Department for Science, Information and Technology: Abolition

Lord Dixon of Jericho Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises a genuinely valid point, but this is about how we mainstream everything and put this at the heart. Everything we are talking about is AI-enhanced reindustrialisation. I appreciate that there are many times when we use “AI” as shorthand for tech or science, just because of how quickly the technology is moving on. I reassure the noble Lord that we will continue to make sure that AI and science and technology are at the heart of the eight industrial priority sectors.

[Lord Dixon of Jericho (LD)]

My Lords, there are five areas where a country or a company can lead in artificial intelligence: people, chips, models, infrastructure and deployment. The leading global companies are spending about £500 billion this year on it; our spending as a country will be roughly 0.3% of that. Given the scale of our investment compared with others, do the machinery of government changes reflect the Government choosing to focus on an area where we can have stronger comparative advantage as a country, or do they mean that we will still continue to try to lead on all those areas?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right that we are talking about how technology and the advancements in it are going to fuel economic growth. That is a priority for the Government, as the Prime Minister has made clear. The prioritisation of that will come in the coming days, but our key here is about making sure that reindustrialisation, through these tools and using these levers, can work for every single corner of the United Kingdom, so that there is no longer a postcode lottery and that people have the opportunity to invest and make best use of these tools.