EU Technological Sovereignty Package

Debate between Baroness Lloyd of Effra and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Monday 20th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The Government have already set out their intention to use public sector buying power more strategically. The January 2025 blueprint for modern digital government noted that public sector organisations often contract locally and individually, limiting the impact of the £26 billion of annual technology spend, and committed to continue working on whole of public sector agreements. We are also developing the national cloud infrastructure programme, a strategic initiative to co-ordinate how the public sector buys cloud services. This programme will use the collective buying power of the whole of the public sector to secure better value for taxpayers, strengthen digital resilience and create new opportunities for British businesses.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister concerned about the rising pre-eminence of China in AI, with several world-class developers now there and the rapid adoption of its low-cost models across, for example, emerging economies?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

Developments in AI are incredible in many respects. That only reinforces our belief that we need to invest in the UK, not just in digital infrastructure and hardware—for example, supporting UK businesses that have unique chip capabilities—but in upskilling people in the UK to adopt AI, so that we as a country can benefit from the productivity gains and that small and large businesses can adopt AI safely and securely.

Built Environment Sector

Debate between Baroness Lloyd of Effra and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

My noble friend is right to draw our attention to this area. Ensuring that we have the workers to support a clean energy transition is essential and she will know that, last week, the department put out a very detailed plan—I commend it to all noble Lords—to address the skills gaps we have in 31 priority occupations. The plan will create well-paid, secure jobs with good workplace rights. Noble Lords will also be aware that, in the last few weeks, the Department for Education, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has also published a skills White Paper, which shows just how joined up these projects to create skills will be. It includes details of the technical excellence colleges, which will specialise in these areas.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I too very much welcome the Minister to her seat. Much of the historic success of the built environment has depended on small and medium-sized businesses: developers, architects, housebuilders, plumbers, planners and so on. What will the Minister do to bring down the regulatory and other barriers to their continued and, I hope, growing success?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes another very important point. Over the past years, the nature of the construction market has changed and it is absolutely right to focus on small builders. There is a whole programme of support for SME builders, some of which is in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. It includes streamlined planning rules for small sites to reduce bureaucracy around those kinds of approvals and new reforms to ease biodiversity net gain requirements, again for small sites. We are also making efforts on late payments, which can be particularly difficult for small businesses in the construction industry. The consultation proposes a package of measures, including specific measures to address the use of retentions in the industry.