Role of Big Tech in Society

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of Big Tech in society.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. It is good to see the Minister in his place, and indeed the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune). I am grateful to Mr Speaker for selecting the debate.

Today, I want to look at the relationship between Government and big tech, and its impact on wider society and the communities we all represent, as well as the national and even global consequences of this expanding, what I term “unreliable relationship of reliance”. Let me be clear: the Government do not have the resources necessary for research and development of new technologies compared with the wealthy and global tech companies’ resourcing—I get that. Private sector collaboration makes sense and is of benefit to our country. Improving the efficiency of Government, public sector productivity, and the outcomes and effects of Governments—whatever their political complexion—is something that I support.

However, I think the Government need to establish—this is something for the Minister; perhaps a legacy for him —their very own centre for tech research: a Porton Down for tech innovation and development, or an expansion of the R&D work of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. Not everything can or should be outsourced to the private sector—this is a Conservative MP saying that.

Today, I want to highlight some of the potential, if not inherent, democratic dangers for the UK Government —both today’s Government and future Governments—as the relationship with big tech becomes more embedded, we become more reliant, and by osmosis, we cede ever more power and influence to tech companies over all the people we represent in this Parliament, and the Governments they elect.

Perhaps UK Government data could be seen as the crown jewels of data—the ultimate state capture: data capture. Data is increasingly entrusted to companies with no democratic oversight or accountability. Some big tech companies regard democracy, governance and oversight, for all their faults, with distain and even contempt—an irritant to their commercial progress, rather than as a challenging and helpful partner.

I believe that any Government being beholden to big tech—I do not mean collaboration, which is positive—is a strategic risk to our country, full of moral hazard. I submit that it is a potential and emerging medium-term strategic risk, where conflict between democracy and big tech will come into stark contrast. Today, we feel only the tremors of such a conflict, but it is for the future and for all Governments to address it before that tremor becomes an earthquake for our democracy and for politics more generally.

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this very important debate. He is making an interesting speech. When we talk about big tech, we are primarily talking about companies based outside the UK—particularly in the United States. Does he agree that this argument is really about sovereignty and about how more of this technology can be developed and owned in the UK or across Europe?

[Mark Pritchard]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, and will touch on sovereignty later. The European Union—it is a positive in many ways—is looking at that. That is partly why I am making this speech today; it is about sovereignty too.

Who knows the most—who owns or hosts the most data—and how that data is used determines who has the hierarchical advantage. I would argue that that gives the democratic or control advantage, not just the commercial advantage. The people, through democratically elected government, should always have ultimate control.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this very important debate. Many big tech companies are a cause of concern, but a particular one is Palantir, which holds Government contracts worth more than £900 million, spanning 10 Departments. Does he agree that more concerning than its dominance is the fact that we do not know what data it holds and has access to? Numerous groups warn that patient data in the NHS federated data platform could be accessible by US authorities under the American CLOUD—Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data—Act, so does he agree that the Government must exercise the February 2027 break clause until those questions are property and publicly answered?

[Mark Pritchard]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. I will not name individual companies today—she has clearly put her views on the record—but no monopoly, be it a public or private sector monopoly, is good for our constituents, consumers and small and medium-sized businesses. She makes her case well.

Will this universal knowledge that tech companies have—this data capture—always be used for good? Will it always be benign? Will it seek the common good or the corporate good?

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mark Pritchard]

Let me make a bit of progress, and then I will try to come back to the hon. Lady. I have applied for this debate a few times—I have been lucky today, but we have only an hour, rather than 90 minutes.

Is big tech politically neutral? Sometimes it does not seem like that. Is that of concern to the Government? Does the Minister agree that some Government data can never be white labelled? Are some big tech companies agnostic when it comes to the UK’s democratic values? Are they more interested in value than values? This is not speculation. Some—not all—of the most powerful figures in tech have openly questioned democracy and its relevance, authority and survivability. Some of those observers are not fringe voices shouting from the margins, but tech owners with capital, platforms and influence and with the ear of many of our constituents and, indeed, our Government.

Again, big tech is a force for good in the world. I believe that. It provides huge benefits with regard to human geography, economic empowerment and borderless prosperity. But in so many ways, tech’s story has only just begun. That is one of the reasons why we need to have discussions like the one that we are having today. It is why Governments, wherever they might be, need to strike the right balance on how much power—how much of the people’s power—they cede to big tech and its shareholders. Many of its shareholders are known, but some are a bit more mysterious and, to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee), do not necessarily always share our values, or are certainly not in the UK.

[Caroline Voaden]

Ten years ago today, the Brexit campaign became one of the first very successful disinformation campaigns. Ranging from Turkish immigrants to Spanish bullfighting, the targeted Facebook ads played on people’s fears and deceived millions. But today, disinformation is more pervasive, insidious and vindictive than ever before, so does the right hon. Member agree that we must learn the lessons of 10 years ago and introduce stricter regulations for social media companies to ensure that they challenge harmful disinformation and reduce its spread across their platforms?

[Mark Pritchard]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point. As I said, I am not going to reference particular tech companies or particular information or misinformation campaigns. I am trying to get Members across the House to raise their eyes a little and look at the big picture of the conflict, coming down the road, between big tech and sovereignty, democracy and all the people we represent. But the hon. Lady’s point is also on the record.

Again, the close relationship between big tech and Governments is necessary, but is none the less becoming increasingly problematic and conflicted. Tech needs smarter regulation, certainly more competition, and a recalibration and rebalancing of its relationship with Government. The collaboration between the two should not mean Governments turning a blind eye to the breaking of laws, or big tech enjoying public policy vetoes. With big tech come big responsibilities. Governments should not rush to absolve big tech of the wrongs of tech in return for future technology transfer and unfettered access, and better terms for collaborations with Government.

These questions arise, perhaps. If the relationship between Government and big tech is conflicted, is it also compromised? If so, does that compromise equate to a type of corporate kompromat? Who wins? Who loses? Who is in control? Has big tech gone beyond even the power of the global banking system in 2008? Has it become too big to fail, too big to challenge even if the challenge is by Ministers of the Crown, too big to be sufficiently stood up to and too big to be fairly taxed?

If the Government’s mantra is “In tech we trust”, I hope this debate will challenge Whitehall and the Government on the fact that that laudable aim does not come without significant, inherent and strategic risks for the whole of our country, our institutions and democracy itself—the people we represent. Therefore the challenge for Government is how they preserve the benefits of private sector collaboration while ensuring that no single point of failure or future political, trade union or operational dispute can jeopardise or threaten the UK’s national security, sovereign capabilities or strategic interests. Who is ultimately in control? Is it the client—in this case, the Government—or is it big tech, or individual tech companies? Is there a master switch, and if so, whose hand is on it? If we are talking about a particular tech company, who within the tech company has the final say on disputed deployment of that tech, or on philosophical or political disagreements?

[Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Member share my concern that because of the speed at which big tech moves, we in this House as legislators always seem to be five steps behind where the technology is? How are we going to be able to regulate for a world that is faster paced than we are in this building?

[Mark Pritchard]

The hon. Lady raises a very interesting point. That is a challenge for all Governments and all Ministers, however able they are. We have a very good tech Minister here today, but it is a real challenge. The starting point is better co-operation, transparency and openness from big tech itself, as I set out in my introductory remarks.

It is the owner or owners—as in shareholders, the board, the advisory board or even other clients and customers—who may object to collaboration between a particular Government and a tech company. That is problematic. Or could tech companies themselves find a moral or political argument to turn off a particular Government service at a particular moment in time? That has been seen in recent months in the conflict in the middle east. We have seen it in China where certain tech companies have switched off their moral compass to placate the Chinese regime in exchange for commercial advantage. Meanwhile, freedom and democracy in China is set back. What can the Government do? There need to be more robust legislative safeguards. The Government need to collaborate with tech companies, of course, but not to capitulate.

In conclusion, tech companies should act as responsible corporate citizens, but they so often do not unless they are made to, and they are not made to enough for the reasons I have set out today. When Parliaments do regulate, tech companies fight it all the way. They weaponise the courts and demonise parents and legislators around the world who dare to even raise legitimate questions and scrutinise these companies. Big tech should not be asking what the minimum is it should do to keep Governments off its back, as it sees it, or to avoid negative publicity and public opinion. Big tech firms should be corporate leaders leading by example and setting high standards without Parliament or Ministers having to tell them what they should do. Big tech should do the right thing, because it is the right thing to do.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) for bringing forward this important debate. It comes at a pertinent time, as we discuss the impact of social media on our children, the way we use AI, and the influence of big tech companies, including on our lives.

As I pointed out earlier, a growing number of voices—doctors, nurses, civil society organisations and Members across this House—are sounding the alarm about the unchecked expansion of one company: Palantir Technologies. The concern seems to centre around two issues. The first is the sheer scale of Palantir’s involvement in our public infrastructure. It holds at least 34 current and past Government contracts across at least 10 Departments, totalling a minimum of £900 million. The true figure is likely higher, since several contracts remain unacknowledged or heavily redacted. Palantir’s largest single contract is the NHS federated data platform, which is worth £330 million over seven years. My inbox has been rammed with constituents calling for the Government to trigger Palantir’s February 2027 break clause. I support that call, and I hope the Minister will say whether the Government do, too.

[Mark Pritchard]

It is unusual for me to intervene, but I am glad the hon. Lady mentioned that number. I had no idea it was that many contracts for that particular company, and that underscores some of the points I was making. I can think of certain service companies, which I will not mention today, that have multiple contracts, some of which they deliver well, and some of which have been a complete disaster under successive Governments. I can think of some global IT companies—not big tech, but the old, traditional hardware companies—where some of those programmes are delivered well, and some have been a complete disaster. To have so many contracts in the hands of so few is concerning.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

That is why I was so pleased the right hon. Member called the debate. I hope he agrees that once a contractor has failed for one Department, it should not be given a contract for another Department. I hope the Minister will speak to that.

I hugely support my constituents’ call for the Government to use that February 2027 break clause with Palantir. I hope the Minister will tell us more about whether they intend to act on that. Some will say that Palantir’s expanding portfolio simply proves that it is the best company for the job. That may be true for some places—I doubt it—but it is not a reason to dismiss concerns. We should be worried about one company having this much dominance across so many pillars of our society, and particularly a foreign corporation that may not have the UK’s best interests at heart. I say that with confidence, because Palantir’s founder, Peter Thiel, has accused us of having Stockholm syndrome over our affection for the NHS and said that we need to

“rip the whole thing from the ground and start over”.

His broader political views are just as concerning, and I encourage Members to look into them.

The current CEO of Palantir UK is Oswald Mosley’s grandson. I do not wish to judge a man solely by his grandfather’s sins, but that gets harder when the views on display are not entirely dissimilar. Nor can we ignore Peter Mandelson’s role in arranging the Prime Minister’s undeclared 2025 visit to Palantir’s headquarters—a meeting where no minutes were taken and that raised transparency questions that are still unanswered.

The second concern is data. Palantir built its reputation as a surveillance and intelligence tool for the US military; it is not a healthcare company, but a data aggregation company with software designed to link datasets across systems. This is no longer a hypothetical risk: NHS England has confirmed that Palantir staff can access identifiable patient data on the federated data platform through a new admin role on the national data integration tenant. The British Medical Association, Medacs, the Good Law Project, Privacy International and Amnesty International have all warned that that data could become accessible to other departments, or to US authorities under the American Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act 2018, regardless of what any contract says.

Some 50,000 patients have written to their NHS trust boards to urge them not to adopt the platform. I am not suggesting that every Palantir contract should be cancelled tomorrow, but we are sleepwalking into a dependency on this company that we will come to deeply regret.

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[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank the right hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) for securing the debate and for his thoughtful contribution. He not only highlighted the dangers of content and addiction but made a power analysis when he talked about the threat to democracy of big tech companies. They have a supranational status now, and states are struggling to tax or regulate them—or to enforce the regulations that they have against them. That is a real challenge to democracy that we need to face up to across the House.

At the heart of this is the fact that tech companies have simply been allowed to get too big. We have had a laissez-faire attitude towards their growth over the years, which is based on confused economic principles. Yes, we want frictionless free trade, but is a market really free if it has been captured by a handful of firms? I thought that traditional economic theory already warned us about that, but we seem to have become more naive about it in the last decade or so. Looking at the power analysis in the global market, this is really about the hegemonic role of the US. If we look at pension funds, for example, more of UK pension savings now go into Apple than into all UK firms combined. We can see how the problem accelerates over time. We wonder why our brilliant tech start-ups are not able to grow; it is because when they reach the point when they need more capital, all the capital is in the US. We get Google buying out DeepMind and the cycle continues. They get bigger and bigger, and we get weaker and weaker. For far too long, we have had an economic strategy that is naive about what happens in a free market if there is a hegemonic power in it. That power has to be challenged.

Members have touched on this today, but the answer lies in a greater focus on tech sovereignty. It is not about gaining tech independence; we are not suddenly going to invent our own Facebook, ChatGPT or Amazon tomorrow—it would be naive of us to try—but about establishing our own niches within the global markets so that we claw some of that power back. It is about pooling our sovereignty and working with like-minded states, perhaps those in the EU, and collectively using our power to enforce tax, regulations and other legal limits on the activities of tech companies.

[Mark Pritchard]

I did not have time to raise this issue in my speech. The National Security and Investment Act 2021 established the National Security Investment Unit, which was the right move. If a particularly sensitive company with strategic assets or a technology that affects UK interests is to be sold or receive outward investment, it has to be cleared by the Government. That is a welcome change, but it is rather perverse or even ironic that, when the situation is reversed, there is very little scrutiny.

[Bobby Dean]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. That is another item on the list of things that we have ignored for far too long. Ultimately, we need to shift the balance of power. As he said in his speech, the power has been shifted too far in favour of a handful of tech giants. This is not just about economic power; it is about our national security, the delivery of public services and, ultimately, our independence in the world and our ability to shape our destiny. I thank him for raising this important issue, and I hope we can have more discussions about power, as well as the impact of that power.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Kanishka Narayan)]

It is always a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy, but it is a particular pleasure when we are discussing questions of digital markets and regulation, because I know that you bring expertise in and experience of these issues.

I thank the right hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) for securing this debate. He has held me to account in the main Chamber, we have spoken in the corridors of Parliament, and I am delighted that he has now convened a much broader debate on the role of big tech in society. I am grateful to him and to all other hon. Members for their contributions to this important discussion.

This debate gets to the heart of what I consider the central question in our politics, our economy and our national security: how we ensure that the extraordinary power of modern technology serves our society, strengthens our economy, protects our citizens, and is grounded in British values.

Given the time we have, I will do the courtesy of responding to individual Members first before talking more substantively on the common issues. The right hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) raised the central question: are we on the side of British values or shareholder values for firms located abroad? It is pretty clear, whether on questions of online safety legislation, where we have the most robust regime anywhere in the world, or on questions of the most innovative set of sovereignty interventions anywhere in the world, that every single decision that this Government have made on technology has been on the side of British values, in the spirit of collaborating and never capitulating.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) raised the two magic words: open source. I made a speech a few months ago talking about my passion for open source, not least because aspects of its Welsh grounding—Raspberry Pi, developed by a Welsh founder, is now opening up opportunities for kids in living rooms across the world to develop bits of software.

There are three things we have therefore done on open source that make Britain the best place in the world for open-source talent: first, a particular focus on talent, not least a major hackathon we have partnered on to invite the world’s best talent to come and build open source here; secondly, a series of offers of compute, direct involvement in Government strategy on open source and, to the extent it is helpful, personal mentoring from me for winners of public service development on open source; and thirdly, just this morning, significant funding of £30 million for a serious national lab, led by University College London, focused in particular on open-source models. Britain is at the frontier of open-source AI, and this is the right thing to have done for our sovereignty aspirations.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport raised an important point about kids’ experiences on social media and the impact on educational attainment. That is exactly my personal motivation behind the significant action we are taking to ban social media for under-16s as well.

The hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) raised a series of questions, and I will address two of them in particular. He asked about compliance with social media bans. There are three things we have done to ensure we learn the lessons from elsewhere: more robust age checks; ensuring that enforcement is out of the gate on day one rather than delayed, so that companies feel the heat of enforcement early on; and to acknowledge that this will not be a 100% overnight compliance issue, but a long-term societal shift in culture, as previous regulations have created. That is the right thing to do.

The hon. Member for Yeovil asked about wider opportunities that the Government will support to offset some opportunities that young people might lose as a result of the ban. There are exemptions for both education services and music streaming. Really importantly, on the day that we announced the social media ban for under-16s, we announced 180 youth hubs across the country. That means more than £500 million spent on arts, music and culture opportunities for young people, right across England. There was a series of contributions from Members with that point in mind.

My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) raised very important points about concentration. I will not speak overtly about an individual company, but I will flag that I understand from the relevant Department that a supplier contract for the NHS federated data platform will be reviewed in line with standard contract management processes this year, on the question of its extension. I am sure that her contributions will be regarded in that context.

I normally hold the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) fondly in my mind in our parliamentary debates, so I was sorry to hear her take a more political, point-scoring approach to questions of online safety. I was sad that she called putting the voices of Welsh kids and families at the heart our decisions “dilly-dallying”. Thousands of young people and families in Wales contributed to the decision on a social media ban. This is a historic decision for the people of Wales, whose voices fundamentally shaped it. That is not tiptoeing; it is running fast but together towards the solutions that matter.

On the hon. Lady’s particular questions, we are preparing legislative options alongside securing significant progress on blocking children from taking, receiving and sharing nude images. We have already secured more progress than any other country on this question. On her point on proactively dealing with national security concerns, the British Government are building capabilities, not least through the Security Institute and across our intelligence agencies, that are unparalleled in terms of ensuring that our national security is a priority on questions of technology.

On when this Government will face up to tech platforms, I gently suggest to the hon. Lady that again and again this Government have taken the side of people, not platforms—of British families, including Welsh families, not foreign tech billionaires. I would encourage her to join us in that mission.

My hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) raised concerns about a particular data centre. I am not fully abreast of the plans on that particular site, but I am very conscious of the concerns he raised. I simply point out that, in theory, there are ways in which data centre investors ought to make sure that what they are doing supports our important clean energy and power goals. In particular, I reflect on the fact that in Lanarkshire there are significant sites that have pulled forward clean energy generation in solar and battery as a result of data centre investment, rather than instead of or in trade off with it. Again, we are focused on ensuring that both those aspirations are met, as they are in north Wales where our data centre investments are pulling forward the future of small modular reactor nuclear in this country.

The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Bobby Dean) and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan), raised an important point about pension funds under allocation to British equities, in particular to British technology and AI equities. That has been a huge focus for the Government, not least through the Mansion House reforms and the increased deployment pace at the British Business Bank, which is now deploying more than £2 billion a year in this area, but also through the half-a-billion sovereign AI fund, which is focused on building deep British capability.

The point the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington raised about the balance of power is central. In response to the ask for a sovereignty strategy, we are not only talking about it—we are delivering it. We have defined the single most important question: where does Britain stand on the balance of power? Do we have strategic leverage to secure ongoing access to critical inputs? There are three tests we are focused on. The first is having enough critical inputs—NVIDIA graphic processing units, for example—to be able to play our way in the world. The second is having a diverse set of sources so that we have bargaining leverage in that context; one of the first things I did was meet SambaNova, Cerebras and Groq to diversify our engagement with chip companies. The third really important test is, where British strengths and economics allow, to build full-fat British capability. We have done that with our hardware plan—more than £1 billion supporting companies such as Fractile, OLIX, Salience Labs and others. That is the crux of our sovereignty strategy: a clear definition, a clear plan across every part of the stack on AI, and delivery alongside that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) brought a deep degree of expertise on technology to this debate and asked the central question: do we shape technology in the artificial intelligence revolution, or is it the other way around? His point about stronger competition, which was also raised by the shadow Minister, is important. The CMA has been acting in an area of collaboration between the previous Government’s aspirations on digital competition and this Government’s. I look forward to the enforcement of remedies across both mobile and business software when it comes to AI.

My hon. Friend also raised questions about online safety. I hope he feels that the significant actions that the Government have taken—banning social media for under 16s, being one of the first countries to bring AI chatbots into regulatory scope to make sure that they are not producing illegal content, and banning romantic chatbots—have been pioneering and show that we are always on the side of the British public.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) raised incredibly important points about how we ensure that the security of AI is central to the questions we ask in public policy. Across every aspect of Government, we are building a Labour vision for that. We are building state institutions that will last the test of time and ensure that we are kept safe from some of the risks of AI.

[Mark Pritchard]

I am conscious of time, so I want to give the Minister the opportunity to answer the questions I asked: who owns the data, who controls the data, and what does that mean for democracy and the balance of power?

[Kanishka Narayan]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point, and I am personally interested in how we rest more agency and control in the hands of the British public and the British state when it comes to data. There are clear rules and regulations about both privacy and individual data consents that apply, but I want to go further still by building infrastructure that equips individuals to have greater control over their data.

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Poole’s points, through the AI Security Institute we have the best capability in the state to keep evaluating, understanding and mitigating risks. Through the AI Economics Institute, we have a deeper understanding of the impact of AI on jobs than pretty much any other country. We want to go further on that, including looking at a range of economic levers to mitigate some of the risks. Through sovereign AI we are investing in British capabilities, through the Alan Turing Institute we are investing in national security-relevant AI, and through labs that were funded just this morning we are making sure that British capability, rather than foreign capability alone, determines the future of AI.

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[Mark Pritchard]

Just a minute: no deviation, repetition or hesitation—never from the Minister, who was completely direct, cogent and excellent as ever. But the question remains for all of us: who owns and controls the data and what does that mean for democracy? That is not a party political point. Is that control and oversight of the governance sat in an office in San Francisco or elsewhere, or is it in a Minister of the Crown’s office here in Whitehall? That will be an ongoing debate that goes to the fundamentals of why we are all here. The people must have the power, not large corporate entities. I think we all agree that we need to see more competition. Tech is a force for good, but we need to ensure that it has oversight.