), I am here to talk about quantum technologies. For most people, the word “quantum” sounds like the title of a James Bond film—and if I am honest, “Casino Royale” is better—but it is so important for the future of our economy, and not just because crusty old physics teachers like me get really excited about it. The quantum industry is projected to generate $100 billion globally by 2035, which is now not that far away. That economic impact is one thing, but the fact that it will also revolutionise defence and huge amounts of our civil infrastructure means that it is a great example of why technological sovereignty is not just an economic issue but a security issue.

The UK is home to some really exciting quantum research and quantum businesses, and it is vital that we keep this industry here, strong and growing. The Government aim to make the UK a leading quantum-enabled economy by 2033, which I absolutely welcome, but too often these businesses are tempted abroad as they scale.

How do we stop that? One way, which hon. Members have not touched on today, probably because of the time limit on speeches, is to improve the skills supply. That is not just at the PhD level that we often associate with physicists, but at the level of the lab technicians who will physically build the machines and maintain the infrastructure—it is vital that we have the skills supply to provide those guys too. People do not need to aspire to a doctorate to work in this sector; we need more pathways for apprentices to do these roles, which are more skills-based than some other roles.

We also need better access to capital for quantum companies. We have brilliant start-ups, but every time they go through a round of funding, they find it harder and harder to secure the funds they need to be able to remain in the UK. We need specialised infrastructure, such as cryogenic systems, advanced fabrication facilities and secure quantum networks.

We also need to ensure that many more of our colleagues understand that this next industrial revolution—the quantum revolution—is coming and we need to get ahead of it. That is why I have brought together a number of Members to form the all-party parliamentary group on quantum technologies, and I thank many colleagues here in Westminster Hall for being part of that.

I will finish with a plea to the Minister. We are here to talk about technological sovereignty, but we live in a globalised world and I hear real concerns from the sector about procuring helium. The international situation in the strait of Hormuz means that Qatar, which is home to one of only two plants that produce semiconductor-grade helium, has been forced to pause production because it has been targeted by Iranian airstrikes. I do not expect the Minister to have an answer to that issue immediately, but I do ask him to have a look at it and consider how we can support the sector during this time of huge uncertainty.

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

Beautifully done. I thank all colleagues for sticking to the time limit.

17:08

[Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I massively thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah), the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, not only for securing this debate on one of the biggest issues of our time, but for opening it so eloquently and constructively.

We do indeed live in a digital world: our jobs, our banks, our transport and our national security all run on technology. The question of who owns that technology and who controls the data that it generates is not an abstract one; instead, it is the defining question of our time. It is about choice for our Government and for consumers, it is about growth for British tech in a global world, and it is about creating resilience by diversifying risk. A bold strategy on technological sovereignty is how we meet the challenge that we face.

Such a strategy means backing British tech, supporting innovation by British businesses that pay British taxes, strengthening our economy and—crucially—protecting our national economy. As Members from across the House, including the hon. Member, have discussed, such a strategy is also about security. The hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) talked about the risks of foreign interference, and the hon. Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) highlighted that Palantir felt it was too big to follow national law. This issue is about our security, so it is vital.

Across the pond, President Donald Trump has demonstrated his willingness to weaponise American power, and especially American technology, to exercise his own political will. Even at home in the US, we see what has happened with Anthropic: he called the people who run it “left wing nut jobs” and directed all Government agencies to stop using it just because the company refused to allow the military unfettered use of its AI tools.

We have also seen that approach with the International Criminal Court. The chief prosecutor of the ICC was personally sanctioned by the Trump Administration, including through the disconnection of his Microsoft email last May. Such episodes expose the reality of the world’s increasing vulnerability. The digital infrastructure underpinning international institutions—and by extension our own public services—increasingly can be disrupted at the discretion of a foreign Government.

Such concerns are shared. In June last year, a study by Civo, a UK provider of sovereign cloud, found that of 1,000 UK-based IT decision makers, 83% were worried about the impact of international developments on their data sovereignty, with the majority considering data sovereignty a strategic priority. Yet even though the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West highlighted the statistics on the technology used, it seems that that is not a concern of Government.

We directly asked the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology how dependent our public services are on US-based cloud technology but the answer was that the Government do not know: it is not being measured at a Government level. That is a serious concern. One of the most basic requirements for resilience is knowing what we depend on. I ask the Minister: do we intend to start collecting that data? At this moment, our essential public services may be running at the mercy of Donald Trump and these big tech firms, yet the Government cannot even tell us by how much.

Sovereign technology is not just a matter of national security. As many hon. Members have highlighted in this debate, it is about our economic advantage, growth in this country, improving national standards for technological development, boosting public trust in modern technology, and increasing tax revenues for the UK. Luca Leone, the chief executive officer of Kahootz, wrote for techUK,

“The crucial question is no longer only who builds our platforms, but who owns and operates the systems that underpin our most critical capabilities. This is where digital sovereignty meets supply chain resilience.”

The hon. Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba) spoke eloquently about the skills, the businesses, the spin-outs, and the university research that is so strong in the UK. We need to help those things stay here and scale up—scale-up finance was talked about a lot in this debate. We can be that global leader and we should be.

This debate has also highlighted that much of the money set aside for technological investment is not going to UK companies. The National Audit Office concluded that the Government’s procurement strategy actively favours large, predominantly foreign suppliers. The Government have a budget of £14 billion for such investments; where does that money go?

Dan Jones, the defence account manager of 4Secure, wrote for techUK that

“Digital sovereignty…is not just a single procurement decision. It is an ongoing commitment to control, assurance, and resilience”.

Public service contracts go worryingly against that trend. We talked about the contract for Palantir in the NHS, and we talked about Palantir in defence. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West eloquently questioned how much the leaders of such tech firms are aligned with British values, and talked about ensuring that the tech we have is aligned with such values. I ask the Minister to explain why Palantir was prioritised over UK tech in the NHS contract, and what work is being done to review our Government processes. This is about not just software but our telecoms infrastructure—the reliance on Starlink is increasingly worrying—and of course our cloud.

I will wrap up by saying that, ultimately, sovereign tech is about power over our everyday lives. Does the Minister agree that now is the time to secure our technology sovereignty? Will he support our new clauses to the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill about digital sovereignty—

[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

Order.

17:13

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah) on securing such an important debate. It is so well attended, and it is a shame that it is not longer; I commend everyone for their two-minute raps. In the context, I will plug tomorrow’s Conservative-led debate on Government support for UK tech, which will be an opportunity to speak about some of the concerns that have been expressed on a cross-party basis about the direction of tech policy.

We all come to this place with experiences that shape our thinking on these critical tech issues. Members have probably never heard this before, but the hon. Lady is a former telecoms engineer—[Laughter.] She brought her expertise to Ofcom and is now a distinguished Select Committee Chairman. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) brings his experience as a computer engineer, and the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) his experience as a “crusty old” physics teacher. He talked about quantum, and one question that I have in relation to today’s launch of the policy on digital identities is whether a quantum-proof system is being built.

I come to this debate as a former Cabinet Office and telecoms and digital infrastructure Minister. During my tenure, the Government in which I served faced three supply chain crises that permanently changed how I think about resilience: Brexit, covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Each forced us to confront uncomfortable truths about where we source from, whom we can trust and what risks we carry when we fail to think strategically about our dependencies.

I also think of my experiences on a trip to China in 2018 as a new Back Bencher visiting Huawei’s Shenzhen lab. I later found myself as the Minister overseeing the removal of high-risk vendors from the 5G core, and I saw how an earlier decision not to scrutinise those providing critical infrastructure came at real economic cost as well as security cost. Security risk and economic risk are deeply intertwined and will become ever more so as more of our economy moves online. In the space of a week, those Gulf economies that have been expanding voraciously into the digital sphere have found three AWS data centres under attack—a deliberate strategy by Iran to cripple critical digital infrastructure and, in so doing, mete out economic pain and chaos.

Those experiences shape how I think about technological sovereignty. We have to be clear about what we mean by that. It does not mean autarky, complete self-reliance, or pretending that Britain can or should build every piece of technology ourselves. That is not realistic or, actually, risk free. It is not about stopping important tech companies investing here and bringing expertise. I see it instead as being about resilience and influence. It means understanding the risks that we are carrying in the tech stack that we increasingly rely on; mitigating those risks; and ensuring that we do not steadily reduce our leverage by ceding power to companies or countries whose influence over those systems may ultimately exceed our own.

We are seeing this play out in the cloud, where I think we need to be pursuing a dual strategy whereby, alongside the hyperscalers, we start to expand our edge capacity, with smaller data centres and a more pluralistic market, using competition policy and thinking strategically about procurement. We need to think about it in terms of the components that power modern computing. How do we make ourselves an indispensable part of any critical supply chain in the way Taiwan and the Netherlands have done in relation to chips?

We need to think about the concerns in relation to Chinese tech in energy policy. I think that as we move further into the renewables space, we are building in quite a lot of risk there. We have heard today about critical minerals, and I have talked about high-risk vendors in telecoms. Dependency on China and dependency on America are not equivalent risks. None the less, I worry that, having learned the lesson about Chinese technology, the Government now appear content to place an extraordinarily high level of dependence on American hyperscalers instead. Of course the US is our closest ally and has enormous expertise that in many respects we cannot match—we cannot do so in every field—but sensible allies hedge their risks. That is especially relevant when we think about some of its cloud rules, which have been mentioned today.

The Government are pursuing an odd strategy here. We are upping our dependency on the US while reducing our reliability and credibility as a partner. Similarly, while inviting circular investments in mega data centres, entering into data partnerships with AI firms and blowing ever larger balloons of fantasy out of the US-UK tech partnership—something that has been picked up today, but also in The Guardian this week—the Government are actually making it harder for UK tech firms to grow, because of Government procurement rules, high taxes, crippling energy costs, wealth taxes and all the rest of it.

I appreciate that we are very short of time—I am getting a little nod to shuffle along—but my worry is that the Government thus far have not had a strategy for tech sovereignty and are heightening our dependence on US hyperscalers. I would be very grateful if the Minister could address those concerns, which I think are shared across the House.

17:18

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Kanishka Narayan)]

It is such a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah), the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, for securing this debate and bringing to it her deep expertise across engineering, policymaking and leadership in the House on the question of tech sovereignty. I also thank all hon. Members for making very thoughtful points and bringing to the debate a range of experiences—as well as swiftness of speech, given the constraints imposed by time today.

I have long felt that the central question in our politics and for our country is the future of technology in this country. It will be the major driver of prosperity and dignity for people, and the central question is whether Britain gets to shape it or is shaped by it. In Westminster, we sometimes talk about technology sovereignty as an abstract geopolitical goal, but we have to keep in mind that, ultimately, it is the basis for our NHS radiologists to have access to the best tools for detecting cancer, with data here in the UK; for British founders and builders to be able to train and deploy models, rather than depending on foreign APIs and pricing; and for people in their homes and workplaces across the country to know that their everyday AI systems are governed transparently and democratically here in the UK.

My view is that technology sovereignty is a state’s ability to have strategic leverage when it comes to a technology, such that it can ensure ongoing access to critical inputs and ongoing assurance that its wider economic and national security objectives can be met more broadly. It is to take the best tools the world has to offer today, but also to shape the rest, and ultimately to make that which is critical here in Britain.

As I think of it, that strategic leverage is obtained by three steps on a ladder. The first is just to have enough of the critical inputs. Taking AI as an example, we have to have enough chips today to be able to do anything with AI in the first instance. With that in mind, the Government have always been very keen to secure the level of capital investment that means that Britain is at least at the table with critical inputs.

Once we are at the table, the second part of sovereignty is to make sure that we have some diversification in who we procure critical inputs from so that we can bargain effectively. We are the party of labour; we understand that who has power matters as much as what the powers are. In that context, one of the first things I did in my role was to engage with a series of companies in every part of the stack so that we were able to build more diversity into the landscape.

The third rung of the ladder is, ultimately, to build British in order to make sure that we have the full-fat version of sovereign capability here in critical parts of the stack.

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

I thank the Minister for setting out his sovereignty stack. Just as an example, is an LLM a critical input or another level in the stack—and does it need to be British?

[Kanishka Narayan]

I valued my hon. Friend’s earlier point that sovereignty has to be seen in the round. We cannot make everything here; we have to look at the entire bundle that we have to offer. In the context of LLMs, there is some uncertainty as to whether all the capability will ultimately accrue in closed proprietary models, or whether open-source, open-weight models might be part of it. To me, as things stand today, it is a pretty important part of the stack. The question then is whether we have enough of it to be able to make the most of it by adopting it for economic and national security usage here, or whether there are aspects in which, at least from a distillation or small-model point of view, we need to develop some capabilities here as well. I do not think there is a binary answer to the overarching question; the answer is much more nuanced. I am happy to discuss that further if it is of interest.

As I said, the third rung of the ladder is, ultimately, to build British and focus on areas in which we can develop our strengths. I have to point out that we made sure that Nscale, one of our neocloud hyperscale providers, was an important part of the supply chain for AI growth zones. I noticed that yesterday Nscale raised the largest ever series-C funding in Europe, in part as a result of the Government’s support and convening in that context. Arm, the leading chip design company globally, is still headquartered in Cambridge, and we have fantastic companies in the AI inference chip part of the stack, Fractile and Olix being two of them. It is an area that I spend a lot of my time on.

When it comes to models, we have huge strengths, not just because a number of the Gemini teams and researchers continue to sit in King’s Cross at DeepMind, but because companies developing foundation models in AI for science and autonomous vehicles, embodied AI, and aspects of world models and computer vision reside here in the UK. Wayve raised £1.5 billion just this year, the largest funding round in Europe to date for that stage. It is a fantastic company that looks in particular at embodied AI and vision. I am proud of those companies. It is right that the Government are supporting them through the lens of tech sovereignty, as that is what both Britain’s and the companies’ best interests dictate.

The sovereign AI unit will be crucial to that. I am glad to see the level of interest in that across the House. It will concentrate efforts on priority areas. There was interest in my specifying those areas. The four areas that are of interest at the outset are novel compute, in particular focusing on the inference chip part of the stack; novel model architecture; AI for science—I point hon. Members to the AI for science strategy published by the Department three or four months ago, which set out particular areas of focus and priority—and embodied AI.

To give a concrete example of early action that the sovereign AI unit has taken, we have already invested £8 million in the OpenBind consortium to accelerate AI-driven drug discovery, and £5 million in the Encode: AI for Science fellowship to support the next generation of world-class talent. The focus of the unit will be on both capital and compute, to incrementally anchor more and more British companies here, but I know that the unit will only be part of the solution. We have a role to look at innovation and market support much more broadly across the tech landscape.

In November, we also announced a significant advance market commitment—a deeply innovative procurement shift—which meant that up to £100 million in Government funding was available to buy products from promising UK chip companies once they reach a high-performance benchmark. That presents UK start-ups with an exciting opportunity to grow and compete right here, building for the world.

AI is of course just one area of Britain’s flourishing tech ecosystem. I point out to my hon. Friends the Members for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) and for Lichfield (Dave Robertson), who made important points about quantum, that the Government have doubled the rate of investment in quantum, with about £1 billion committed over the next four years. The points on helium made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield have very much been taken into account. The Government are looking at the developing situation on helium supply in the middle east, which is of concern.

Through our national programme, we broadly want to anchor development and access to technological capabilities that are most important to economic growth and national security. That means, in the context of quantum, more companies starting, growing and staying here and, in the context of AI, not just developing capabilities in particular parts of the stack, but in part looking upstream for skills as well.

In that context, I agree totally with my hon. Friends the Members for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) and for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba) that the quality and scale of our talent and skills in our universities and schools is the single biggest determinant of where we end up. I am happy to write to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge about the UKRI changes that we are making. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend East and Rochford, IP capitalisation is a deeply important part of what I focus on with the Intellectual Property Office, and I am happy to engage him on the question of Essex University in particular.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion Preseli) (PC)]

The Minister knows that the Computer Misuse Act 1990 criminalises a lot of legitimate cyber-resilience and vulnerability research. I think that the Government are minded to introduce a statutory defence for such research, but can he share whether that defence will be introduced as part of the cyber Bill?

[Kanishka Narayan]

The hon. Member is absolutely right to raise that point about a defence for cyber-security purposes. The Computer Misuse Act is being reviewed at the moment—the Home Office is looking at it—but, as I mentioned in Committee on the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill, that is not the appropriate vehicle, given its much narrower scope than the broad scope that we would like in the context of a defence. For those reasons, I am keen that we pursue the matter, but elsewhere.

I am conscious of time, so I will proceed at pace. Alongside quantum and AI, semiconductors are another technology that underpins the global economy and is fundamental to our way of life. As part of our industrial strategy, digital and technology sector plan, we are taking measures to foster the growth of that particular sector.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) spoke very thoughtfully about the fact that we should not just rely on venture-focused companies in particular parts of the country, but look at our industrial heritage. That is exactly why I have focused on ensuring that the AI growth zones programme puts data centres in the north-east, alongside the headquarters of our largest listed tech company. A deep heritage of financial services technology innovation in Newcastle and the surrounding area is now able to benefit from good jobs anchored by that data centre.

In south Wales, the data centre planned for the site of the old Ford car manufacturing plant gives hope for jobs in the semiconductor cluster, anchored by that data centre. That is critical. In north Wales, data centres are pulling our nuclear small modular reactor into the future, which is critical to thousands of jobs in that community. In Lanarkshire, the old steelworking community, which lost thousands of jobs and never fully recovered, now has hope from half a billion pounds of community investment as a result of data centres. That is precisely what I believe in.

[Anneliese Dodds]

In one sentence, will the Minister say something about another geographical issue: collaboration with like-minded countries, especially in the EU?

[Kanishka Narayan]

I will simply give a note of total affirmation on the importance of that. Having met a series of Ministers from Europe, I know that we have a huge amount in common and a huge amount to do in the future.

I am being tested pretty intensively on time, so I will focus on one final point. Some Members rightly raised the question of mergers, acquisitions and investment controls. As my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee will know from the time that I worked for her on the Bill as it was proceeding through the House, the National Security and Investment Act 2021 is an excellent example of where we are ensuring that investment and sensitive areas maintain the national security interests of Britain now and in the longer term.

In summary, the Government will continue to support our tech sectors as best they can. Only yesterday, Nscale raised the largest series-C funding round in all of Europe. Isambard-AI has raised a £50 million round for embodied AI—manufacturing AI—as well. Those are testaments to the approach that I have set out, which will ensure that British firms and people can seize every opportunity they can in tech-enabled Britain.

17:30

Motion lapsed, and sitting adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 10(14)).