Societal Impact of AI: Government Policy

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2026 Westminster Hall

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

It is a real pleasure to speak in this debate. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) for securing it, and I agree with many of his remarks and those made by other speakers. I particularly agree with his remarks about the New Contract initiative.

The UK’s AI sector has grown 23 times faster than the rest of our economy. We must ensure continued investment and the realisation of productivity gains from appropriate use, but we must also secure greater domestic control and resilience, and mitigate near and later-term risks from inappropriate use, if we are truly to become an innovation nation. I believe that we must change our approach to AI, and I want to spend the time that I have setting out the case for doing that.

Above all, we must seek sovereignty as if we actually mean it. Supporting UK niches, such as photonics and quantum, is key to sovereignty and to boosting growth from Southampton to Sheffield and from Belfast to Birmingham, but we must recognise how crucial access to frontier models is to our sovereignty. The recent debacle with Fable 5 and Mythos 5 only serves to underline that. The sovereign AI fund needs a clearer rationale. It should be developing UK companies and partnerships, and public stakes should genuinely put our people and our places first.

We must also work more concertedly with allies to develop joint sovereign capability. AI development needs to be part of an economic security reset with the EU, and we need to be able to participate in the Scaleup Europe Fund. Interestingly, Mistral AI’s chief executive recently claimed that the EU has at most two years to build its own AI or become permanently structurally dependent on the US or China. The UK must be included in that EU-level debate before it is too late.

Delivering stronger sovereign control and resilience also means the Government putting their money where their mouths are and supporting UK AI and UK partnership AI in procurement. All Departments should be assessed publicly on that, and the Competition and Markets Authority should be engaged on how to ensure more advanced market commitments to support our sovereignty. We can learn from other countries on that. Look at France, which recently dropped Palantir from its intelligence services. Of course I realise that changes cause disruption, but we cannot work purely on the basis of cost or short-term capability any more. We have to make assessments on the basis of control and resilience, given their significance for our national interest.

In public services, we must move beyond no, low and performative adoption to appropriate and transparent adoption that puts people and places first. It is critical that the UK can deploy sufficient compute to support those aspirations. I hope that the AI Energy Council can develop plans for a line delivery of renewable energy and data centre projects, as well as fixing difficult issues such as demand modulation to unblock additional capacity. There can genuinely be a win-win here, but for that and greater adoption to be achieved, I agree with what others have said: we have to face up to public concern about the risks. We need only look at what is happening in Scotland right now to see that.

First, on unemployment, half of all UK workers feel that they will lose their job to AI. From what I can see, there is very mixed evidence about that so far, beyond the field of software development. Pleased as I was to see the Early Careers Jobs Alliance and the AI adoption insights agreement from the Government, we must go further. Lessons should be learned from the consultation on the social media ban, “Growing up in the online world: a national consultation”.

I would like to see the Government launch a consultation on starting work in a world of AI, so that we can involve young people who are worried about that, gather their good ideas and show that the Government are engaging with that crucial issue. We should be doing far more in our schools and colleges to prepare our children.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

AI is increasingly being used to make cutting-edge assistive technology for people with special educational needs and disabilities, but the industry is a bit of a wild west, and access for young people in areas such as Yeovil is uneven. Will the hon. Member join me in urging the Government to publish guidance for schools on best practices for AI assistive technology for SEND?

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[Anneliese Dodds]

The hon. Member raises a really important point, and it is part of a broader picture. My understanding is that something like only half of all schools have an appropriate AI policy. Simply saying to students, “Don’t use AI”, having an unorganised approach to it, or just taking a company’s word for it without a broader set of guidance and frameworks for deployment is not supporting our children and young people. Saying, “Just don’t use AI”, when we know children and young people are using it, is not fair to them, and will do a disservice to our economy in the future.

Our children and young people need to understand how AI works, as well as the risks of cognitive offloading and the negative impacts on social interaction from inappropriate use. I also want to see us encouraging international discussion in the OECD and the United Nations about taxation—taxation of permanent establishment, capital gains and the cost of human labour compared with tokens. That does not need to have an immediate impact; we could set a threshold of employment impact to trigger a token tax, for example. However, we cannot run away from this debate, especially given how much services dominate our economy.

Secondly, we have to engage with concerns about the safety of frontier models. As I said many months ago alongside the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, just regulating applications after harm has been done is unacceptable. Grok should not have been able to produce 3 million non-consensual nudified images in the first place. New York, California, Illinois and the EU have moved towards approaches requiring mandatory assessment of frontier models, and we should too. We should place the AI Security Institute on a statutory footing as a first step, and we should use our presidency of the G20 next year to reinvigorate global attempts at co-ordination, which started with the Bletchley conference but have effectively stalled since. We can work with EU countries to do that as well as with nations from India to Brazil.

Thirdly, and finally, although AI can release huge productivity gains, we have to recognise that unscrupulous and inappropriate use is already imposing huge costs too.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am interested in the right hon. Lady’s comment on productivity, because it is one of the prevailing macroeconomic challenges facing this Government and previous Governments, as the stalling of productivity has been a problem across western economies for a while. It is true that AI might help, but it could also harm. Equipping people with skills is critical to building productivity, and dependence on AI may actually undermine people’s confidence and their skills over time.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I absolutely agree. That phenomenon of so-called cognitive offloading and the lack of scaffolding in skills is a genuine concern. Equally, we see how rapidly and accurately AI can assess tumour scans, for example, working with human beings to deliver the highest possible quality of healthcare. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) about the potential there. We need to have a sensible approach to this issue.

I also want to mention some additional harms. We are now seeing ubiquitous slop on the internet, AI-enabled fraud and cyber-attacks, and the impact of AI summaries on local media use as well, so I want to see the CMA using its powers for competition-focused action on strategic market status services. I want the Government to adopt a maximalist approach to the “Watch this Space” White Paper, and I want us to stop treating bots as separate, because AI is increasingly going to be integral to our interface with the internet, as well as to so much else, so we need to adopt a safety-by-design approach to online regulation, and that needs to recognise the increasing ubiquity of AI.