Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that the (a) development and (b) delivery of the Digital Gilt Instrument programme supports UK-based firms; and if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of that programme on (i) domestic innovation and (ii) sovereign capability in digital financial infrastructure.

The Government is taking forward its digital gilt instrument (DIGIT) pilot which will be issued onto a platform within the Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS). Eligibility for the DSS requires that firms must be legally established in the UK, and therefore DIGIT will be issued onto a UK based DLT platform.

With this pilot, the Government has two key aims: to explore how distributed ledger technology (DLT) can be applied across the lifecycle of the debt issuance process; and catalyse the development of DLT in UK financial markets. The department is making ongoing assessments to design and deliver DIGIT in support of these aims.

In April the government issued a market engagement notice for the pilot digital gilt instrument (DIGIT) to understand both the current landscape of services available or in development in the UK and what potential investors want to see from a DIGIT issuance. This included questions for industry as to how DIGIT could be developed and delivered in such a way as to meet these objectives, which the department is currently analysing and incorporating into its ongoing assessments.