Digital and Technology Policy: National Sovereignty

Baroness Uddin Excerpts

Thursday 23rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and I thank him for all his work. Echoing all the praises, I, too, express my gratitude to my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for her very powerful leadership, including in this debate.

My contribution today is framed in the context of having organised numerous discussions and meetings in relation to the APPG on digital transformation, of which I declare my membership, and policy on technology as it affects society. In this context, sovereignty is a matter of national security, and promoting our national security is an absolute objective for all Members of the House of Lords and across the other House.

For their support, I acknowledge the Library briefing, ControlAI, and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh for her ambitious efforts in relation to advancing sovereign AI stack, which I will make some reference to later. I also thank Dowshan Humzah for his precious time, wisdom and foresight.

Sovereignty used to be visible: in borders, laws, currency and armed forces. Today, much of it is indiscernible: it sits in cloud contracts, chips, codes, data and algorithms. The question is not whether Britain can govern Britain; as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said, it is whether Britain can still choose when the systems supporting our public services, businesses and families are designed, owned and operated elsewhere, outside our legal reach.

Digital sovereignty is therefore not technological isolation. Britain cannot, and need not, build every chip, cloud or frontier model, as has been said. It is about retaining the agency, capability and alternatives to act when circumstances change and to build the foundation of the economic power needed for public services, national security and statecraft itself.

Digital sovereignty shapes national sovereignty in at least three critical ways. The first is strategic autonomy, as has been repeated in this House. Can Britain continue to provide essential services, to protect sensitive data and to change direction if a supplier, another state or dominant monopolies dictate trade terms that are not acceptable to our national requirements and standards?

The second is economic resilience. Consider what plans are in place to improve investment that addresses British capability and expands skills and employment. Will these fast-paced developments leave us permanently renting access from elsewhere, which may endanger future-proofing the protection of national procurement? In this context, I refer to the work I have convened in the House on the Sovereign AI Power Index, which was developed by Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, a former MP. It is one disciplined way to measure whether our current trajectory will deliver real sovereignty.

The third is citizen protection and rights, especially those of our children. Can a citizen challenge an automated decision? Can a parent reach a competent human being? Can a child grow up without their attention, identity and vulnerability becoming somebody else’s commercial asset? Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh’s Sovereign AI Power Index offers a system to measure whether investment is translating into genuine national capability, control and resilience.

Dowshan Humzah, a futurologist, technology practitioner and author, says that technology should be our servant, not our master—as it seems to be now. Yet, too often, digital transformation removes human competence, quality and kindness. Digitising a broken service does not transform it; it industrialises the failures. AI can make a good institution better, but it can also make a bad institution fail faster and more consistently, and with no one held accountable. There are sombre considerations ahead of us regarding the governance and accountability of major public services, including the criminal justice system, education and the autonomous use of weapons in warfare.

On daily matters, I ask the House to imagine two different UK parents in 2031 whose children use AI tutors at school. For one of those parents, the system is transparent, independently tested and subject to UK law. A teacher can explain its recommendations. That parent can challenge an error, and the school can change the supplier without losing the child’s history. Technology is serving the family and society. For the second parent, the child is labelled “low potential” by the system, and nobody can explain why or locally override it. The school is locked in, the data cannot easily be moved, and the human teacher becomes the administrator of the machine’s judgment, with a consequential impact on that child for many years. One parent is a citizen using technology; the other will be captured in a never-ending circle of machine-centric decisions that are difficult to challenge or manage.

In five years, AI agents may mediate education, employment, welfare, health and even warfare. In 10 years, AI will be the infrastructure of the state. In 20 years, today’s primary school children will be the workers, parents and leaders. The defaults we tolerate now—opacity, manipulation and dependency—may become the unwritten constitution of their digital lives.

Digital sovereignty is not about building walls; it is about keeping the keys to our own doors and ensuring that our children inherit them. It is about our children’s future. We cannot place our sovereign digital system in anyone else’s grasp, while we do everything we can to ensure—

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath) (Lab)]

Excuse me.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

I am finishing. We must do everything we can to ensure that AI does not become sovereign over Britain. We cannot wait for others to determine the future of our citizens and our children.

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

I must ask the noble Baroness to conclude her remarks, please.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

We must invent it with honour and dignity for human lives.

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind some Members that the speaking time limit is six minutes for Back-Benchers. I urge all noble Lords to keep within that limit so that the debate may conclude within the time allowed, without cutting short the Minister’s remarks.