Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to enable Innovate UK to recognise the reclassification of medicines as innovation in their grant assessments.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Innovate UK recognises the role of innovation in the reclassification, repurposing, and reformulation of medicines.
Whilst not all competitions will allow funding for post-market products, Innovate UK has supported projects involving repurposing for new indications, novel delivery models, formulation changes, and wraparound technologies to improve patient access. For example, Innovate UK is currently funding Signacor Therapeutics in Northern Ireland to repurpose an existing chemotherapy drug towards the treatment of heart disease.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure energy and planning infrastructure can support large-scale AI compute deployments without undermining commitments to clean energy and lowering energy costs.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
To meet the UK’s AI ambitions, we are committed to ensuring our energy system is equipped to support this growing demand in a clean, sustainable, and scalable way.
Through the AI Energy Council, we bring together leaders from both the AI and energy sectors, to discuss how to prepare the UK’s energy system to manage the growing energy demand of AI and aligning AI energy demand with Clean Power 2030 goals. The council will explore bold, clean energy solutions to ensure our AI ambitions align with the UK’s net zero goals.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the AI Growth Zone in north-east England delivers over 5,000 skilled jobs and attracts the forecasted £30 billion in private investment.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Government is establishing AI Growth Zones (AIGZs) to deliver the infrastructure needed for the UK to develop and deploy advanced AI at scale.
Following the announcement of the North East Growth Zone, we have established a taskforce which DSIT SoS will co-chair with the regional mayor (Kim McGuinness), including the region’s leading universities, businesses and skills providers. Alongside our existing engagement with partners, this taskforce will ensure we bring all the force of national government to work with regional and local government. We will lay the physical foundations and build data centres to launch careers in AI, ensuring this Growth Zone is about creating real opportunities for people across the region.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the contribution of multinational companies to the UK's artificial intelligence capacity, and what steps they are taking to balance the role of those companies with the development of UK-owned artificial intelligence capacity.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The government's sovereignty strategy is pragmatic and focusses on building resilience and strategic advantage, rather than simply self-reliance. We want to ensure that the UK can use the best models in the world while protecting UK interests.
To achieve this, we are establishing strategic partnerships with the leading frontier model developers, for example our Memoranda of Understanding with Anthropic, OpenAI and Cohere, to ensure resilient access to and influence the development of their capabilities. We are also developing sovereign capabilities where it matters most by scaling onshore infrastructure, supporting the emergence of new national champions and increasing the talent pipeline in the UK.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of job losses as a result of artificial intelligence replacing content moderation and safety roles at tech firms in the UK.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Under the Online Safety Act, in-scope services must protect all users from illegal content, and children from age-inappropriate content. The Act’s illegal content duties have been in force since March 2025, and the child safety duties since July 2025. Platforms are required to take steps to mitigate risks to users, including through implementing effective content moderation processes.
AI Adoption across businesses, including tech or non-tech firms, is a key priority for this government, and this technology can play an important role in content moderation.
DSIT is working across government to plan for different scenarios, and is monitoring data to track and prepare for these. The Get Britain Working White Paper sets out how we will address key challenges and that includes giving people the skills to get those jobs and spread opportunity across the UK to fix the foundations of our economy to seize AI’s potential.
Asked by: Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government, in regard to page 79 of the Chronic Risks Analysis, published by the Cabinet Office on 8 July, why the information about the Equality Act 2010 references gender rather than sex.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Chronic Risk Analysis (CRA) is a collaboration between Cabinet Office and the Government Office for Science.
The text in the report sets out some of the protected characteristics covered by the Equalities Act and notes the potential impact on these through bias and discrimination. The drafting could be improved by explicitly listing all 9 characteristics. This will be amended in any future publications of the analysis.
Asked by: Martin Wrigley (Liberal Democrat - Newton Abbot)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what discussions she has had with business representatives on ensuring that elderly people are not prevented from using businesses that choose to move to digital-only services.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The government does not generally intervene in how businesses choose to conduct their activities or offer their products and services. However, the Government expects all businesses to treat all consumers fairly.
Having said that, everyone has a role to play in realising a shared vision for a digitally inclusive UK to ensure everyone, including the elderly, can participate in our modern digital society. That is why we launched the Digital Inclusion Action Plan in February, which sets out the first actions we are taking over the next year to boost digital inclusion.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what guidance they provide to national museums and galleries about the copyright status of exact digital reproductions of two-dimensional artworks that are in the public domain.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
According to case law, a work will only be protected by copyright if it is original, in the sense that is the author’s ‘own intellectual creation’. It is questionable whether an unaltered reproduction of an existing work where copyright has expired could satisfy this criterion if there has been no (or very limited) scope for the creator to exercise free creative choices. However, this will depend on the individual facts of the case.
Further guidance is published on GOV.UK in an Intellectual Property Office copyright notice on digital images, photographs and the internet.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of how national museums and galleries treat the copyright status of exact digital reproductions of two-dimensional artworks that are in the public domain.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
According to case law, a work will only be protected by copyright if it is original, in the sense that is the author’s ‘own intellectual creation’. It is questionable whether an unaltered reproduction of an existing work where copyright has expired could satisfy this criterion if there has been no (or very limited) scope for the creator to exercise free creative choices. However, this will depend on the individual facts of the case.
The Government has made no assessment of how cultural heritage institutions treat the copyright status of such reproductions in practice.
Asked by: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact on jobs in life sciences and access to new medicines of Merck's decision to cancel a planned £1 billion expansion of its UK operations.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The decision by Merck, or MSD, not to progress its investment, is part of a broader effort by MSD to optimise its resources. It announced in July that it would cut $3 billion per year by 2027 and that 6,000 jobs would go worldwide. MSD continues to employ over 1,600 staff in the UK across other operations, including more than 40 collaborative working agreements with the NHS, the Our Future Health project and UK clinical trials. This decision will not impact UK access to new medicines.