Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure the UK is a global hub for (a) relocation and (b) investment by generative artificial intelligence firms seeking to license creative content legitimately.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
We are supporting the growth of a globally competitive AI sector in the UK and ensuring that the UK is the destination of choice for leading AI firms.
Since July 2024, £44 billion has been invested in UK AI and tech. A further £31 billion has been committed by leading AI firms, including Microsoft, NVIDIA, Google, OpenAI and CoreWeave. The UK-US Tech Prosperity Deal announced in September further strengthens our position as a destination of choice for AI investment and relocation.
As set out in the Industrial Strategy Creative Industries sector plan, we will establish a Creative Content Exchange to be a trusted marketplace for selling, buying, licensing, and enabling permitted access to digitised cultural and creative assets.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what recent assessment she has made of the potential impact of the level of copyright protections in relation to the use of creative works for training generative artificial intelligence systems on the UK’s creative industries.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Copying protected material in the UK will infringe copyright unless it is licensed, or an exception to copyright applies.
The Government recently consulted on several topics relating to the interaction between copyright and artificial intelligence (AI), including seeking views on the use of copyright material in AI model development.
The Government’s priority now is to consider all responses to the consultation, to help inform its next steps. Alongside this we launched expert working groups in July, bringing together representatives of the creative, media and AI sectors, and have committed to convene a parliamentary working group on the issue.
The Government will continue to engage extensively on this issue and its proposals will be set out in due course.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what recent discussions her Department has had with international counterparts on approaches to protecting intellectual property rights in the context of generative artificial intelligence.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government has consulted on several topics relating to the interaction between copyright and artificial intelligence (AI), including on the use of copyright material in AI development.
As part of this work, the Government has engaged extensively, both with international counterparts and with industry stakeholders on the interaction between copyright and artificial intelligence (AI).
The Government will review the responses to its consultation carefully as it considers its next steps. The Government will continue to engage extensively on this issue and its proposals will be sent out in due course
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what discussions her Department has had with representatives of the UK’s creative industries on (a) the Government’s proposed exception to copyright for text and data mining and (b) the potential impact of an opt out regime on creators’ rights and incomes.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The government is engaging extensively with stakeholders from the creative industries on copyright and AI. This has included establishing a stakeholder working group to inform policy development.
Three initial stakeholder roundtables were convened in the Summer with representatives of the creative, media and AI sectors, by the Secretaries of State for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).
Alongside this, DSIT officials continue to meet with creative industry representatives to discuss the proposals outlined in the consultation on copyright and AI, and their potential impacts.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of stimulating a licensing market for the use of copyrighted creative content by generative artificial intelligence firms.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government consulted on copyright and AI between 17 December 2024 and 25 February 2025. This included seeking views on whether and how the government should support licensing.
Consultation responses are currently being reviewed alongside extensive engagement, which will include a dedicated technical working group on licensing which is due to be established. Together these will inform an assessment of the potential merits of stimulating the licensing market and any next steps to support both the creative and AI sectors. Proposals will be set out in due course.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps she is taking to ensure that existing copyright law is (a) upheld and (b) enforced in relation to the scraping and use of creative content by generative artificial intelligence developers without permission or payment.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Copying protected material in the UK infringes copyright unless it is licensed, or an exception to copyright applies.
Rights holders are supported to enforce their rights by initiatives such as the streamlined procedures of the UK’s Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC).
The Government consulted on several topics relating to the interaction between copyright and artificial intelligence (AI), including the use of copyright material in AI development.
The Government will review the responses to its consultation carefully as it considers its next steps. The Government continues to engage extensively on this issue and will set our response in due course.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment her Department has made of the feasibility of introducing mandatory transparency obligations requiring generative artificial intelligence developers to disclose which copyrighted works have been used in their training datasets.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government published a consultation on 17 December 2024, seeking views on several topics relating to the interaction between copyright and artificial intelligence (AI), including seeking views on the use of copyright material in AI model development.
As part of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, the Government has committed to publish a report by 18 March 2026 that will consider a number of areas including transparency.
The Government is reviewing all responses to the consultation to help inform next steps. The Government will set out its position in due course.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps he is taking to improve resilience to cyberattacks on public services.
Answered by Feryal Clark
The Prime Minister announced on 3 June 2025 that responsibility for government and public sector cyber security moved from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to strengthen the resilience of digital public services by better integrating cyber security responsibilities and expertise into the Government Digital Service.
The government is progressing work on an implementation plan to support the delivery of the Government Cyber Security Strategy and is developing a new, more interventionist operating model to clarify, enable, and enforce cross-government responsibilities for cyber and digital resilience.
Additionally, important steps have been taken to understand and mitigate cyber risk through the launch of the GovAssure cyber assurance regime and the Government Cyber Coordination Centre (GC3).
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, how many data breaches have been recorded in Government departments in the last 12 months.
Answered by Feryal Clark
The Government does not record or monitor data breaches across government departments centrally.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to monitor the use of artificial intelligence (AI) by UK businesses; and whether she plans to take steps to monitor the potential impact of AI use by businesses on the number of jobs created in each of the next five years.
Answered by Saqib Bhatti - Shadow Minister (Education)
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology draws on regularly updated evidence from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The ONS run the regular Business and Insights Conditions Survey (BICS) survey, which is refreshed every two weeks and now contains questions on AI uptake in UK businesses.
The ONS estimated that in September 2023, only 16% of UK businesses were using AI, with 19% planning to adopt solutions in the future (ONS, BICS survey). A separate global study by KPMG finds a similar level of uptake in the use of AI in business settings of 20% in the UK (KMPG, Trust in Artificial Intelligence 2023).
Our understanding of AI diffusion in the economy can also be informed by consumer use, which is reported at much higher levels. 50% of adults reported to the ONS that they used AI in their day-to-day life (ONS, OPN survey). It is possible that while businesses do not report formal use of AI, workers in these companies use tools such as ChatGPT or other Large Language Models for daily work tasks.
On the potential impact of AI use by businesses on the number of jobs created, in each of the next five years, AI has the potential to be a net creator of jobs and have a positive impact on economic growth - the World Economic Forum concluded in October 2020 that while AI may take away 85 million jobs globally by 2025, it is also likely to generate
97 million new jobs in areas such as data, machine learning and digital marketing.
DSIT will continue to monitor the take-up of AI in businesses and the impact this has on job creation closely.