Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that partnerships with AI companies to develop pilot tools for Gov.uk services deliver benefits for users while protecting data privacy.

His Majesty’s Government is implementing artificial intelligence partnerships through a phased, test-and-learn approach that embeds data protection from the outset while testing transformational capabilities before committing significant public funds.

Working with the Commercial Innovation Hub, the Government has developed procurement approaches tailored to AI’s unique characteristics, including the National AI Tender for GOV.UK and the Planning Transformation Accelerator for AI-assisted decision-making, ensuring procurement methods are appropriate for evaluating frontier technologies.

All procurement frameworks require GDPR compliance as a mandatory qualification criterion, with partnerships operating under the UK Data Protection Act 2018 and comprehensive privacy-by-design principles. Pilots are deployed in controlled environments with oversight from departmental information security teams and data protection officers, with government retaining intellectual property ownership to prevent vendor lock-in.

Decisions to scale are contingent on pilots demonstrating measurable user benefits and full compliance with data protection standards through defined evaluation criteria and contractual break clauses, ensuring AI capabilities can be advanced while maintaining robust privacy safeguards.