Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan

Tracy Gilbert Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an incredibly pertinent point, and he mentions one of the great challenges. There are many challenges in this agenda, which is why we are striving so hard to get as much progress as we can. Removing one of the key barriers to not just upscaling innovation, but keeping it in this country, involves making sure that the investment landscape is comprehensive and swift enough—not just at spin out and scale up, but when we get to the point where we need the further rounds of investment that he mentions. Sometimes that is in the hundreds of millions of pounds, and sometimes it takes time to become profitable. Taking that kind of investment risk is essential.

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Chancellor and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary are both working intensively on pension reform. We did so in opposition, and we are carrying on with the Mansion House process. We want to make sure that the investment landscape in this country is world class. Right now, we have some work to do, but we are getting there.

[Tracy Gilbert (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab)]

I am pleased that today’s action plan refers to the expertise and development in AI that already exists in Edinburgh. It is understandable that the Government had to cancel a number of unfunded projects from the last Administration. However, will my right hon. Friend work with stakeholders to ensure that the ambition to develop an exascale computer in Edinburgh is at the heart of the Government’s long-term plan and will be brought forward in the next six months?

[Peter Kyle]

At last, there is a great advocate for a sustainable, fully funded, fully costed compute landscape for our country. That is something we have begun announcing in today’s plan, and into the spring I will announce further strategy on compute. I want to make sure that we have the right resilient, sustainable investment that our country needs when it comes to public compute. We have committed today to increasing our public compute by a factor of 20 in the next five years. That shows the scale of our ambition. My hon. Friend can rest assured that when we make announcements on the compute needs of our country, particularly when individual institutions are involved, they will be fully costed, they will be fully funded and they will be delivered.