Quantum Technology

Lord Vallance of Balham Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure the UK is able to optimise the opportunities arising from quantum technology.

[The Minister of State, Department for Energy and Net Zero and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

My Lords, the UK’s national quantum programme has seeded a world-leading emerging sector. The Government are increasing investment from £1 billion in the last decade to £1 billion over the next four years. This funding will accelerate deployment of quantum sensors, networks and computers, turning the UK’s research excellence into industrial impact. It will also build the skills base, infrastructure and international partnerships necessary to cement the UK’s leadership position in what are game-changing technologies.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, the UK has an extraordinary opportunity when it comes to quantum: a potential 7% increase in productivity by 2045. That is some £212 billion. Does the Minister agree that the Government need to go further and faster in skills; in accepting all the recommendations of last year’s quantum taskforce; in scaling, to make bigger bets right across the quantum stack; and in driving demand, with government as an efficient, effective first customer—in short, being bolder and going deeper? The benefits to the UK economy can be measured in the billions.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The short answer is yes, and noble Lords will hear more about that shortly. All those things are critical. We have a good skills programme. There was a good report in July last year to deal with that. We are looking at options, including the use of procurement to make sure that this technology is pulled through.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, with the leading position that the UK has in quantum computing, what plans do the Government have for translational research, particularly in the areas of drug discovery, pharmaco- kinetics, next generation imaging and compute power, which will be needed to deliver on artificial general intelligence?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The noble Lord asks an important question. Quantum computers will be best for quantum problems. Drug discovery is a quantum problem, so it is exactly the sort of area for which this will be useful. We have five hubs specifically looking at both basic science and translation: a biomedical sensing hub dealing with imaging and other areas, including blood testing; a sensing, imaging and timing hub in Birmingham; an integrated network hub in Edinburgh; a quantum computing hub in Oxford; and a hub on position, navigation and timing. These are all about pulling the technology through in due course.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, given the worrying flow of some UK quantum companies taking money from or moving abroad, particularly to the US, in search of additional funding, is my noble friend the Minister confident that we are doing enough to map where in the UK the expertise is? It is important to us for national security, apart from anything else, that we have our own sovereign capability. Are we mapping it as well as we can and do we have an early warning system, such that we can intervene when some of these newly developing companies are thinking of going abroad, so that we can give them the support, funding or whatever else they need to stay in the UK, where we need them to grow?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

My noble friend asks an important question. There is no doubt that UK quantum companies look pretty attractive at the moment. We have a good idea of where those companies are, what their skills are and what is going on across the quantum space, but I believe there is a need to have all the levers in place to make sure that these companies stay in the UK. Yes, that is about funding, but also about regulation, procurement and giving the signals that can leverage the investment that these companies will need, as many of them are getting up to very significant valuations.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, quantum technology clearly has profound implications for our future national security, including for the secure communications on which we all rely and for potential future threats to cryptography. How are the Government working to ensure the alignment of the national quantum strategy with our cyber and national security strategies? What assessment have the Government made of the UK’s sovereign capability in key parts of the quantum supply chain?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

There are two important parts to that question. First, it is necessary to make sure that all existing data go through into post-quantum cryptography—in other words, into things that cannot be broken by quantum computers. That process is being led by the National Cyber Security Centre, which is working with businesses and trying to get them into place to have that ready, but it is not a short-term project. It will take quite a long time to get all that done. Secondly, the race is on to make sure that we are at the very forefront of getting a working, scaled quantum computer, because that is what will give us an advantage in all these areas. We work very closely with the security agencies across all this.

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

Will the Minister acknowledge that our theoretical physicist community, which is powerful and underpins so much of the sensible things the Minister has been saying, is feeling considerable anxiety at the moment because of the scale of the cuts proposed by UKRI to the Science and Technology Facilities Council? Will he urge UKRI to publish an impact assessment of its proposals?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I absolutely acknowledge the concern of a particular branch of physics—particle physics and astronomy—which has historically been placed under the Science and Technology Facilities Council. That is a bit of an odd situation, because it means its funding is traded off against facilities. That is exactly what is being looked at, at the moment. My number one priority for UKRI is to protect and grow investigator-led, curiosity-driven research, because that is the very thing that will give us the advantage in 10, 20 or 30 years. There is a very clear instruction that we are going to protect that. At the moment, UKRI is looking at the impacts of potential changes to funding, but no decisions have been made on that yet. I recognise the problem.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, quantum technology is possibly, indeed probably, the most disruptive and transformational technology yet invented by mankind. Thankfully, with our world-leading science base, the UK already has the second-highest number of start-ups working in this sector. Thankfully too, we definitely have a considered embryonic national strategy, which the Minister has outlined. Nevertheless, is it not inevitable —we can see it happening already—that the UK will soon be outspent by the US, China and the EU? Do we not need continuously to recalibrate our strategy?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right. About 11% of all companies in the world in quantum are in the UK. We are second in investment, but this is a race, others are spending huge amounts of money here and many of our companies look pretty attractive. That is why we have a series of programmes, not just funding at the front end to keep grant funding and other support but thinking about how we get pull-through into procurement. That is what will keep these companies here, allow them to grow here and allow them to have the export opportunities. I look at this on a daily basis. This is a critical technology, a big growth opportunity for the UK and one where we have years of advance progress putting us at the leading edge. Over the past 60 years or so, as a country we have not done well at making sure we scale and keep companies and new technologies. We must do everything we can to achieve this in quantum.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, to build on the important point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, quantum technologies will at some point, probably soon, enable a huge range of new capabilities across our lives, including in defence, healthcare, commerce and scientific research. So significant, broad and complex will be the impact that I suspect we will look back with nostalgia at the relative ease and simplicity of regulating AI. Can the Minister share what plans the Government have to regulate quantum and what steps, if any, have been taken so far?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The first thing to say is that I think AI and quantum will come together, so the two technologies will be extremely powerful. We commissioned some work from the Regulatory Horizons Council, which has produced the world’s first approach to regulating quantum, very much in the line of regulating use, not the development of the technologies. That has led to a series of fora where regulators are getting together to discuss this. It is something that we are at the leading edge of, but it is very early days for knowing exactly what that regulation should look like. I am sure this House will have many views on that subject.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I think we have been lulled to some extent by the fact that quantum has taken a long time to get to this point. The Minister replied to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, that money has been accelerated from £1 billion over 10 years to over four years, but does he not recognise that the rate of progress has accelerated even further? Should the Government not go back and look again at even more acceleration? If not, we will be passed.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I can assure the noble Lord that I look at that every day. I am looking at ways to make sure we unlock more private sector capital to get this acceleration. This is at a stage where these companies need to grow as private sector companies. We need to help that. We need to unlock the masses more capital than government could or should give to make that happen.