Science, innovation and technology Committee

Ben Spencer Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

I start by thanking the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee and its entire membership for the publication of a very interesting and timely report. Business, academia and the whole tech sector needs clarity, in some ways more than anything else. Does the Chair share my concerns, which are stated quite well in the report, that

“The government has repeatedly outlined that building sovereign capability is a ‘critical priority’ for the UK but has not been clear on exactly what this means or how it might be measured”?

There are lots of different definitions of sovereignty being bandied around, which mean lots of different things in different contexts. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need some clarity on what exactly it means in this sector when we use the word “sovereignty”?

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

It is one of the thrusts of the report that we need greater clarity on sovereignty. This is not an academic debate—we do not need philosophical discussions on what sovereignty may or may not mean—but as the shadow Minister indicated, on tech stacks, particular technologies and their supply chains, we need to understand what we are trying to achieve, so that business, academia and Government, and particularly Government procurement, can move in that direction.

It is interesting, because it was almost implicit that we did not want to say where we were looking for sovereignty, or where we did not have it, as that might alert our competitors to weaknesses. I think China and Russia probably know our weaknesses quite well, and it is our tech start-ups and our great businesses and scale-ups that need to better understand our intended strengths, so that they can support them.