Question to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to strengthen the United Kingdom’s sovereign capability in the development and manufacture of memory chips.

Memory is essential to advanced computing and artificial intelligence (AI), and global production is concentrated in a small number of overseas markets. The Government's approach is to strengthen the United Kingdom's sovereign capability where it has competitive advantages, such as chip design, photonics and advanced materials, and to improve resilience through trusted international partnerships. The UK AI Hardware Plan puts this into practice, with memory and data-storage technologies within its scope. The plan is backed by over £1.1 billion of investment, including £120 million for innovation and £750 million for a new heterogeneous supercomputer, £400 million of which will procure next-generation chips.