Digital and Technology Policy: National Sovereignty

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 23rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a consultant to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation and as chair of the board of the Authors’ Licensing Collecting Society. I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd, on her reappointment, but the bed of nails that is having a debate on the last day of term comes with it.

It is both a privilege and a sadness to follow the right reverend Prelate in his valedictory speech. Before turning to the substance of this debate, I hope that the House will allow me to say a brief word about him. He has, unusually, served both as a Bishop of Sheffield and of Oxford in this House, the latter for exactly 10 years this month. Bishop Steven has been an influential and instrumental voice on artificial intelligence in this House, a member of our original House of Lords Select Committee on AI and crucial in developing the principles for AI development set out by the committee. We just avoided designating them our 10 AI commandments.

He was a founding board member of the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, and is someone who has always put the ethical and human dimension of these technologies—dignity, trust, the value of work and human flourishing—first. He was a co-founder member of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Environment and Climate Change. He anticipated the NEETs and AI human flourishing debate by emphasising the importance of adequately preparing young people for changing economic and technological conditions by providing meaningful routes from education into work and ensuring that technological change does not undermine opportunities for younger generations.

It is fitting that his last contribution to this House should be in a debate on digital sovereignty, since the question he has pressed throughout his time here—whether we are shaping these technologies or being shaped by them—is precisely the question that this debate poses at a national and European level. With his insights, collaborative spirit, friendship, and enduring dedication to ethical innovation and policy-making, he will be greatly missed. I know I speak for all of us across the House in wishing him well and all best wishes for the future.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for securing this debate and for her superb introduction, and to all noble Lords who have spoken today. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Moraes and Lord Drayson, on their summer reading material. The debate has ranged widely, from infrastructure to intellectual property and from procurement to accountability, but a single thread runs through it: digital sovereignty is not an abstract concept but crucial for our economic, societal and security future.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron, Lady Berger, Lady Gill and Lady Shields, reminded us of what the absence of that sovereignty looks like in practice. Last month, the US Government placed export controls on Anthropic’s newest models. President Trump gave the company less than 90 minutes to cut off non-US citizens. This restriction was lifted on 1 July, but this episode—and, potentially, the recent OpenAI episode mentioned by some of the noble Baronesses—shows that what we have built in this country is not technological independence but, in the AI Minister’s own phrase, a search for strategic leverage. However, leverage is not control. Karim Khan, chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, could tell us the same. Sanctioned in 2025, he lost his Microsoft 365 email account on the decision of a boardroom in Redmond, Washington state, not a court.

There is an economic cost to this dependency. The Competition and Markets Authority found that AWS and Microsoft hold 70% to 90% of our cloud market, as the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, said. This costs UK customers in the region of £500 million a year. The same is true of the rest of the AI stack. We are heavily dependent on US big tech. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, used “colonisation” in this context. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, said, this is not isolation and as the noble Baroness, Lady Shields, said, we need to determine where our advantages lie.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, said that this persists not because of market failure alone but regulatory timidity. I believe very strongly in competition, but I part company with the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, in that I believe strongly in regulation and competition. I agree with the possibilities of open-source and open-weight models. The CMA, with strong cross-party support, has the powers that it needs under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, but only three designations as an SMS of big tech services have been made. The CMA declined to designate Amazon or Microsoft in cloud services as having strategic market status, despite strong recommendations from an independent inquiry. A requirement for Google to negotiate fair and reasonable payment terms with news publishers has been repeatedly delayed. A new strategic steer, which could be issued within weeks, directing the CMA towards binding remedies and reaffirming its independence, would cost nothing and require no legislation. Will the Minister commit the Government to that?

The noble Baronesses, Lady Berger and Lady Shields, and the noble Lords, Lord Vaizey, Lord Drayson and Lord Ranger, talked about data. The noble Lord, Lord Ranger, used the expression “data assets”. I agree that it is very much about exploiting the sovereign data assets that we have in the UK. It is not only about where the data sits. The security systems that protect our networks must read the data that they are guarding to do their job, so a residency promise does not get to the heart of the problem. Microsoft’s own European digital resilience commitment, a pledge to legally contest any order to suspend services here, may be welcome, but, as critics rightly call it, this is “sovereignty washing”. A contractual promise cannot override a foreign law. I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, in wanting answers in this respect.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Gill, touched on the importance of copyright. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has already secured the Minister’s confirmation on the record in this House that the sovereign AI fund recipients must comply with UK copyright law. Yet she has called that assurance disingenuous, pointing out that some funded firms will not disclose whether their training data complies at all. We need transparency. I share that scepticism. Confirmation of compliance is not the same as verification of it. I would welcome the Minister’s assurance today that the difference is understood.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron, Lady Bennett and Lady Sheilds, and the noble Lords, Lord Moraes and Lord Drayson, all raised the importance of procurement. In that context, many of them also mentioned Palantir. The Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee found that the Government was “worryingly comfortable” with dependence on a small number of providers and named Palantir specifically. The Financial Times has reported that the Ministry of Defence’s own data systems are now built on architecture that only Palantir is licensed to support—lock-in by design, not accident.

The noble Lord, Lord Moraes, drew an instructive comparison with Europe. On 3 June, the European Commission adopted what it explicitly called its “tech sovereignty package”. President von der Leyen was blunt:

“We cannot afford to depend on others for the technologies that keep our hospitals running, our energy grids stable and our services secure”.


Set against our own sovereign AI unit, I think the contrast is stark. The EU has a structured, published, cross-sectoral strategy; we do not.

Many noble Lords raised the question of accountability. Indeed, the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Bennett, referred to the “constitutional” issue. This is particularly the case with the prospect of artificial general intelligence and the reality of agentic AI. Sovereignty is hollow without this; we need a single or lead AI regulator, mandatory algorithmic impact assessments, an accountability for algorithms Act and a strict human-in-command standard. We need to ensure responsible AI through that, as the right reverend Prelate said.

I leave the Minister with two questions already put by several noble Lords, in different forms. First, will the Government publish a clear, measurable cross-departmental definition of digital sovereignty, addressing infrastructure, standards, data and procurement, which would replace the current fragmented approach? Secondly, will they commit to reporting annually to Parliament on our strategic dependency risk, as our allies in the EU, Japan and the United States are already doing?

Every procurement decision that embeds foreign dependency is an accumulation of strategic vulnerability. It is time to decide our digital future in Westminster, not Silicon Valley. As the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, said, it is a question of will, not capability. Like the noble Lords, Lord Vaizey and Lord Holmes, I am not convinced by the reorganisation of AI and tech structures in government. But with the new Government there is an opportunity for a new effective sovereignty policy. I very much hope that they take it.

EU Technological Sovereignty Package

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Clement-Jones]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the EU’s technological sovereignty package; and what plans they have to introduce equivalent instruments to protect and promote the UK’s artificial intelligence capabilities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Lloyd of Effra) (Lab)]

We have undertaken an initial assessment and are working through a detailed assessment of the EU’s technological sovereignty package. This includes proposals on CADA and chips. Our current assessment is that the package presents both opportunities and risks to UK industry. We will continue to engage with industry and European partners as proposals evolve. For the UK, AI sovereignty means reducing overdependencies, strengthening resilience and backing British capability, including through the £1.1 billion AI hardware plan and our sovereign AI fund.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a consultant to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation. The EU’s Cloud and AI Development Act will set out a framework with sovereignty criteria for public sector procurement. The Government’s AI hardware plan, mentioned by the Minister, is welcome, but it contains no equivalent procurement-linked sovereignty framework. Given that the Government’s public procurement overwhelmingly relies on US hyperscalers, can the Minister commit to introducing a UK AI sovereignty assurance framework to ensure that public sector services and critical national infrastructure are nationally resilient?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The Government have already set out their intention to use public sector buying power more strategically. The January 2025 blueprint for modern digital government noted that public sector organisations often contract locally and individually, limiting the impact of the £26 billion of annual technology spend, and committed to continue working on whole of public sector agreements. We are also developing the national cloud infrastructure programme, a strategic initiative to co-ordinate how the public sector buys cloud services. This programme will use the collective buying power of the whole of the public sector to secure better value for taxpayers, strengthen digital resilience and create new opportunities for British businesses.

Artificial Intelligence: Legislation

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The Government are acting to ensure that the UK can grasp the transformative potential of AI. That includes developing our sovereign capability and, as the noble Lord mentioned, relying on the advice of the AI Security Institute. Our approach is that we will legislate where we need to. We have done so through the Online Safety Act and we are doing so in other areas where we see the need. We believe that the best way of regulating is through context-specific regulation, which will take into account the specific issues that arise when AI is adopted by particular sectors.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser to DLA Piper on AI regulation and policy. The Government followed Australia in its approach to access to social media for under-16s. Will they do the same with AI, now that Australia will be adopting mandatory standards for AI, as nine in 10 of the British public clearly want?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The UK’s approach is to develop our sovereign capabilities. We are investing in infrastructure and in AI growth zones. We are working to ensure that everyone in this country benefits from the potential of AI and are upskilling 10 million workers. In respect of the regulatory environment, AI can be adopted in many different areas: it can advance drug discovery, or it can support teachers in classrooms so that they have more face-to-face time with pupils. It is right to take a context-specific regulatory approach.

Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, first, I declare an interest as an adviser to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation. I should also say that we as a law firm were subject to a ransomware attack by NotPetya back in 2017. It was not a pleasant experience.

I thank the Minister for her introduction and earlier engagement on the Bill and thank all noble Lords who spoke today in such an expert fashion. On these Benches, like many other noble Lords, we support the fundamental objectives of this legislation to modernise our outdated cyber security framework. But what has been remarkable today is the consensus across the Benches that the Bill is not nearly ambitious enough. Indeed, as my noble friends Lady Northover and Lady Ludford, the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Jones and Lady Harding, have said, this could be a missed opportunity to align much more closely with the EU framework.

I would prefer not to be jumping off a cliff, with or without wings, with all due deference to the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, and I do not think that we are really living up to the motto of the city of Newcastle either. As the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, said: where are the principles? The noble Earl, Lord Effingham, said: where is the strategy? The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, asked where the plan of action was. There is quite a bit missing from the Bill, and I shall take noble Lords through some of those areas.

As many noble Lords have illustrated, the threat landscape has deteriorated sharply. The National Cyber Security Centre has managed 204 nationally significant incidents in a single year, double the year before. Yet, as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, pointed out, the Bill will apply directly to only a tiny minority of organisations; meanwhile, 43% of UK businesses have experienced a cyber breach in the last 12 months. One of the most glaring omissions is the almost entire exclusion of the public sector, as the noble Baroness, Lady Alexander, and the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, pointed out. Central government, public administrations and local authorities are almost entirely exempt from the Bill’s direct statutory duties.

How can we claim national resilience when the state itself is exempt? We have seen the data of 270,000 military personnel compromised in the Ministry of Defence hack, and the devastating attack on the British Library, which destroyed irreplaceable data. Local authorities hold vast repositories of citizen data, from electoral registries to social care records. The ransomware attack on Redcar and Cleveland cost £10 million, the one on Hackney £12 million.

As my noble friends Lady Northover and Lady Ludford, the noble Lords, Lord Birt and Lord Vaizey, the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, all said, we must make cyber security a boardroom issue. It was very good to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, with her lived experience of cyber attack, yet only 27% of businesses now have a board member explicitly responsible for cyber risk, down from 38% three years ago. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, was correct. Unlike the EU’s NIS2, the Bill fails to mandate executive responsibility. I support the noble Lord, Lord Birt, in saying that we must now extend corporate financial audits to report on how an organisation and its suppliers manage cyber security using existing governance codes.

The urgency here is multiplied by the rapid rise of agentic artificial intelligence. The noble Baroness, Lady Alexander, described this as “an AI-shaped hole”, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Harding, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, all pointed to this omission.

Anthropic recently withheld wide release of its Mythos model because it could autonomously find and exploit software vulnerabilities across every major operating system. The UK’s own AI Security Institute, as we have heard, found Mythos substantially more capable at cyber offence than any model previously assessed, and warned that frontier AI capability is doubling every four months. Of course, that will be further amplified by quantum computing, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale.

The EU’s AI Act already imposes binding cyber security and incident reporting duties on the handful of frontier model providers that it judges to pose systemic risk. California and New York do the same for the largest developers. This Bill, by contrast, does not mention AI systems at all, as many noble Lords have pointed out. Last month, the cyber security agencies of the Five Eyes alliance, including our own National Cyber Security Centre, issued a joint statement warning that frontier AI is shrinking the gap between vulnerability discovery and exploitation from months to a matter of days, and this can no longer be treated as a technical issue rather than a leadership responsibility.

Meanwhile, our own defenders have a skills crisis. The noble Lords, Lord Birt, Lord Arbuthnot and Lord Vaizey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Alexander, all raised the skills issue. ISC2 warns that 88% of UK cyber professionals have experienced a breach in the last 12 months as a direct result of skills shortages, yet Clause 43 references “a skilled person”, as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, who must liaise with the Secretary of State during national security directions, without defining what “a skilled person” is.

Who will actually enforce the rules? The Bill distributes duties, as we have heard today, across 12 separate sectoral regulators, many of which, such as Ofwat, already struggle to regulate their own domains. This fragmented approach guarantees duplication and gaps. Again, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Birt, and, indeed, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy: the UK needs a single expert or lead regulator —as mentioned by the noble Baronesses, Lady Alexander and Lady Harding, the noble Lords, Lord Vaizey and Lord Holmes, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville—to oversee both public and private sectors. Failing that, the Government should at least adopt the EU’s Digital Omnibus model of a single report-once portal. I share the ambitions of the noble Baroness, Lady Paul, and those of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, in this respect.

We must, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, said, fix the Bill’s definitions—also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. For instance, techUK warns that the current definition of a managed service provider is dangerously broad, risking capture of any basic IT support in the country.

The Bank of England’s own data shows that just three US giants control 73% of the cloud computing services supporting UK financial firms. A number of noble Lords raised the issue of cyber sovereignty. The Trump Administration blocked European and UK firms from accessing Mythos. If a foreign ally can pull the plug on a critical cyber security tool overnight, how can this Government claim true national resilience? That is why, as many noble Lords today have said, we need a comprehensive digital sovereignty strategy. My noble friend Lady Ludford called this “servitude” and the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, talked about critical defence. We need to assess our foreign policy dependencies and support domestic UK providers. I welcome what was said by the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron, Lady Bennett and Lady Berger, in that respect.

The Bill is silent on cyber-enabled fraud, which costs our economy billions of pounds every year and exploits precisely the same weaknesses this Bill is meant to fix. The noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, mentioned a related threat which is emerging, as Thales has tracked that automated bot traffic has overtaken human traffic online for the first time. As suggested by the NMA, we need the Secretary of State, under this Bill, to assess the cyber security risks that anonymous bot traffic poses to UK websites.

If we expect businesses to defend themselves, we cannot handicap our own cyber professionals. I welcome what has been said by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, the noble Lords, Lord Arbuthnot and Lord Holmes, and my noble friend Lady Ludford, on the question of the Computer Misuse Act, which badly needs amending.

Finally, in the face of autonomous AI threats, the Government need an ultimate backstop. We support proposals from ControlAI to introduce strictly constrained last resort powers, allowing the Secretary of State to direct the shutdown of data centres or AI systems in a catastrophic emergency. The cost of inaction vastly outweighs that compliance burden. The noble Baroness, Lady Gill, graphically described the situation at Jaguar Land Rover, which lost around £500 million in a single attack. But currently JLR sits entirely outside the scope of the Bill, as does the retail sector, as a number of noble Lords have pointed out. The noble Baroness, Lady Paul, indicated that that was true of the insurance sector too.

The Bill is a necessary foundation. In Committee, we will push hard for amendments to reflect the changes that are needed. In this way, we can ensure that our national cyber defences are genuinely whole of society and fit for the age of AI. We are going to have a very well-informed Committee; I hope the Minister is looking forward to it.

Employment: Artificial Intelligence

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

My noble friend is right about the potential of AI and that many people are uncertain about how it will develop in the future. The critical point that I think he and I agree on is that the best way of approaching this technological development is equipping people in all regions of the country—young people and those who need retraining—which is exactly the approach we are taking. With our AI skills boost, we will upskill 10 million people in work, and we have already reached 1.7 million. In that way, workers in this country will be able to make the most of this technological revolution.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the Milburn interim report, Young People and Work, found that a growing share of entry-level roles are now filtered by algorithmic screening before a human has even seen an application. Given that NEET numbers are shockingly high, what specific assessment have the Government made of the extent to which AI-driven recruitment tools are narrowing rather than widening life chances for these young people? Will the Minister commit to mandatory algorithmic impact assessments, as suggested by the TUC, for recruitment algorithms so that employers and platforms are required to test for bias before these tools are deployed at scale?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The Government previously set out guidance on recruitment in the age of AI. The new future of work unit will look at what is developing in the labour market and at whether guidance such as that needs updating and in what respect. In the meantime, we are supporting young people, through our youth guarantee and through provision of early training opportunities for them, so that they can get into work now and continue to advance through their careers.

The Space Economy (UK Engagement with Space Committee Report)

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, as a former member of the committee—all of us, I suppose, could be described as space cadets—I warmly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland, for her superb chairing of the committee and for her inspiring introduction today. I join her and other members of the committee in thanking all the staff and advisers to the committee, and all our evidence givers, including the celebrities that the noble Baroness mentioned. I also thank all noble Lords who have contributed so enthusiastically to this extremely illuminating debate.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, said, the title of the report absolutely captures the challenge. It serves as both a stark warning and a brilliant road map for our future. As we have heard today, the UK space sector is an invaluable national asset. It generates nearly £19 billion a year in income, directly employs over 52,000 people in highly skilled jobs and underpins approximately 18% of our entire GDP—some £364 billion. We possess immense comparative strengths that we must champion, from Glasgow, which builds more small satellites than anywhere else outside California, to our pioneering in-orbit servicing, assembly and manufacturing—ISAM—sector. We also boast unique downstream advantages, with the City of London primed to be the pre-eminent global centre for space finance, law and insurance.

As we have heard today, the UK space sector is an invaluable national asset, but we must not be complacent: the hard data shows that the UK’s global market share in space has fallen from 5.1% in 2020 to just 4.2% in 2023. We are sliding backwards because our nearest competitor nations are aggressively ramping up their public investments while the UK relies on short-term, fragmented funding cycles. As we consider these economic opportunities, we must be clear-eyed about the intense international competition that we face, particularly the overwhelming dominance of the United States. The recent record-breaking IPO of SpaceX vividly illustrates the sheer scale of American financial and industrial might in this domain.

The noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Shamash, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Ashton and Lady Mobarik, have talked about the importance of sovereign UK launch capability. The committee’s report was right to warn that the UK and the rest of the world have become dangerously overreliant on a single commercial entity for orbital launch and satellite communications. This is a profound strategic vulnerability. We cannot simply outsource the resilience of our critical national infrastructure to a single overseas monopoly, nor to the unpredictable political and commercial whims of one billionaire. This stark reality underscores exactly why the Government must step up as an anchor customer to help our own domestic firms scale up and why we must urgently pool our sovereign capabilities with our European partners.

To truly grasp the scale of this domestic opportunity, we need only to look at our world-leading capabilities in earth observation, which were focused on in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. Satellite data is rapidly becoming the new gold of the global economy. Earth observation is vital for monitoring climate change, tracking deforestation, predicting natural disasters and enabling precision agriculture. Yet, as the committee heard, adoption of these services outside the space sector remains far too slow because many organisations still view space as complex or irrelevant.

This is exactly where the Government must step in. By acting as a smart procurer, buying earth observation data to improve our own public services, whether for national flood mapping, monitoring coastal erosion or infrastructure planning, the Government can act as an anchor customer. This would immediately de-risk private investment, help our innovative SMEs to scale up and ensure that the UK captures its rightful share of this market. I very much appreciated what the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said on the whole scale-up aspect.

But space is no longer just an economic frontier. It is, as many noble Lords said, a critical national infrastructure. It is increasingly congested, contested and competitive. Our national security and resilience rely heavily on the space domain, from tracking climate change to the vital encrypted communications provided by our Skynet military satellites. To secure these economic and security benefits, the committee’s message is unequivocal: the UK Government must provide a coherent, funded strategic direction. Industry is crying out for the Government to pivot from being a small-scale grant funder to acting as a reliable, smart anchor customer. Procurement contracts, rather than just R&D grants, as noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, are essential to de-risk projects, crowd in private capital and help our brilliant SMEs to scale up into globally competitive businesses.

Yet the Government’s official response to this excellent report is frankly lacking in the urgency required. Instead of publishing the detailed national space capability development plan that the sector needed and which the committee demanded by the end of 2025, the Government deferred the hard details to a spring space publication, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. Now it seems that they have promised a plan for space for later this year. Can the Minister confirm exactly what is intended? This deferral of decisions is simply not good enough. As Professor Sylvester Kaczmarek powerfully highlighted in his recent briefing to Peers, deep tech firms cannot scale their businesses on what are described as future documents. The Government’s response offers process when industry desperately needs delivery.

I therefore press the Minister on three specific matters. First, given the Government’s insistence on absorbing the UK Space Agency into DSIT, will they urgently publish a clear accountability map so that industry knows exactly who owns strategy, procurement and regulation across Whitehall? Secondly, when will the Government publish a concrete procurement route that includes specific targets for SME participation? Thirdly, how do the Government plan to create an open assurance pathway for the complex AI-driven autonomous missions of the future? If we want to lead the world in active debris removal, so positively mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and secure space operations, we must have the regulatory frameworks to prove that these AI systems are trustworthy and secure.

I am afraid that the Government’s response to this committee is characterised by a failure to grasp the nettle. They have not only absorbed the UK Space Agency into a Whitehall department but explicitly rejected the committee’s sensible recommendation to appoint a dedicated Minister for Space to drive cross-government co-ordination.

We on these Benches align very closely with the committee’s recommendations. On European co-operation, the committee rightly called for urgent decisions on our participation in flagship EU programmes such as Galileo and IRIS² to provide industry with certainty. The Government have stated that they cannot make decisions yet. We are clear that we must pool our sovereign satellite navigation capacity by fully rejoining the Galileo system and confirming our participation in IRIS². We cannot rely solely on foreign-owned systems for our critical position, navigation and timing needs.

On governance and strategic focus, the committee explicitly warned against the fragmentation of space policy across Whitehall and expressed deep concern over the absorption of the UK Space Agency into DSIT. We on these Benches believe that this merger is a strategic error. Why are the Government dismantling the autonomy of our national space agency at the very moment that it is proving its commercial worth? An independent UKSA is crucial to present a unified interface with the European Space Agency, maintain specialised technical focus, and champion UK interests internationally. We continue to call on the Government to reverse that decision.

We must tackle the skills gap mentioned by a number of noble Lords with genuine ambition, which includes implementing broader reforms to the apprenticeship levy to allow space firms the flexibility they need for responsive training and microcredentials. We cannot maintain our leadership on deferred decisions and structural dilution, so I urge the Minister to take the bold decisions identified by the committee, deliver a clear and actionable space strategy and, in the words of the report, act now before we lose out.

Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 (Directions to OFCOM) (Revocation) Order 2026

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2026 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Lloyd of Effra) (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg to move this draft order. Wireless connectivity underpins a vast range of everyday services, from mobile phones and wifi to broadcasting and satellite communications. All these rely on access to radio spectrum. Spectrum is a finite and valuable resource, and it must be carefully managed to ensure that different services can operate without interference, that networks function reliably and that consumers and businesses benefit from competition and innovation.

In the UK, Ofcom, the independent communications regulator, manages spectrum by issuing licences, setting conditions and promoting efficient use. Government set the overall policy and strategic priorities for spectrum, including through the statement of strategic priorities that Ofcom must have regard to when discharging its functions. Maintaining a clear and effective framework for managing spectrum is therefore an important part of supporting investment in digital infrastructure and the wider economy. This instrument contributes to that by improving legal clarity without changing existing services, business models or regulatory requirements.

This draft order revokes a direction given to Ofcom in 2010. At the time, the Government used this direction to ensure that a specific set of reforms to support the rollout of mobile broadband was implemented clearly and at pace, alongside Ofcom’s existing statutory framework and in line with wider European measures to harmonise the use of key spectrum bands. These measures included allowing operators greater flexibility in how they could use key spectrum bands, enabling spectrum trading so that licences could be bought and sold, updating licence conditions to support long term investment, setting licence fees to reflect full market value and preparing for major spectrum auctions. Together, these changes helped operators transition from older mobile technologies towards newer ones, enabling the rollout of 3G and 4G services more quickly and efficiently and supporting the widespread availability of modern mobile services across the UK. The reforms also reflected wider European measures to harmonise the use of key mobile spectrum bands and support this transition.

All the obligations set out in the direction have now been fully implemented by Ofcom through a series of regulatory actions over the past decade. As a result, the direction no longer has any practical effect and is now redundant. This instrument therefore revokes that direction. Its removal will improve the clarity of the legal framework and remove the risk of confusion that could arise from retaining obsolete provisions. For example, when Ofcom looks to set annual licence fees for mobile spectrum, we want to minimise the risk of unnecessary legal challenge. The direction requires Ofcom to have particular regard to the outcome of the 800 megahertz and 2.6 gigahertz auction when setting certain licence fees. That auction took place in 2013; retaining the direction could create uncertainty about whether those historic auction outcomes should continue to carry special weight today.

This instrument does not introduce any new policy or change the way that spectrum is managed in the UK. Ofcom will continue to exercise its functions under its existing statutory framework, including duties set out in the Communications Act 2003 and powers under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006. These provide the framework for managing spectrum efficiently, promoting competition and investment and protecting consumers. This step will help ensure that the framework underpinning wireless connectivity remains clear and effective and supports continued investment. I beg to move.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this order. I am somewhat intrigued as to why we are privileged to have two Ministers for these orders, which are both under the heading of electronic communications. No doubt the mystery will be resolved. Of course we do not oppose this instrument and I do not intend to detain the Committee long on what are, on the face of it, tidying-up measures. However, they raise a question or two worth putting to the Minister.

We have no quarrel with removing a direction that has plainly served its purpose. As the Minister said, Ofcom completed the work that the 2010 direction required years ago. However, can she say a little more about why now? The Explanatory Memorandum notes that retaining the 2010 direction risks creating

“legal challenge against Ofcom if they proceed with changes to licence charging arrangements”.

That is not a housekeeping observation but a forward-looking one; it suggests that Ofcom already has changes to spectrum licence fees in contemplation. Can the Minister tell the Committee what those changes are and on what timetable we might expect to see them?

Looking further ahead, can the Minister say something about how the Government see the framework for spectrum direction-making evolving to meet the demands of 5G and 6G rollout, non-terrestrial and satellite networks, and the rising spectrum needs of AI-related infrastructure? The 2010-era framework, tied as it was to 3G liberalisation, was never designed to anticipate those needs.

Artificial Intelligence: Global Governance

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

My noble friend is right to draw attention to the strengths of the UK in AI. Given the pace of change, the UK is determined to shape AI and not be shaped by it. These are issues that countries do not face alone, so we are working with international partners to seize the opportunities and address the challenges that AI presents, both bilaterally and multilaterally. The UK is well placed to lead, including through our AI Security Institute, working with allies to share expertise, build capability and strengthen our resilience together.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a consultant to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation. The UK signed the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence nearly two years ago. Can the Minister tell the House when the UK intends to ratify the convention, and what steps the Government intend to take to implement it, given their own statement that

“existing laws and measures will be enhanced”

once ratification occurs? Has the moment arrived for the UK to champion binding international obligations on AI, rather than continuing to place its faith in voluntary commitments that have clearly failed to hold either Governments or developers to account?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The convention on AI is flexible and does not create new human rights obligations. Contracting states are given broad discretion when it comes to selecting the appropriate form of implementation, including sector-led regulation. That fits with our mission to highlight the benefits of AI for working people in a way that recognises that regulation largely is based on a sector-based approach.

Social Media: Substances Unfit for Human Consumption

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The Government support clean competition in sport, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport supports UK Anti-Doping and UK Sport in their efforts to protect clean sport and educate athletes on the risks of performance-enhancing drugs. The Online Safety Act covers situations where illegal products are marketed, and it is for Ofcom to enforce that area. As I mentioned, the children’s harms guidance makes it clear that sponsor or influencer-promoted content can be in scope where it actively encourages children to consume harmful substances.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the BBC investigation found that these illegal substances are readily available from online sellers based both in the UK and overseas, yet there is no systematic requirement for platforms to know who is placing these advertisements, particularly of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, referred to. Will the Government ensure that forthcoming work on online advertising standards includes a requirement for platforms to verify the identity of those placing advertisements for health and physique-enhancing products so that enforcement bodies can identify and pursue those responsible?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right that the Online Safety Act already covers illegal content and child safety duties. Those duties are in force. Ofcom is now turning its focus to the additional duties for categorised services, which will include protections against fraudulent advertising. We are expecting Ofcom’s consultation on the additional duties next month, which should cover a number of the issues that the noble Lord raises.

European Framework Programme 10

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right. Our ability to get money through this scheme is a great success story. We are back to nearly full strength in terms of the academic side of that. Just to give some figures, in the past scheme, the University of Cambridge had £70 million and the University of Oxford £67 million. We have a large number of grants through this scheme. It is a very important part of the system, and we need to look at this in conjunction with UKRI funding to look at the totality of how we think about spread across all disciplines. I think this is a very important part of our funding system and, provided it is open, excellent and value for money, we will negotiate to try and be part of FP 10.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, can I press the Minister on timelines? He will be aware that universities are advocating for early clarity as regards the Government’s timeline for declaring their intent to associate with FP 10. Will this declaration be made early enough to influence the programme’s final design and ensure UK participation from day one? Given that multiple departments are involved, can the Minister clarify which Minister has overall responsibility and how interdepartmental co-ordination is being managed?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

We have got the money for the first two years of the programme in the spending review so, assuming that we associate, the money is there for those first two years, which covers the period of the spending review. The timelines for FP10 are in the hands of the EU, which has not yet defined what the programme is. As I have already said, I was invited to a meeting in July, so we are engaged with the process. I will continue to be engaged with it and work across other departments to make sure we represent every department. But I cannot give any more timelines, because the EU has not given its timelines yet.