Civil Service: Artificial Intelligence Productivity Gains

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation. Given that the Government have just set up a sovereign AI unit with a budget of £500 million to promote domestic AI leadership, what steps are being taken to ensure that British companies and start-ups have fair access to Civil Service AI contracts rather than defaulting to large US tech corporations? Why is the UK Civil Service so heavily reliant on procurement from major US technology firms such as Microsoft—the Minister mentioned Copilot—OpenAI and Google, rather than focusing on developing its own domestic AI tools and platforms?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. I have a full Question on sovereign AI on Wednesday, when I will answer that question in more detail, but in the meantime let me say that there is not a some inbuilt bias against that; it is just that many of the large language models are, of course, from US companies, and those are the ones that are available at the moment. However, the sovereign AI unit will use that £500 million specifically to stimulate UK companies as well.