UK-based Tech Companies

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Chris Evans]

I stand corrected, Mr Betts—I was in meetings all morning, so I have not seen the sports news yet.

For constituencies like mine, which were dependent on heavy industry, the development of high technology offers new growth opportunities that we can harness in our valley communities once again. I want to focus my comments on a company called Academii. Academii helps organisations improve their workplace training by replacing one-size-fits-all learning with streamlined content, smart delivery and measurable outcomes. It is used by major employers in the energy and utility sectors, as well as by the NHS, community health boards and international clients.

Earlier this year, the business secured £700,000 of investment from the Welsh Labour Government to further develop its platform and expand its workforce. Academii is a powerful example of what a talented team of entrepreneurs and technicians can achieve when united behind a cutting-edge idea. I firmly believe that this spirit can be fostered in our universities, which can become the powerhouse of technological change across south Wales.

Clusters in university campuses can form the basis of spin-out companies, which, under the umbrella of a higher educational institution, take groundbreaking research and transform it into a market-ready product or service. Spin-outs are widely recognised for their highly effective, lucrative and sustainable business models. Their success is driven by their dynamic and entrepreneurial culture, which involves faster decision making, greater flexibility and a higher appetite for risk taking.

[Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

I recently visited the Nexus innovation hub at the University of Leeds, which does the things that my hon. Friend was just describing, with innovative spin-outs and companies genuinely innovating in really challenging areas. However, they struggle to access Government procurement because they do not have things like Cyber Essentials, but they do have the equivalent accreditation from international organisations. Does he agree that the Government should do more to recognise these accreditations, so that we do not stifle innovation?

[Chris Evans]

I am always happy to take interventions, but my hon. Friend seems to have written my speech for me, because I will develop that argument as I go along. I note he is from Leeds—Leeds pinch all of Sheffield Wednesday’s best managers, do they not, Mr Betts?

Spin-outs offer postgraduate students the sought-after opportunity to work in a start-up, allowing them to develop skills and experience outside of academia. At a time when many graduates are struggling to navigate the job market, spin-out companies can be a fantastic place to start their career. Places like Wales, Northern Ireland and the north-east have traditionally been reliant on public sector work and have a lack of entrepreneurship, but spin-out companies can remedy those problems. Young people can found these companies, and young people can work in them. Their success boosts employment, the economy and investment in higher education. In 2024 alone, spin-outs channelled a record £3.35 billion of investment into university research. Such investment not only benefits the economy but ensures that promising technologies are not abandoned due to lack of funding.

While much of this funding is awarded to spin-outs in the golden triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London, Swansea University has bucked the trend. It has emerged as one of the UK’s leading academic institutions for generating spin-out companies, having established 58 spin-outs since 2011. Swansea’s recent successes include Ail Arian, a business that recovers silver from printed electronics, and Corryn Biotechnologies, which has designed wound dressing that mimics the natural healing process of the skin. Celtic Vascular Ltd is another Welsh spin-out that deserves recognition for its groundbreaking work. Its team of researchers has pioneered AI-driven software that detects coronary heart disease with 92% accuracy.

I am proud that Welsh universities are leading the way in generating spin-out companies and inspiring others outside the golden triangle to do the same. However, the Government must do more to support spin-out companies. The biggest challenge that academics face when spinning out is finding the financial support to bridge the initial gap from the lab to the market. The UK Government recognised that challenge in their 2024 autumn Budget, in which £40 million was allocated to early-stage spin-out companies. Although that funding is welcome, it falls short of what is needed. For context, £40 million is approximately the cost of bringing just two drug-discovery programmes from inception to their first in-human clinical trials. Yet for a share of the Government’s first £9 million tranche in 2025, UK Research and Innovation was overwhelmed with more than 2,750 expressions of interest. There is a huge gap in funding at the point when researchers want to bring their discoveries out of the lab.

UK-based investors largely avoid scale-up investments, unwilling to take risks on products that have not yet been prototyped or introduced to the market. The grants awarded by Innovate UK are simply unreliable. They reached a peak of £150 million in 2023, but the funding for spin-outs fell by 44.5% in 2024 to £83.3 million. That reflects a shift in the Government’s wider investment strategy: the allocation of research and innovation grants is becoming more targeted and selective. Early-stage spin-out companies have directly lost out to this new strategy. In January 2026, Innovate UK paused its smart grants programme, which was designed to bring original, high-impact innovations to the marketplace. In its place, a new growth catalyst programme has opened, targeted at spin-outs that are ready to scale. Grants for the scheme must be aligned with private investment, which means that eligible companies are expected to be market-ready.

It has been said that a “valley of death” has subsequently emerged between the lab and the market, which many potentially game-changing innovations fail to span. To avoid that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards) said, they are forced to rely on the US for capital. In return, the facilities and workforce are based across the Atlantic.

Ministers have a duty to turn the tide on this issue. With better UK-based support, this country’s technology, healthcare and life sciences sectors, let alone the economy, would be emboldened and much richer. I therefore ask the Minister whether the Government will provide more financial support for projects in pre-investment phases of development, beyond the £40 million set aside in the 2024 autumn Budget. Will they allow the British Business Bank to play a key role in providing that support, given its recent expansion and its position at the heart of the Government’s growth agenda?

I do not need to tell the Minister, who is a fellow Welsh MP, that Wales is home to a wealth of talent, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit. I want to see this nation thrive, but that will happen only if the Government provide the support and investment needed to unlock its full potential. I call on them to do just that, before other states around the world do it for us.

AI Safety

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) for securing this timely debate.

In August, I created the first AI prototype of a British MP. It was made by my constituent, Jeremy Smith, who ran an AI start-up in my constituency. I will go to almost any lengths to support a local business in Leeds South West and Morley. This was an online MP that anyone could talk to at any time. Jeremy said my constituents would benefit from two versions of me, including one that never sleeps—although, with children aged four and one, I am not sure that is a useful distinction.

Questions were converted into text and an answer generated quickly, and then it was turned into my voice for the users. The replica was impressive, although I did sound a bit too posh and angry when I did not know the answer. AI Mark not only had my voice—we also fed it my policy stances and typical casework answers. I saw it as a clever voicemail system designed to handle common casework queries when my office was closed; it was never going to be a replacement for me or for my excellent casework team. However, how does it relate to safety? We have all seen AI models that break, say outrageous things or hallucinate.

We created what I called the “guardrails”, and these were the limits on what AI Mark could say. That created a problem: when the guardrails were lower, AI Mark was very interesting to talk to. He would create Tinder dating profiles on demand; he did write incorrect haikus about the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage); and he did give the population of Vietnam—and try to predict the weather there, too.

[Mr Charters]

Does my hon. Friend think the Whips would prefer the real Mark, or the AI Mark?

[Mark Sewards]

My hon. Friend tempts me to say something I am not allowed to in this place, so I will say that they absolutely would prefer me—of course they would.

AI Mark could also be exploited to say things that just were not true. So I lifted the guardrails to reduce the risk before I released him to the public, but this made him significantly less useful. He only responded to key phrases and he stuck to the content that I had fed him, but that made it so much harder to distinguish him from a normal chatbot.

Usefulness and safety will clearly be a balancing act as this technology develops. We know AI can be dangerous—we have heard the arguments today—but we have also seen its potential. I have seen its potential. If we want systems that are both safe and useful, businesses need the space to experiment, and I ask the Minister in his summing-up to confirm the Government’s current approach to this.

Now, I am not arguing for a free-for-all; to be clear, we need proportionate regulation and effective oversight. That much is obvious. I will just say that AI Mark did not actually save me any time. I read the thousands of transcripts that came through—I read them all myself; I did not delegate that to anyone else, and it created far more work for me. I could have refined this model to operate well within the guardrails I had set for him, but I was not willing to ask my team to put aside time to refine it when we had real casework to deal with immediately. That is why I took the decision this month to shut AI Mark down.

There is space for a business to take up the baton and take this forward, because the technology is incredible and the potential is real, but that is all it is for now—potential. I will just finish with this: one person from Ukraine, or at least a Ukrainian IP address, tried to get AI Mark to declare support for repressive regimes. Because of the guardrails that we put in place, he did hold firm in his love for democracy, just as I am sure that everyone else here would.

Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

The work of the AI Safety Institute is ongoing, and it does world-class work. Of course, AI is fuelled by data, and we know that the public need reassurance that data will be used safely. With a data Bill going through, and with a Government that want to ensure people have the rights they need to have control over their data, I want to assure my hon. Friend on the use of data, technology and AI, as well as on the use of algorithms, which are increasingly being used in the private sector, but also in Government. Unlike the previous Government, I want to ensure that algorithms are published by Departments so that everybody can understand what it is that we are doing in their interests to benefit the country, because without understanding it, people will not feel safe with it being used. I will not tolerate that because we need to ensure that we as a country use this technology for the public good.

[Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s leadership on AI—it is good to have someone taking this seriously. As somebody who was teaching a year ago, I am always interested in the application of AI in the classroom, especially when it comes to reducing teacher workload so they can spend more face-to-face time with their students. I am also interested in the application of AI in creating personalised learning resources for students based on their ability. Will the Secretary of State speak about that in more detail and potentially tell us about the timelines for rolling this out in our schools?

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful that my hon. Friend has brought his experience from the classroom into the Chamber and into debates such as this one. As somebody who has experienced neurological challenges and barriers to learning as a child and through life, one of the most exciting parts of the digital and AI revolution that is unfolding is that, if we harness this correctly, a single classroom can exist both for students who have barriers to learning and for others who have specific talents that need stretching and challenging. Of course, there is no replacement for great teaching and the people and teachers in the classroom working with students, but with the assistance of digital technology and with what AI can do to provide a granular, detailed and tailored experience for students, that is something we are working on. My Department is working with the Department for Education so we can get this technology into classrooms and, as he says, for the benefit of all students right around the United Kingdom.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising that important and challenging case. Community pharmacists like Dipak play a vital role in our health service. As she knows, the Department of Health and Social Care sets drug tariff prices and regularly assesses what pharmacies are reimbursed to ensure that overall they are paid fairly. If the hon. Lady is prepared to share the details further with me, I will have a review carried out by the team of the case she has raised.

[Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

Q7. Last year, I was honoured to accept an invitation from the European Jewish Association to go to Krakow and discuss the role of Holocaust education in tackling the rising tide of antisemitism across Europe. We also visited Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, where we laid wreaths and paid tribute to the many victims of the Holocaust. Given that this month marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of those evil places, will the Prime Minister set out what this Government are doing on Holocaust education to ensure that never again means never again?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that. Antisemitism is completely abhorrent and has no place whatsoever in our society. I recently met Jewish community leaders in Downing Street to discuss what further we can do to combat antisemitism, and that includes allocating £54 million for the Community Security Trust to continue its vital work, committing to building a new Holocaust memorial and learning centre and providing at least £2.2 million to continue the funding for Lessons from Auschwitz. I look forward to working with others on those important proposals.