King’s Speech

Lord Markham Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a founder of a health tech company, HealthTech Fund, which is likely to have many investments in the AI space. It is late, so I will not try to summarise all the excellent speeches we have heard tonight, particularly as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, did such a good job of summarising. I will avoid that repetition. I enjoyed the maiden speeches. I look forward to learning from my noble friend Lord Blackwater’s history lessons, laughing at his humour and sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing when he makes those controversial points. The noble Lord, Lord Hobby, made a speech of such intelligence that I know that listening to him will be a learning experience for me and the rest of the House. I was touched, like many others, by the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Leaman, especially as a father of a neurodivergent child, and I look forward to working with her in that area. I think the noble Lord, Lord Dixon of Jericho, takes the prize of all noble Lords in terms of Jericho. It has to be the coolest place of which to be a Lord. I look forward to hearing from him on what matters to people and how public services can be designed to meet their needs.

This being a King’s Speech debate on education, culture, technology and energy security, I must admit that, like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford and the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, I expected more of a strategic King’s Speech—a bigger picture, if you like, that sets out some of the challenges and the Government’s vision and values on how to address them. For instance, I expected a major AI plan, as the noble Lord, Lord Tarassenko, and my noble friend Lord Taylor said. I expected to hear how AI represents a generational opportunity to transform productivity and output, increase our human knowledge and free us from mundane tasks to enjoy our leisure time, improve our lives and create unprecedented wealth and prosperity.

I expected to hear about the generational threat that AI brings to certain types of jobs, to potentially many of our freedoms, to cyber security, and to the whole nature of modern warfare and the defence of this nation. Most of all, I expected to hear how we are going to ensure that the UK is in the AI fast lane, and about the dire consequences of being stuck in the AI slow lane—yet, as many have said, we do not even have an AI Bill.

On education, as my noble friends Lady Maclean and Lady Spielman, and many others, said, I expected to hear how we would use education to equip our kids to thrive in the AI future, to train and attract the best AI talent in the world, and, as said by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, to avoid a dangerous skills divide. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who, as ever, spoke so passionately, and my noble friend Lady Owen, I expected to hear concrete plans and action on how we are to protect our children from the threats of AI, social media and the technical world.

Instead, on education, as set out by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, we heard how we have been making degrees harder and less attractive. We have introduced new funding systems, especially around plan 2 students, with loans with much higher interest rates, where debt grows faster than their ability to repay. This is not only grossly unfair but a deterrent to skills and education. I ask the Government to look at a Conservative proposal to link student debt and interest to inflation as a fair and just approach.

I expected the Government to set out an energy policy that would achieve competitive prices, so that we can attract AI data centres and keep our industrial base. I perhaps expected them to have learned some of the lessons that we have seen in Norway, where it has been shown that you do not have to make a binary choice between renewables and oil and gas production; you can combine the two, and focus on renewables and grant new oil and gas licences, as my noble friends Lady Bloomfield and Lord Mackinlay said. If you look at Norway versus the UK, you can see what I call the rule of double. Norway has double the UK’s oil and gas production and double the percentage of renewables, while UK business and consumers face double Norway’s costs. This means that data centres can afford to be in Norway, as can manufacturing companies, to the benefit of Norway’s economy, its people and the strategic security of that country in a dangerous world. I understand the Government’s ambition for renewable energy—it is the ambition of many on this side as well. However, it does not have to be at the cost of our own North Sea oil production; it does not have to be either/or.

Finally, in this uncertain world, I expected a serious sovereign technology agenda. What, for instance, is our approach to ensure semiconductor resilience? How can technology and AI be at the forefront of our defence, drone capability and cyber security? How can we develop critical AI and tech infrastructure that can protect us all?

These are the things I would have expected and hoped for in a King’s speech. These are things of vision—a set of values and ambitious goals. These are the things that the country needs. What do we get instead? In the words of Wes Streeting, dare I say it,

“where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift”.

As I said, those are not my words but the words of the former Health Secretary.

I say to the Government and Ministers here today—who are vastly talented, and I highly respect—please do not settle for the mediocrity set out in many parts of this King’s Speech when we can do so much better and our country needs so much more. I am going to conclude using the words from another Minister’s resignation letter, that of Jess Phillips. I think many of us, probably all of us, have enormous respect for her campaigning. It might surprise you to hear me say this. She said:

“Labour governments come around rarely … they are precious … Have a row, push back, make arguments”.


Stand up and be counted and bring back a King’s Speech with vision, boldness and energy equal to the task at hand.