Sovereign AI Fund

Lord Markham Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

I welcome the noble Lord’s welcome, as it were, for the developments happening here in the UK. It is true that the UK has a lot to offer. On cloud discussions and the provision of data, the National Data Library is advancing and we have gone through our period of discovery, with five areas of kick-starters, so we can provide UK public data to those who can benefit from it. Separately, we are using the sovereign AI fund to develop the domestic technology sector, so that it can provide one of the options for government procurement in the future.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, the Competition and Markets Authority has expressed concerns that AI may entrench the market power of a small number of cloud providers. If the sovereign AI fund is not designed to increase the UK’s strategic authority in the cloud space, what are the Government’s plans to do so?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right to refer to the independent Competition and Markets Authority. It has conducted a major, 22-month investigation into the cloud market and is now acting. It has announced a package of actions to strengthen competition in business software and cloud services. It will be launching a strategic market status designation investigation into Microsoft’s business software system in May that will allow the CMA to examine cloud licensing and actions from Microsoft and Amazon on improving cloud interoperability and reducing egress fees. In terms of the role the AI sovereign fund might play, it is at a relatively early stage of development. Infrastructure is one of its priority areas, and we will see what opportunities come in the near future.