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 support AI development in the West of England.

The Government is putting artificial intelligence at the heart of our mission to grow the UK economy. We are backing British researchers and firms and catalysing regional AI clusters so communities across the country, including in the West of England, can benefit.

We are opening a £250m procurement for the next phase of the AI Research Resource, our publicly owned supercomputers which can be used – for free – by UK researchers and business. One of the supercomputers, Isambard-AI, is based in Bristol and is one of the world’s top 10 public supercomputers and the 4th greenest.

The Government will act as a “first customer” for promising UK AI hardware through an advance market commitment of up to £100 million, giving UK companies the opportunity to grow and compete. We are also backing British scale‑ups via a new Sovereign AI Unit, supported by around £500 million, and driving local productivity through targeted skills and business adoption programmes that help SMEs adopt AI and equip workers with essential AI skills.

Together, these measures will place communities such as in the West of England in a strong position to seize the opportunities presented by AI.