Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask His Majesty's Government what percentage of the Ministry of Defence's HR, finance, and commercial functions have been automated to date.
Answered by Lord Coaker - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The HR, finance and commercial services already make extensive use of enterprise digital systems and automated processing. There is, however, no consistent historic baseline which would allow the Department to express this reliably as a percentage.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many military personnel have been released from back-office roles to front-line roles as a result of automation since the publication of the Strategic Defence Review 2025.
Answered by Lord Coaker - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Department remains committed to maximising the operational effectiveness of the Armed Forces and ensuring that Defence personnel are focused on activity that best supports front-line outcomes. As set out in the Strategic Defence Review, Defence is taking forward work to move Regular personnel from administrative activity into front-line roles and to automate at least 20% of Human Resources, Finance and Commercial functions by July 2028.
This commitment is being delivered through the Defence Reform and Efficiency Plan, including the Corporate Services Modernisation programme, which is redesigning and modernising Defence’s People, Finance and Commercial services. The programme is simplifying policy and processes, standardising activity, consolidating services where appropriate and introducing modern digital tools to reduce manual work, strengthen access to reliable management information and improve the user experience. This will reduce the back-office burden, improve productivity and release capacity for front-line activity while maintaining effective support to all personnel.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the decision by the United States to establish an Autonomous Warfare Command; and what consideration they have given to establishing an equivalent integrated capability within UK defence.
Answered by Lord Coaker - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
Given the importance of autonomous systems to the future of warfare, we will continue to engage closely with our US counterparts as they establish an Autonomous Warfare Command and see what lessons apply to the UK Defence system.
The UK’s approach reflects our own operating model and structure. Defence is developing an integrated approach to optimise the balance between crewed, uncrewed and autonomous systems across the Armed Forces. This includes the establishment of the Uncrewed Systems Centre as a Defence centre of excellence alongside Defence’s Rapid AI Delivery (RAID) taskforce, to accelerate the development, integration and adoption of these capabilities. This is backed by a defence investment plan commitment of over £5 billion by 2030 in autonomous systems across the Integrated Force. This investment will support capabilities including the Hybrid Navy, uncrewed ground vehicles and Collaborative Combat Aircraft, increasing the mass, lethality and readiness of the Armed Forces while retaining appropriate human responsibility and accountability. We will continue to assess the most effective organisational arrangements for delivering these capabilities.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of the 28 per cent of government legacy technology identified in the Government Cyber Action Plan, published on 6 January, has been remediated or decommissioned since January; and what is the target for remediation by the end of Phase 1 in March 2027.
Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport)
In 2025, DSIT suspended reporting under the previous Legacy IT Assessment Framework due to the burden it placed upon departments. Consequently, a comprehensive account of which systems have been remediated or decommissioned is currently unavailable. However, DSIT have been working with departments to explore innovative and scalable solutions to tackle legacy systems across the public sector, including piloting AI Code Assistants within departments to accelerate legacy remediation activities. The current evidence shows that these pilots are extremely successful and given this DSIT is now considering how this could be expanded
Individual departments are accountable for addressing their legacy technology, supported by £20 billion in funding allocated to digital priorities across government, including the remediation of legacy IT systems. Through the Digital Business Review Process DSIT will track the progress being made and offer support where appropriate.
The Government Cyber Action Plan does not set specific targets for the remediation of legacy systems. This will be a continually evolving picture as DSIT improves the observability of the legacy estate across the public sector. These targets will be set in the Legacy IT Action Plan that will be published later this year.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what milestones have been met under the Government Cyber Action Plan, published on 6 January; and what proportion of the £210 million investment has been committed to date.
Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government Cyber Action Plan set out public milestones to hold Government to account for delivering improvements in cyber security and digital resilience.
The first tranche of milestones published under the Government Cyber Action Plan are due for completion by April 2027. Work is ongoing towards these milestones with some notable achievements including: the establishment of the Government Cyber Unit within DSIT; the establishment of central services and support functions; the launch of the Government Cyber Profession in February 2026, and the publication of the Government Cyber Incident Response Plan.
The noted investment is subject to standard business case approval procedures. DSIT will continue to report bi-annually on progress against NAO recommendations (from its 2025 report on Government Cyber Resilience) to enable parliamentary scrutiny of government spending.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the humanitarian and environmental impacts of plastic waste exports on communities in destination countries, and what action they are taking to mitigate those impacts.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We have made no assessment of the impacts of plastic waste exports on communities in destination countries. Overseas facilities receiving UK waste must be operated in accordance with human health and environmental protection standards that are broadly equivalent to those established in UK legislation.
We work with the UK regulators to ensure the proper enforcement of our rules and regulations.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports of sexual violence towards Rohingya women and girls in Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh.
Answered by Baroness Chapman of Darlington
The UK has been actively engaged in addressing the humanitarian situation in Cox's Bazar and closely monitoring levels of need and insecurity. We regularly engage with the Interim Government in Bangladesh about security in Rohingya refugee camps and request them to take action to improve the protection environment. In June, during Chief Adviser Yunus' visit to the UK, the then Minister for the Indo-Pacific discussed the situation of Rohingya refugees. UK funding (over £420 million since 2017) is providing community-based protection services for women and children.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the regional economic impact of generative artificial intelligence, particularly outside London and the South East.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham
The Government recognises the transformative economic potential of generative AI in the UK. While London and the South-East currently generate around 86% of UK AI Revenue, other regions, such as Manchester, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, are emerging as key innovation hubs. This includes £750 million of investment recently announced for the building of a new AI supercomputer, hosted at the University of Edinburgh.
Additionally, as HMG’s AIRR+ compute network can be accessed remotely, researchers across the country are now able to make use of the UK’s world-class sovereign compute, in order to train new cutting-edge AI models.
The North and South-West have the highest levels of business AI adoption outside of the greater South-East, suggesting industry in UK is harnessing the benefits of AI technology into their business practices.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to regulate pound sterling-backed stablecoin; and what assessment they have made of the impact of the United States GENIUS Act on any such regulation.
Answered by Lord Livermore
The Government has confirmed that it will bring forward final legislation this year to create a financial services regulatory regime for cryptoassets in the UK. The Government recognises the growth and competitiveness opportunities of stablecoins, and its regime will allow firms to be licensed in the UK to issue stablecoins.
Following the passing of the GENIUS Act by the US Congress, the Government’s approach to cryptoassets positions the UK well to work with the US in advancing our shared ambition to foster world-leading cryptoasset markets.
Asked by: Lord Sarfraz (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they would support the nomination of President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his role in averting war between India and Pakistan.
Answered by Baroness Chapman of Darlington
The award of the Nobel Peace Prize is a matter for the Nobel committee, and not for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.