European Framework Programme 10

Lord Vallance of Balham Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and, in doing so, I am returning to the subject of my first ever Parliamentary Question.

[The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

We welcome the initial proposals for the EU FP 10. We identify strong alignment between the proposals and our own focus on using research and innovation to drive economic growth. We are particularly looking at how the proposals align with the principles of excellence, openness and good value for money. I was pleased recently to have been welcomed by the informal meeting of EU Research and Innovation Ministers in July, when these proposals on the future of European research and innovation were discussed.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer. I am pleased to see things are going in the right direction, first, because scientific excellence and value for money remain at the heart of the Horizon Europe programme and, secondly, because academic participation rates have risen so much since we rejoined. What is the position for industry? Can my noble friend tell the House anything about the discussion he referred to with counterparts on the future of FP 10 and its ambitious budget? Is it the case that the United Kingdom will no longer be excluded totally from the areas of quantum and space? Finally, would he agree that, with China in the ascendent and the United States damaging itself scientifically, it is all the more vital for our future prosperity that the UK co-operates with European countries in science?

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[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I am very happy to answer my noble friend’s four questions. In terms of industry, we do not have as good an uptake yet. Academia has increased the uptake of EU grants very successfully and in Pillar 1, which is largely the academic pillar, in 2024, over 13% of the money came back. In the European Research Council awards, 56 were won, which was more than any other country in Europe. We are fully back there, but not so in industry where it is still slow. I think it is really important that we get the message out that this money is there for industry to apply for. It lost a lot of confidence when we left the programme, and we need to get the confidence back because of the reasons stated—we need to be fully part of the system. We are now able to do much more in both space and quantum that we were initially excluded from.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)]

My Lords, there have been a number of calls from research and university representatives for the programme to take a balanced approach to research security but also to reduce bureaucracy. Can the Minister please say how he will evaluate and negotiate on FP 10’s provisions for ethical research but also on derisking investments so that we can ensure that they align with UK priorities but do not increase additional barriers or financial strains?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. Obviously, the FP 10 negotiations have not really started yet; it is just a discussion of what this might be. We are going to look very carefully at the principles of openness, excellence and value for money. We will also look at accessibility: we want to be a part of all the programme, not excluded from areas to do with military and defence. We are now included in some of those; we would like to be fully included as we increase the relationship. We are very keen to make sure, as we look at all of this, that we have transparency on the finances and value for money.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, can I ask the Minister one broad question? Would the Government, in assessing FP 10, take into consideration the success in research that British universities have had since we joined, even recently, the Horizon programme? For example, Imperial College has a direct grant of about £180 million and broader involvement leading up to, over several years, several billion pounds. The draft programme is much aligned to our own strategy. Therefore, I hope the Government will seriously take into account the success we have had and may continue to have if we join the FP 10.

[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.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s comments about Horizon and the greater involvement in space. Can he confirm what progress has been made on the UK rejoining EGNOS, which basically is the European navigation system for flying small planes in very bad conditions? We were a member and then, of course, we were kicked out because of Brexit.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I am going to have to get somebody else to answer that question in writing, I am afraid, because I do not know the answer.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, I think we would all agree that the UK has most of the leading universities and institutions in Europe. The result, as the Minister said, is that historically we punched well above our weight in this area. We contributed only 12% of the funds and received 14% to 15% of the funds back; now, in the latest round, we are still contributing 12% and receiving only around 10% to 11%, so we are now punching well below our weight. What can we do to address this now and in future rounds to make sure that our universities are not losing out?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

As I have said, we are actually above 13% for Pillar 1 in the university sector and we are increasing again. We took a big hit when we left—a very big hit—and it is taking a while to come back. We are now on track and doing better in increasing our share than any other nation in Europe. The biggest area on which to concentrate is the industry side. Industry took a big hit because of loss of confidence when we removed from the system, and that is going to take a little longer to come back.

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in relation to industry, in the Minister’s first substantive Answer, he said that industry did not have the same percentage as academia. How can Government work with both industry and academia to forge closer collaborations so that they can partake of this investment, particularly when it is industry that usually identifies the difficulties that have to be solved and academia then comes up with the solutions?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I wrote to vice-chancellors to encourage them to make sure they apply to get into all of the scheme, and that had an effect on applications. I am doing the same with trade bodies and other parts of industry to get them linked. The general point about links between academia and industry is crucial; we need much closer collaboration. The noble Baroness will see, as we go through our next REF exercise to assess universities, that the links to industry are going to be a very important part of that.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I declare I am a professor at Cardiff University. Can the Minister explain how there is co-ordination between the devolved Administrations? In terms of which Ministers and departments are involved, as mentioned in a previous question, I want to know how the co-ordination is happening to ensure that all universities across the whole of the UK find that there are consistent messages and have the appropriate support towards applying into the grant programmes.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I have regular meetings with Ministers from the devolved Administrations. Most recently, they were around some of the issues to do with REF. Unfortunately, the meeting with the Welsh Minister was cancelled twice by them, but I will none the less persist.

Open Artificial Intelligence Service

Lord Vallance of Balham Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they will explore the possibility of establishing an entity to provide a sovereign open artificial intelligence service on a public-private partnership basis with shares open to British citizens.

[The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

The Government are committed to building sovereign AI capabilities spanning hardware, software and data, and they have established a sovereign AI unit. This is backed by up to £500 million. The unit will advance UK strategic interests through supporting promising companies. We recently published the compute road map, setting out plans to build cutting-edge, secure and sustainable AI infrastructure, and of course there is the National Data Library. We will explore novel commercial structures, such as public/private partnerships, as part of that delivery model.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the conversations he has had with me and for the report he has just given. While we research, others, like the Indians, already understand the sovereignty question. They are now finding ways of funding and launching their own national AI systems, scheduled probably for next year. I know the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has been at meetings where the Treasury, responsible for AI developments, has indicated surprise that there is pressure for a national sovereign movement. Can we make sure that the Treasury is not taking a long, slow view on this? Can we also make sure that we are exploring all the opportunities open to us to bring more people into creating public/private partnerships in a new way, quite unlike what we have done before, in order to ensure that parents, particularly, can see that the UK is developing an AI system for their children in which they can place their trust?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

A lot is going on. What is being considered is investment in companies, but things that have happened include the formation of a new AI computer infrastructure—Isambard-AI went live this summer. The AI Security Institute is determined to make sure that we have the ability to look at risks of future models, and of course there is the National Data Library. So, there is a lot in train and a lot of sovereign capability is being built. The next phase is to make sure that we have investment for companies that are developing the latest models in the UK.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in register, not least as adviser on AI to the Crown Estate and Endava plc. Public engagement and public trust are critical to the success of sovereign AI—indeed, critical to the success of all AI. What are the Government doing to engage the public with their sovereign AI aspirations, and to build on that public engagement? Can the Minister inform the House when the consultation paper on the proposed AI Bill will be published—September?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The sovereign AI unit is already publishing what it does on its website and consulting very broadly. As the noble Lord knows, there is a consultation on the AI Bill. I can confirm that it will not be September, but I cannot confirm beyond that.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, this kind of citizen ownership clearly has attractions in terms of developing public trust, developing AI for public benefit, and being an antidote to big-tech concentration. But does not open-source AI represent a more straightforward path to AI sovereignty? This avoids the need for massive capital investment in model training and enables new models to be created using UK expertise. Will the Government, through the sovereign AI unit, incentivise and support this approach, perhaps in tandem with the concept of citizen ownership?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

As the noble Lord rightly says, the open AI approach—I mean the general approach to openness, not the company—has been an important part of how this has progressed so rapidly and will be an important part of what we do going forward. We need partnerships where necessary in order to access existing models, but we also need to develop our accompanying hardware, data and skills domestic infrastructure. We will continue to view openness as an important part of how we do that.

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the House to my registered interests and my interest in supporting AI businesses. The Government’s view on sovereign AI must be adjusted with the view that sovereign AI will be designed by the available data and the Government’s data. What is the Government’s view about how that data will be made accessible to private industry? Secondly, how are the Government proceeding on the AI growth zones, which will help different parts of the country significantly? When can we hear about that?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right: data is fundamental. People often think of this as being just about the algorithms, but you need the data, the algorithms, the hardware and the skills to come together. The National Data Library is being formed. The Health Data Research Service, which will get health data in the right place, is now advertising for the CEO and chair and is designed to bring together data in a much more accessible and usable way, ultimately for the benefit of patients and the NHS, in that instance. The short-listing on AI growth zones has taken place. We already know that one will be in Culham; the others will be announced shortly.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

When the Minister listed things that were happening, he listed a bunch of institutions, but he did not mention the Alan Turing Institute. What should be a powerhouse of sovereign capability in this country seems to be descending into chaos and internecine struggle. What are the Government doing to try to sort out this really important institution?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The Alan Turing Institute is of course an independent institution. In 2023, a quinquennial review determined that it needed significant changes, and those changes have been taking place. They will be ongoing and there is indeed a plan to make sure that the institute is able to deliver AI for missions that are important for the Government, whether that is defence, which has been mentioned, or climate and healthcare. I am confident that the institute will get to a place where it is much more able to have the engineering expertise to deliver products that will be of value.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, to build on the excellent question of my noble friend Lord Holmes, I was concerned this morning to be presented with some research to the effect that Britons are among the most nervous about AI of any population. To what does the Minister attribute this falling off in our level of confidence about AI, and what steps do the Government envisage taking to address it going forward?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I am tempted to refer back to surveys I used to see when I worked in a global company, which always came out worse for the UK than anywhere else in the world. But this is a very real issue, and there are major concerns about some aspects of AI. My worry is that we do not concentrate enough on the benefits and articulate those. We have work to do to make it clear that this is going to benefit people and is not just something to worry about; it is going to be beneficial right across the sectors, including in health. We have work to do to get that message out and to ensure that it is understood and believed.

[Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab)]

The Minister is right that it will be beneficial, but what thought are the Government giving to developments in some of these businesses—for example, using AI to create digital clones of their employees, and the implications of that for employees’ moral rights over their own name, likeness, attributes and character? Have the Government given some thought to ensuring that human rights are also considered when AI policy is under consideration?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The AI Security Institute was set up to look at the potential risk of new models. It works closely with model developers and gets access to models early, tests them for things that might be problematic, and is an important source of identifying possible issues. There are of course much broader questions, such as the one that has just been asked, which are beyond what happens inside government. That is why the work the Alan Turing Institute started, looking at some of those issues, is important. I am very pleased that many of the people who led that are now being established in academic positions and will continue to address these very important questions as we go forward.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, we have heard repeatedly about the importance of data to the success of our AI industries. We are also well aware that people’s relationship with AI is very much guided by the fear of their data being misused. I understand that Sir Tim Berners-Lee is looking closely at this issue and how we return the ownership of our data to us as individuals from companies that are harvesting it and using it without our consent. What are the Government doing to pursue this and to look at how we as citizens can control our own data in this new AI world?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Of course, this is a major issue, particularly in health data. I was intrigued when speaking recently to colleagues in Denmark. They made the point that they have a very simple message: they provide a health service free of charge, and in return citizens of Denmark are expected to provide their data to improve that service, but they still own the data. The question of how we manage that with data ownership in the UK, in health and beyond, is one of the things the National Data Library and Health Data Research UK will have uppermost in their minds as they develop their services.

Civil Service: Artificial Intelligence Productivity Gains

Lord Vallance of Balham Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

The Government have assessed the potential productivity gains from AI across the Civil Service, identifying which solutions are most effective and that will scale. We conducted the world’s largest trial of general-purpose AI tools, such as Copilot, to measure their impact and benefit. These evaluations inform which technologies deliver which outcomes and will enable us to prioritise adoption. Our assessment indicates significant economic benefits from widespread, well-targeted AI deployment across His Majesty’s Government.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, in May, the Government announced a rightly ambitious plan to drive tens of billions of pounds per year in Civil Service productivity savings through AI. In June, they estimated that use of AI tools was saving civil servants 26 minutes a day. Even if that is true, the Minister will agree that time savings, however welcome, do not equate to productivity. Now that the Government have spent £573 million on AI tools and consulting for the Civil Service, how will they measure productivity gains to rapidly build on successes and shut down failures?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The figure of £573 million is, of course, forward spend, so that is not what has been spent; it is a commitment over the next few years. It is important that we measure this. Guidance on how to measure the impact of AI tools was issued last year; there is a rigorous process for doing that. On the 26 minutes that has been picked up by the Copilot study, it is of course a general AI tool. Much greater savings come with specific uses in specific areas, which will not be general across the Civil Service.

The noble Lord is quite right to point out that time saving is not productivity, but what we do know from studies elsewhere and across business is that, when you get those time savings, about half of it goes on core tasks, about a quarter is on other strategic and creative work and about 25% goes on enhanced well-being. That is what we might expect as a result. There is a lot to do to make sure that we implement this properly across the Civil Service.

[Baroness Winterton of Doncaster (Lab)]

My Lords, would my noble friend the Minister also consider assessing productivity gains from basing civil servants in the regions rather than in London? In my view, as an ex-regional Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber, that would be an effective way of ensuring that the Government were focused on reducing regional inequalities and encouraging regional growth.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. I am not going to try to add the regional Civil Service to my brief, but I will say that this is exactly the sort of area where AI is rather good at working out whether there is a benefit, because it can spot patterns that are difficult to spot individually or by human endeavour. This is a place where you could begin to see what the real impacts are and what drives success rates in the regions.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation. Given that the Government have just set up a sovereign AI unit with a budget of £500 million to promote domestic AI leadership, what steps are being taken to ensure that British companies and start-ups have fair access to Civil Service AI contracts rather than defaulting to large US tech corporations? Why is the UK Civil Service so heavily reliant on procurement from major US technology firms such as Microsoft—the Minister mentioned Copilot—OpenAI and Google, rather than focusing on developing its own domestic AI tools and platforms?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. I have a full Question on sovereign AI on Wednesday, when I will answer that question in more detail, but in the meantime let me say that there is not a some inbuilt bias against that; it is just that many of the large language models are, of course, from US companies, and those are the ones that are available at the moment. However, the sovereign AI unit will use that £500 million specifically to stimulate UK companies as well.

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, while the results from the landmark Civil Service AI trial are clearly encouraging, does the Minister agree that it highlights the urgent need to train up public sector workers across all departments on the effective and appropriate use of generative AI? I suggest that such training and guidance apply in particular to us—by which I mean noble Lords on all sides of this Chamber.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

It was interesting to see the report from MIT last week on the use of AI across companies, which noted that 95% of companies got very little benefit and 5% got massively disproportionate benefit. One of the reasons why you get much greater benefit is training people properly and allowing there to be proper disruption of existing workflows—so I completely agree with the question. What the noble Lord is talking about is an important part of this, which is why there is a series of schemes across the Civil Service, including the senior Civil Service, both to recruit people with AI skills and to train staff.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former Minister for the Civil Service—although it was an awfully long time ago. The record shows that the biggest increase in output and productivity in the Civil Service and the biggest fall in numbers in modern times occurred between about 1972 and 1982. Of course, the driving force for that was not so much energy efficiency, although there were attempts to improve that, as removing whole industrial functions from the public sector. The Civil Service numbers fell from about 815,000 down to about 510,000 in 1982. That was an enormous cost. The lesson of that is that, if one really wants to increase productivity and slim the Civil Service, as I believe the Government do, there should be the removal of whole functions from the Civil Service—in this case, the industrial Civil Service—into the private sector.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

The question is: what areas are the Government going to look at now to remove functions from the state sector, which will be the sure way to increase productivity and reduce numbers?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

It is an area where AI is important, because AI does just that. There are certain things AI does to improve the efficiency of what is already done, and certain areas in which it does things that cannot currently be done. Both of those areas will lead to disruption of current workflows. This goes back to my previous answer: the disruption of workflow around AI is the big change management challenge.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, my experience of introducing technology—not AI but other technologies—to large organisations is that there is a huge cultural aspect. I agree that training is very important, but does the Minister agree that, for AI to succeed, the entire workforce has to want it to succeed? How are the Government and Civil Service going to embrace the huge cultural change required to take full advantage of this technology?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I agree, and I have alluded to that in previous answers. The challenge is a cultural one around workflow. I go back to the MIT report, which shows that, especially in big companies, there are high levels of adoption and low levels of disruption. The challenge is to get high levels of adoption with appropriate disruption taking place. That is a cultural challenge. That is why not only training but leadership are needed to make this happen.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, we are all aware that probably the biggest challenge in government is productivity in the NHS, which has declined by about 20% since the pandemic. However, in none of the conversations and negotiations on the resident doctors’ dispute have we heard about productivity being a key part of the solution. Can the Minister reassure us that we really are trying to drive productivity gains, so that any wage increases can be fully justified?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. I can certainly reassure him that AI in the health service is going to be one of the big areas where changes occur. It is going to introduce changes in a number of ways. The first is in workflow organisation, which is key for the NHS to look at. The second is in new treatments and ways of diagnosing. It is already being used to reduce the need for humans to look at X-rays and so on to get them through more quickly, so there is an efficiency gain. There are also new approaches, such as using AI to make sure that remote monitoring—for example, taking photographs of suspicious moles and seeing if they are malignant—is potentially massively enhanced. There are many opportunities for productivity improvement through AI.

Artificial Intelligence: Legislation

Lord Vallance of Balham Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my technology interests, as set out in the register. They include being a member of the global advisory board at Endava plc and a member of the science and technology advisory committee of the Crown Estate.

[The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government are preparing a consultation on AI legislation in order to gather views on the proposals. This would better prepare the UK for AI security risks, while making sure that our statute book is ready for the age of AI and its undoubted opportunities. The Government will update Parliament in due course.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I was rather hoping that we might have a consultation for our summer reading, but we will await the consultation and subsequent Bill. The Government have said that they will take a domain-specific approach to the legislation and regulation of AI, rather than cross-sector. To that end, how will consistency be assured through such an approach?

Similarly, what about areas that currently do not have any competent regulator, such as hiring and recruitment? People find themselves not being shortlisted for roles because AI has made that decision, without even knowing that AI was in the mix. Even if they knew that AI was in the mix, there would be no place to seek redress. Surely, clarity, certainty and consistency are what anyone in the country requires when it comes to AI, whether they are an investor, innovator, consumer or creative. How will a domain-specific approach, with no guiding mind, ensure that clarity, consistency and certainty?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I am sorry that I disappoint the noble Lord with his summer reading list. I am happy to meet him to give him some other recommendations of good books.

As set out in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, we believe that most AI systems should be regulated by the existing regulators. They are the experts. They need the AI skills to be able to do it. The Government are working with regulators to drive collaboration and alignment across the regulatory domains through, for example, the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum’s AI and digital advisory hub and the Regulatory Innovation Office, which is working with DRCF to collaborate on the support of the development of tools to help businesses and investors better navigate digital regulations.

We recognise the point the noble Lord has raised, which is that there are some aspects of AI that need to be looked at across AI generally. That is why we are undertaking consultation on legislation, and why we have ongoing work with all the departments around the impact on jobs that he described.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, as long ago as February, the Minister’s Secretary of State said:

“AI is a powerful tool and powerful tools can be misused. State-sponsored hackers are using AI to write malicious code and identify system vulnerabilities, increasing the sophistication and efficiency of their attacks. Criminals are using AI deepfakes to assist in fraud, breaching security by impersonating officials”.


He went on to say:

“These aren’t distant possibilities. They are real, tangible harms, happening right now”.


If that is the case, why are the Government not taking a much more urgent approach to the introduction of regulation? I declare an interest as an adviser to DLA Piper on AI policy and regulation.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I agree that this is an urgent issue, and it is changing day by day. The urgency is reflected in the work that has already taken place through the Online Safety Act, the Data (Use and Access) Act and, of course, the Crime and Policing Bill. But the need to get the legislation right for a more widespread AI Bill is important and has to be taken with due consideration. It would be very wrong to try to rush this. A consultation that brings in all the relevant parties will be launched, and that will be the time when we can make sure that we get this absolutely right.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, at the Bletchley AI safety summit, major AI companies, such as Google, signed a voluntary agreement that they would not release AI frontier models without a safety card explaining how they had been tested and by whom. However, in March this year, Google released its Gemini 2.5 model without such a safety card. Does the Minister agree that examples such as this only add pressure for AI models safety testing to be put on a statutory basis?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

We do agree that the issue of safety in AI is very important. That is why we formed the AI Security Institute, which is busy working with companies around the world, testing their models, bringing their models in, working out where the vulnerabilities are, working in a way that allows those companies to build in the safety requirements that are needed, and, importantly, working with other AI safety and security institutes around the world. They have between them formed a group that is looking at these very issues. This is something we will be very vigilant on. It is something the world needs to be vigilant on as these models rapidly advance.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that it is important to get it right. But, in addition to the consultation, will it be the case that any future proposed Bill will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, to allow both Houses of Parliament to look in more detail at these very important issues?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. The consultation, which is in the process of being developed, will need input from everybody. It is important that we get the right people looking at what this consultation needs. As that consultation rolls out, it will be important that we have very widespread engagement right across Parliament.

[The Lord Bishop of Newcastle]

My Lords, I am very pleased that Blyth in north-east England has been chosen as the site of a new AI data centre. This represents good investment in training and skills and in transport infrastructure. However, data centres have a lot of impact on the environment and local communities, particularly in terms of water shortages. What ongoing assessment has been done of the impact, particularly on water shortages in local communities?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question. I gave quite an extensive Answer on water and AI last week. There are specific requirements for places that could host the new AI growth zones, including for the power supply but also, importantly, the ability to look at how water is used, the use of technologies to reduce water use, including recirculation and the types of chips that allow you to generate less heat during processing, and an obligation to work with water companies to come up with a clear, credible plan.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, on 3 July, over 150 major EU businesses wrote to the European Commission seeking a pause on the rollout of the EU’s AI Act. They objected, among other things, to its rigidity, complexity, overregulation and threat to competitiveness. What do the Government make of these objections? Do they remain as keen as they were in opposition on close alignment with the EU on AI regulation?

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[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I think the noble Viscount is very well aware that we have taken a rather different approach, in that we are proposing regulation largely through the existing regulators rather than having everything in one place. We are now looking at an AI Bill that would go across; that is what the consultation will be about.

This is one of those areas where it is crucial to work with colleagues around the world. This is not a domestic but a global issue, and one that has to be dealt with with our colleagues in the US and in the EU. We will look very carefully at some of the features of the EU Act, which, as the noble Viscount rightly said, have been carefully looked at by a number of people, who found some things that I think the EU also wishes to change as it looks at its legislation. This goes back to my earlier answer: if we rush the consultation, we will get this wrong; if we take the time and do it right, we could end up having the best regulation in this area, which will none the less need to change, as this advances very rapidly.

[Baroness Kidron (CB)]

My Lords, both the AI Opportunities Action Plan and the industrial strategy outline a commitment to sovereign AI, including the creation of a UK sovereign AI unit, but with little detail about the timeline or the terms under which it will operate. Meanwhile, the Government continue to sign contracts with global AI firms across multiple government departments without reference to the concerns expressed in both Houses about the need to protect the UK’s valuable datasets. Could the noble Lord reassure the House that the UK’s very valuable public datasets will not be shared with international tech companies before Parliament has the opportunity to understand the terms on which they are being shared? Given that the Government have pushed back the timeline of the promised AI Bill, could he also explain how and when the details of what constitutes UK sovereign AI will be established?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will be aware that we have allocated up to £2 billion for AI, £500 million of which is on sovereign AI. That unit is just being established now. It will look at the features, which, of course, include data, hardware and software. One thing I can tell her, which I hope she will be pleased with, is that there is a programme on the creative content exchange in the creative industries sector that is specifically designed to look at how data from the creative industries can be pulled together so that it is easy to license it, easy to understand what has happened to it, and, therefore, easier to use it appropriately in an AI setting.

Data Centres: Energy and Water Consumption

Lord Vallance of Balham Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have (1) to measure, and (2) to regulate, the amount of (a) energy, and (b) water, consumed by data centres in the United Kingdom.

[The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

The Government are actively monitoring the data centre sector and published the first government estimate of data centre capacity on 1 May, including measures indicating energy use. As part of the Government’s commitment to reduce the use of the public water supply by 20% by 2037-38, Defra is examining how the efficiency of water use in data centres can be improved and the Environment Agency is working to improve the understanding of water and resilience needs.

[The Lord Bishop of Oxford]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. As he is aware, the Government have a dedicated energy council, but there is, as yet, no similar provision for water, no formal record of all the current data centres or the water they use and no public criteria for assessing new proposals such as the one in Culham in Oxfordshire. Does the Minister agree that water demand and supply in AI growth zones is a pressing problem? Do the Government have any plans to establish an AI and water task force and will it have representation from local communities?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate is right that water is a very large issue for data centres, as they consume large amounts of it. There are now technologies that reduce that use, such as recirculation of water. The AI growth zone proposals are required to set out water use—the volume of water required, the availability of that volume, the timeline of delivery and any wider infrastructure requirements or constraints—and they must work with the water provider to do that. Applications must confirm the above from the relevant water supplier and include any other associated impacts. A working group on sustainability has also been set up under the AI Energy Council.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am an officer of the All-Party Parliamentary Water Group and follow these issues very closely. Does the Minister share my concern that data centres are being built and expanded very close to major new housing developments in areas of deep water stress? What is the Government’s policy to ensure that households, as well as the data centres concerned, will have sufficient drinking water and sufficient evacuation of wastewater sewage?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The proposal process for AI growth zones, which is where the big data centres will be placed, started in early February and ended at the end of February. Over 50 proposals have come forward, each of which needs to deal specifically with water in relation to the local environment and local plans, and to plan that with the water company.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, demand is increasing faster than our policies for AI energy usage. AI is desperately power hungry, just at the pinch point where we are desperately trying to reach clean power by 2035 and our electricity demand is set to more than double by 2050. I call on the Government urgently to create an AI energy efficiency strategy, with the target of ensuring that AI usage and savings are better than carbon neutral before 2030.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The AI Energy Council is set up as a joint council between the Secretary of States for DESNZ and for DSIT. The noble Earl is right that, at the moment, around 2.5% of current total energy consumption is in data centres. The total amount of electricity use is due to go up from seven to 62 terawatt hours by 2050. In relation to the overall increase in requirement for electric vehicles and others, that is still about 10% of the total. However, it is a really important issue that the energy council is looking at and it leads to questions about the supply, and work on small module reactors may be part of the solution.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, would the Minister accept that, for both energy and water, there may be significant implications for the devolved Governments in Scotland and Wales, particularly with water needed in north-west England, the Midlands and the Thames area coming from water supplies from Wales? Can he undertake to keep in close touch with the Governments of Wales and Scotland on these matters?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The AI growth zones can be distributed right the way around the country. There is a very specific plan for each of those proposals, and they must be looked at with local engagement with the relevant authorities. I am sure there will be contact with the devolved Governments as part of that.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I for one am very grateful to the right reverend Prelate for raising this issue. I think the House is only beginning to realise just how staggering big tech’s energy usage is. I understand that Google has doubled its CO₂ emissions since 2020 and signed a contract with Commonwealth Fusion Systems for 200 megawatts of power, using a power plant that does not even exist yet. Can my noble friend say whether more can be done to enable big tech companies to reveal how much energy usage and water is going to be involved in the use of AI? We ought to have an honest discussion about the costs involved in both those areas.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I have given answers on the data centres. The broader question of AI has been looked at by a number of publications, including recently in the journal Nature, which looked at the overall energy consumption by AI and the overall potential energy reduction by the application of AI across industries. It turned out to be slightly net positive for energy. The noble Viscount is right that energy consumption is a major area to think about. There are new chips that are reducing energy consumption by a thousandfold and new approaches to machine learning that can reduce it. It is high on the list of concerns, and that is why the AI Energy Council has formed a sustainability working group.

[Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)]

My Lords, in the light of the National Preparedness Commission report and the energy requirement of the AI data centres, is the Minister satisfied that this is not undermining our energy systems’ resilience?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The latest data suggests that it is about 2.5% of total energy consumption. That will increase, and is being taken into account. It is clearly important that, as we move to more renewable sources of energy and come off reliance on gas, we have an increased supply. It is also why the Government announced that Rolls Royce will be the first partner for small modular reactors, which will be an important part of our energy system going forward.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, building on the question from the noble Baroness, now that the Government have renamed the AI Safety Institute as the AI Security Institute, can the Minister confirm that its expanded role will indeed include energy security? If so, what view does it take of the resilience of UK- hosted AI systems of exposure to high energy costs and intermittent energy sources?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The Government believe that the best way to deliver price reductions for clean power is the clean power 2030 mission, so that the marginal price of electricity is set by gas less and less often. The increase in renewables will allow that, plus the advent of small modular reactors. The AI Security Institute is not the place to consider energy security; that is the AI Energy Council. Its sustainability working group is considering whether renewable and low-carbon energy solutions should be adopted, and where; how innovation in AI hardware and chip design can improve energy efficiency; whether new metrics, alongside the PUE—power usage efficiency—metric should be introduced; and the impact of new energy solutions such as small modular reactors. That speaks to the issue of resilience.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for referring to a report that we issued. My question is a slightly different one. Given that data centres are now an integral and necessary part of the infrastructure of this country in the private sector and the public sector, who is responsible for their security?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The Government are aiming to designate data centres as a type of commercial project to be considered under the nationally significant infrastructure projects plan, allowing the Secretary of State to decide on applications for new centres and bringing this into clear view of the security agencies. The security agencies are, of course, engaged in the question of how to ensure the security of what we have in data centres. On the broader point about the data itself, that is covered by the AI Security Institute.

ARIA: Scoping Our Planet Programme

Lord Vallance of Balham Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency’s handling of an Environmental Information Regulations request regarding its “Scoping Our Planet” programme.

[The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

ARIA fully complies with its responsibilities under the Environmental Information Regulations. ARIA is committed to transparency; it publishes regular information on its programmes in its annual reports and accounts, in the corporate plan and through the quarterly transparency disclosures on its website. It publishes its responses to all EIR requests.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister mentions ARIA being committed to transparency, but that highlights the fact that it is not subject to the general freedom of information provisions under the ARIA Act. I note that on Report on the ARIA Bill the Labour Opposition Front Bench signed and supported in a Division an amendment tabled by me to bring ARIA into the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. In fact, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, said:

“The Government’s determination to keep ARIA’s projects and decision-making secret is worrying. This is a matter of principle: do they believe in transparency, or not?”—[Official Report, 14/12/2021; col. 209.]


I can now ask the same question of this Labour Government: do they believe in transparency? Will they bring ARIA within the Freedom of Information Act?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. I know that he is prone to shaking his head when Ministers answer. I fear that I may give him a neck injury during this answer.

Of course we are committed to transparency, but we have no plans to bring ARIA into the scope of the FoI Act. ARIA is a unique organisation with unique freedoms; it has been designed deliberately to be a small, agile body with limited administrative capacity so that most of its efforts can be spent devoted to finding the answers to some of the missions that it funds —long-term transformation research for the benefit of the UK. However, both the Government and ARIA understand the importance of transparency, and ARIA publishes all its information on recipients of programme funding, transactional information on its operational costs, and data on the regional distribution of its programmes and funding. It complies with the Environmental Information Regulations, is audited annually by the NAO, and publishes its annual reports and accounts.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I support what the Minister just said about the transparency that ARIA has managed to establish, despite the absence of freedom of information legislation. Its work in terms of requests for research and the research funding awarded are all available on its website. Would the Minister agree that ARIA has been a great success hitherto in establishing strong co-operation and relations, nationally and overseas, and bringing in some inward investments from overseas? The current CEO, Ilan Gur, should be congratulated on doing so, as he is leaving his job for personal reasons to go back to the United States.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments. I agree that ARIA has got off to a tremendous start under the leadership of Ilan Gur, who will leave his role when a new CEO is appointed—he will stay up until that point. ARIA has done a number of things, including training a whole group of people who otherwise would not be entrepreneurial scientists to be entrepreneurial scientists. Eight new start-ups have occurred as a result of this, and seven UK subsidiaries of global companies have come to the UK. The projects are all at an early stage, but there are some very exciting pieces of work that are now recognised and admired globally.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, have the Government looked at the implications of AI for the Freedom of Information Act? Someone could quite possibly generate 100,000 questions in about half an hour, which will put pressure on the public sector.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I have not looked at that specific point, but I accept that that is indeed a possibility. The Freedom of Information Act has an enormous number of important roles, but it can be overwhelming. That is another reason why a very small organisation such as ARIA, which is focused on getting its work out while being very transparent about what it is doing, is freed from some of the requirements of that Act, which can place a very large administrative burden on a small organisation.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, when the Minister is considering whether to apply freedom of information, will he consider the learned comments of the former Prime Minister who introduced it, Mr Blair, who described it as the worst mistake he ever made?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I will not get into whether it was or was not that, but I say again that we have no plans to bring ARIA under the Freedom of Information Act, which I think is important. If we go back to the origins of ARPA—the organisation in the US that led to DARPA, IARPA and many other such organisations on which ARIA is based—its originators in the 1950s and 1960s said that the reason no other country had managed to emulate that successful programme was because they kept everything on too short a leash. We should not make that mistake.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

Second Oral Question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I have a question for the Minister; I am pretty sure that the answer will be that he has no idea, and that will not be any reflection on him because I do not have any idea either. What has been the total cost to the public purse of the implementation of freedom of information legislation for all the numerous organisations, large and small, across the public sector?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I do not carry that figure in my head. I can tell my noble friend that ARIA has spent 300 hours over the past few months dealing with requests under the Environmental Information Regulations alone, so he can imagine the scale of requests that can come through other things. I am sure the cost of providing information requests to public bodies has been very high.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, when Ilan Gur recently and sadly announced that he intended to step down as CEO of ARIA, he said that his role was always intended to be time-bound. That being the case, was a succession plan in place to appoint his replacement? Once a new CEO is appointed, will the Government strain every sinew to make sure that a succession plan is in place for their successor?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

It has been known for a little while that Ilan Gur would return to the US, where his family is now back. I know, because I was on the board of ARIA for a period before I took up this post, that there were lots of discussions around succession planning. I am sure there will be succession planning in the future as well. What is important—this is why the announcement has been made in this way—is that Ilan is clear that he will stay until the new person is in place.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister’s arguments are sounding dangerously like those made by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, on Report, which I am sure he will be delighted by. Does he accept that DARPA is covered by US freedom of information legislation, whereas ARIA is not?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

DARPA is a much larger organisation and the ARPA family overall probably has close to 1,000 people working in it in total. DARPA is covered by the US Act, but it has a much larger base and many more people working with it. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said, the amount of information that ARIA puts in the public domain is more than that of almost any other body in the world.

AI Opportunities Action Plan

Lord Vallance of Balham Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my technology interests as set out in the register.

[The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

The Government are taking action to capitalise on AI’s potential and welcomed the publication of the AI Opportunities Action Plan, accepting all 50 recommendations. Implementation is well under way. We have launched the AI growth zone application process, held the first meeting of the AI Energy Council and signed an MoU with Anthropic. We are delivering the AI research resource, including the Isambard-AI and Dawn supercomputers, which will boost the UK’s AI compute capacity thirtyfold.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, Matt Clifford delivered an excellent report, with 50 wide-ranging recommendations across our economy and society. Does the Minister agree that the fact that they rightly range widely makes clear the need for the Government to bring forward cross-sector AI regulation to ensure that, wherever we come across AI in our lives, there will be clarity, certainty and consistency on how we have that AI experience, which would surely be good for innovators, investors, creatives, citizens and our country?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

There are three approaches to making sure that we get consistency and appropriate regulation and support, as the noble Lord suggested. The first is that the regulators look after AI in the domains which they already look after. We are making sure that they are properly supported to do that and can join up—for example, in the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum—to learn lessons across different areas as they apply AI in their domains. The second is the approach of assurance: to develop an assurance industry in the UK which can assure people that, when they use AI, it performs what they expect it to and in the way they expect. That is true both for the Government—the Artificial Intelligence Playbook for the UK Government addresses some of the wider issues—and in developing the assurance industry overall and looking at areas such as bias in systems. The third, as he alluded to, is the question of what happens as artificial general intelligence, artificial superintelligence and the latest models come along. We remain committed to bringing forward AI legislation so that we can realise the enormous benefits and opportunities of this technology in a safe and secure way. We continue to refine our proposals and hope to launch a public consultation before the end of the year.

[Lord St John of Bletso (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister elaborate on what steps are being taken to promote more co-operation and collaboration between the public and private sectors in AI development and utilisation?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The interaction between the public and private sectors is crucial in this, as it is in many other areas. UKRI is leading a number of public programmes which support universities and the ability to get spin-outs and developments from them, so there is considerable interaction at the beginning of the process. There is also interaction throughout the process; for example, the AI Security Institute is working with some of the largest companies and looking at their models to ensure that, as they are developed, issues that could come up are foreseen and, we hope, mitigated in advance. Collaboration between the public and private sectors is crucial in AI, as in many areas of technology development.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have agreed to create a new function—UK sovereign AI—to partner with the private sector and maximise the UK’s stake in what is described as frontier AI. Further details were promised by spring 2025. By my calculation, spring is over. What powers will this unit have to invest directly in companies, create joint ventures or provide advanced market commitments, as recommended in the plan, and how will it ensure economic benefit and influence on AI governance in the UK?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

AI sovereignty is a crucial issue. It ranges from questions of what infrastructure and companies we need in this country to what public work we need to do to make sure that we can access the AI required. AI sovereignty is very much part of the AI action plan; the spending review is under way and there will be more information on what exactly will happen in its different areas post spending review. The areas the noble Lord raises are all important—they are the right ones. Spring is nearly over. It will not be in spring, but we hope to give more information shortly.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, the press have indicated that there could be enormous improvements in public sector productivity if AI were introduced. What savings might be made in the public sector if we introduce AI?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

A series of funded programmes have been looking at the introduction of AI in government in particular. Some reports were published in the last couple of weeks showing time savings and degree of satisfaction, and identifying where the use of AI will be most useful and where it will be problematic. There are already some outputs from that work in the public domain. We will continue to make them public as we assess the performance of AI in government systems. A unit called i.AI is developing new approaches, such as Humphrey, which have been widely publicised.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my tech interests as set out in the register. We welcome the GDS report, to which the Minister referred, on driving tactical productivity improvements in the Civil Service with AI tools. Does he agree that to realise deep strategic change through AI in the Civil Service will require a hugely ambitious digital transformation? Are the Government being realistic about how challenging this is likely to be? How will they keep Parliament updated on their approach and progress?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Oddly enough, I am aware of how difficult this is and how much work is needed. The requirements range from data to the ability to get it into a form that can be read and be interoperable; that is behind the national data library and the health data research service which we have announced. There are skills issues right across the Civil Service and elsewhere which need to be addressed, with skills increased, along with the application uptake of AI by businesses across the UK. All those are part of the AI Opportunities Action Plan, and there are things under way in each of those areas. I do not think this is straightforward. It will require some experimentation. There will be some things that will not work as well as expected and others that we will need to move faster on. I expect this to be a very dynamic field over the next few years.

[Lord Tarassenko (CB)]

My Lords, a strong emphasis in the AI Opportunities Action Plan is the development of human capital to maintain the UK as one of the leading countries in the world for AI. In the last four years for which the figures are available there has been a decrease of 39% in the percentage of UK-domiciled computer science graduates undertaking doctorates. This year, the situation is likely to be even worse, as for the first time EU students finishing a four-year undergraduate course in the UK will no longer count as home students. Is the Minister as concerned as I am by the sharp decrease in home students undertaking PhDs in computer science and AI? Are the Government considering any measures to reverse this trend, perhaps by reducing the interest rate on undergraduate loans to zero while graduate students are doing their PhDs?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

As the noble Lord points out, there has been a decrease in PhD funding through UKRI from 2018 to 2022. The overall number of PhD students has not gone down, but the sources of funding have become more diversified. It is an important issue for the UK to be good and capable in the numbers of PhD students we have. Two new programmes are being developed as part of the AI opportunities plan: the AI fellowship programme and the AI scholarship programme. Both will be important to ensure that we have the skills we need to deliver on the plan. I take the point about the number of students who have gone from computer science into PhDs. That is an area that we need to look at and understand. As the noble Lord is aware, some of it is a classification question, in relation to EU students, but there is no doubt that we need to keep the number of students doing PhDs up.

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, to follow on from the noble Lord’s point about skills, behind the flashiness and excitement of AI lie some boring things that have to be done. One of the big challenges to support an AI ecosystem in the UK is the byzantine procurement rules of government. Can the Minister tell us what he is doing to ensure that small and growing British-based AI companies have a crack at getting government contracts and therefore growing?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

This is an area close to my heart. It is a crucial part of stimulating innovation right across the patch. Government procurement ought to be a way in which innovation companies get their first indication of a signal, in many cases, of a potential customer. A commercial innovation hub has been set up in the Cabinet Office, precisely to try to make it much easier to deal with SMEs and others, which has historically been extremely difficult to do from a government procurement perspective.

Science and Innovation: Alan Turing Institute

Lord Vallance of Balham Excerpts

Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to strengthen science and innovation following reports that the Alan Turing Institute is cutting research projects.

[The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government are protecting record levels of R&D investment, with £20.4 billion allocated in 2025-26. Through UKRI and other mechanisms, we are supporting science innovation across the UK to better deliver on the Government’s priorities and maximise the potential of UK science. The Alan Turing Institute is of course an important part of the R&D system and is currently focusing its research activities on fewer projects, in line with its refreshed Turing 2.0 strategy. The Alan Turing Institute is an independent organisation, and this realignment process is being handled internally.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome today’s funding announcements. However, after a review by the EPSRC, a revised strategy and a further external review, the Turing is shutting down at least 21 science and innovation projects, three out of the four science and innovation directors have resigned, together with the chief technology officer, and at the end of last year staff sent a letter of no confidence in the leadership, saying there had been a “catastrophic decline in trust” and claiming that the viability of the institute was under question. What does all this mean for the future of the Turing, which has an enormously valuable track record and role in the AI research and innovation ecosystem? Will it continue to have a leading role in advising on AI ethics, regulation, standards and responsible innovation?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The Alan Turing Institute was set up by six universities and now has some 65 university partners. The 2023 quinquennial review identified a number of governance and programme issues that needed to be addressed, including that the institute was spread thinly across a broad area. The Turing 2.0 strategy will focus on fewer areas, put more resource behind those projects and ensure that there is real progress to build on the strengths that the noble Lord has rightly identified. The four Alan Turing Institute challenges are in health, the environment, defence and security—in which it has a very major role to play—and fundamental AI. Going through this repositioning is a major undertaking, involving a lot of current upheaval.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a board member of UKRI. Does the Minister agree that, in terms of innovation, science research and arts and humanities research play a complementary role, and that the latter helps us to, among other things, better understand the historical context and the impact of change on society, as well as to communicate science to a broader audience? What are the Minister and the Government doing to promote and enhance arts and humanities research and to promote its value to the broader innovation economy?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her very important question. She may be aware that the final thing I did before leaving my job as the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser was to commission work on the creative industries by the Council for Science and Technology, for exactly that reason. Most start-ups are populated not just by technicians or scientists; they have people from arts and humanities backgrounds as well. The business of where your science fits into society is incredibly important and requires people with a multitude of skills. Therefore, we will continue to support the arts and humanities for their own sake, and for the benefit they bring to the economy through creative industries and their contribution to science and technology companies.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (Lab)]

My Lords, the life sciences sector plays a key role in promoting innovation in the UK, and we can all be very proud of the work that it does. One of the key factors in promoting an enhanced impact is the speed at which clinical trials can be accelerated. Can the Minister say a little bit more about what progress is being made? It is quite a complex challenge to speed up clinical trials, given all the regulation, but doing so has the huge benefit of creating more jobs, contributing to growth and helping patients access new and potentially more effective drugs.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

My noble friend is quite right that clinical trials are of huge importance and benefit healthcare just from the very fact that they take place in the healthcare system, irrespective of their outcome. Historically, we have been extremely good at clinical trials in this country. Indeed, during Covid, the world’s most important clinical trial took place here: the recovery study, which was the biggest, fastest and most important study and gave definitive results. However, it is also true that our performance in commercial clinical trials has deteriorated over the past few years. We are absolutely determined to return that to where it should be, and we will be clear in a very public way about the metrics and our progress against those, to make sure that we get back to where we belong.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords of my interests in the register. My noble friend the Minister is the Oxford-Cambridge innovation champion, to ensure the success of this economic engine for the country as a whole. Would he agree, however, that, in addition to the brilliant research and innovation from our universities and other institutions, it is necessary to bring local, regional and national government together to support the necessary infrastructure and investment, and the skills base? Would he further agree that it is vital to make all such developments inclusive, so that nobody is left behind and the people of the local communities can benefit from it?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness. I wonder whether she read the piece I wrote, which said something very similar. I agree entirely that this has to be inclusive innovation and that it is not about two shiny objects at the end of the line—Oxford and Cambridge—but about the corridor in its entirety. It absolutely needs to involve all the local partners in making this happen. At the end of it, it needs to improve opportunities and the economics for everybody.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I am sure the Minister would agree that, if we are to continue to be the tech superpower, we need regulatory clarity, institutional continuity and competitive energy costs. Does he therefore share our concern that, in all three areas, we are losing ground?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I agree that those areas are important. They are, of course, part of the system, including other matters such as procurement of innovation and the skills we need. On the regulatory side, the Regulatory Innovation Office is there to try to free the obstructions that exist to some innovation. The need to reduce reliance on gas and increase our ability to have a domestic supply is crucial to get energy prices to the right place. All these things are important. It is not just the initial science; it is the ability to turn that into companies that can subsequently scale.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I agree with what the Minister said about why the Alan Turing Institute ran into trouble. It was partly because of poor governance—it was thinly spread, as he said—but he also mentioned that the institute is independent and will therefore reform itself. What oversight does his department have to ensure its governance works this time?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. The Alan Turing Institute is indeed an independent charity, but it receives funding from the Government. Indeed, from 2024-29 it will receive £20 million a year of core funding, which is higher than the previous period, so more money is going into the institute. With that contribution, and, indeed, the contribution that comes from UKRI, there is a clear responsibility for government to ensure that this is run well and that it does indeed deliver on the changes. I met the leaders of the Alan Turing Institute this week and visited it very recently to look at some of the programmes. We will keep an eye on the progress towards this Turing 2.0 programme for transition and, indeed, the very important work that goes on, especially in defence and security.

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a former trustee of the Alan Turing Institute. Bearing in mind the outline that the Minister gave of the Turing 2.0 strategy, does he agree that the Turing could have a pivotal role in readying our public servants, but also our regulators, for the upcoming benefits of AI, and in optimising the use of AI for greater effectiveness and readiness?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The Alan Turing Institute now has four main themes—health, environment, defence and security, and fundamental AI—but it also has the Centre for Emerging Technology and Security and the AI Standards Hub. It will continue to be a beacon for some of these areas. It is working closely with government on some of the issues that will then lead to greater adoption in the public sector, which is important. The one that has happened most recently is its work on Aardvark Weather, an AI weather forecasting system that is 10 times faster and uses a thousand times less power than conventional approaches.

Scientists: Working in the United Kingdom

Lord Vallance of Balham Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to encourage scientists from around the world to do their research and associated work in the United Kingdom.

[The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

The UK has a world-leading science base, supported by some of the top universities and research institutions, and offers prestigious fellowships and professorships through UKRI and the national learned academies. As the immigration White Paper sets out, we will now go further in ensuring that the very highly skilled, including top scientists and researchers, have opportunities to come to the UK and access our targeted routes for the brightest and best global talent. We will set out more details in due course.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I like to think that my noble friend the Minister’s Answer does not go quite as far as he personally would want it to. In America, the Trump Administration are mounting an attack on universities and scientific research. That is a matter for them, but for us it offers an unparalleled opportunity, and we must grasp it. Can the Government not develop proposals that would attract, encourage and facilitate not only talented individuals but whole research groups, who could come to do their work in universities around the UK? Does my noble friend not agree that this would offer the prospect of a brain gain of immeasurable potential for our future growth?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. We have always been the beneficiaries of brain gain; we have been attractive to top-class overseas researchers for many years. Indeed, about one-third of our Nobel prize winners are first or second-generation immigrants. For 2025-26, UKRI has roughly £770 million for talent funding, of which £170 million is for future leader fellowships. There is an opportunity, as there always is, to attract people from overseas to the UK, both individuals and groups; indeed, there are mechanisms in place to do so. I am looking very carefully at what further mechanisms can be put in place to make sure we remain a country that attracts the very brightest and best.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, the Government’s immigration White Paper, as the Minister said, expresses the ambition to attract top global talent, including scientists. However, measures such as the increased skills charge, alongside high UK visa costs and the challenging context of flat cash real-terms cuts in core research funding, create barriers to recruitment. The Government seem not to be very clear whether they want to attract international scientists or not. Do we not need a proper long-term plan with increasing investment to maintain the UK’s research leadership and attract talent?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The current SR period has £20.4 billion for R&D, which is the highest amount there has been. Of course, a proportion of that is about talent attraction. The talent attraction announced in the White Paper was geared towards the global talent visa—the level of highly skilled people who can bring great value added to this country. The desire is to increase the threshold for the skilled worker visa to aim for more qualified, more talented people. On the high-talent end of the system, there are clear measures in the immigration White Paper to try to get those systems to work better and faster. The cost of visas and the health surcharge is now met on UKRI grants and on Horizon Europe grants.

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

The Minister will have sensed the widespread support for the Government’s plan to launch an initiative in this field. Can we have a date on which this is going to be published, and clarity on whether it will target American academics, who have become very unsettled by the assault on academic freedom in the United States? Can he also tell us whether the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on immigration will have any adverse consequences for what was originally planned?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

As I said in answer to an earlier question, I am keen to make sure we have a robust system to attract the best talent from all over the world—this is not targeted at any particular place—and I will make announcements about that very shortly. In the immigration White Paper, the routes for a global talent visa are specifically pulled out as ones that will become easier. They will be facilitated to make this happen, as will those in other highly skilled areas. There are measures in the White Paper that make that easier for the highly skilled individuals we need both for the research sector and, indeed, the tech sector and companies.

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure my noble friend is aware of the large number of charities that support research that brings overseas senior academics to the UK. I mention the Royal Society Wolfson Fellowships; Weizmann UK, which brings scientists from the Weizmann in Israel to the UK; and a large number of others. They contribute enormously to our science space.

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. He is quite right; there are a number of schemes from charities and, indeed, as I have said, from the academies. Over £200 million of funding goes to the national academies to support their core activities. The vast majority of that is spent on research and talent schemes. Some £400 million was given to the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering as an endowment for their specific fellowship schemes—the Faraday Discovery Fellowships, and, for engineers, the Green Future Fellowships. There are many charities that also contribute, and we are fortunate in this country to have charities, including the Wellcome Trust, that provide substantial funding for fellowship schemes.

[Lord Mair (CB)]

My Lords, other countries have been quick to act decisively in the light of the Trump Administration’s severe cuts to US science budgets. Is there not a real danger of the UK falling behind? Should this not be addressed very urgently?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I reiterate the point I made: it is very important that we make schemes available to people from all over the world; it is not about targeting a specific country. We will do so, and we are working on schemes to make attractive offers both to individuals and to groups. This is an important area. There have already been many approaches to universities for people who want to base themselves here, and it is important that we have a system that is sustainable and effective, making sure that researchers can work in what is a world-class system in the UK.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, whether they are homegrown or imported, it is clear we are increasingly going to need more researchers in this country. Equally increasingly, we are competing internationally for research talent. What, therefore, is the Government’s assessment of our overall net attractiveness to researchers right now? How do the Government propose to monitor this going forward and adapt as needed?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

An estimated 17% of R&D workers in the UK in 2023 were non-UK. In that year, 7% were EU nationals and 10% were non-EU. In the university sector, about 37% at the top research and teaching universities are non-UK nationals. About 25% of the life sciences workforce was born outside the UK. The noble Viscount is quite right that there are many people we need here. We have always needed them, we will need them, and we are monitoring very carefully how these numbers are evolving.

As part of the immigration White Paper, the labour market evidence group is being set up—comprised of the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, the Department for Work and Pensions, Skills England and the Migration Advisory Committee—to make sure that we have a clear view of future needs.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister talk to his colleagues in the Home Office to ensure that the graduate route, which was established some years ago and provides universities in the UK with academic talent and scientists from other countries—I think particularly of Queen’s University Belfast, which is assisted by students and scientists from south-east Asia—is not minimised or undermined in any way?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. In answer to the first part, I can confirm that the Minister sitting next to me heard that, so the Home Office will be aware. The graduate visa system is an important system. The changes in the immigration White Paper effectively reduce from 24 months to 18 months the amount of time a graduate has after finishing their course to get a job. The reason for that is clear: to try to make sure these people get jobs that are highly skilled and that they can continue in, rather than jobs that are not highly skilled.

This is an important route. It is worth noting that in 2023-24, the number of graduate visas increased by 49%. This has been a rapidly growing area. It is important that we make sure we get this right and that these people enter high-skilled jobs.

Artificial Intelligence: Public Services

Lord Vallance of Balham Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to use artificial intelligence to improve public services.

[The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)]

Public services are of course central to the AI Opportunities Action Plan, which outlines how we will improve these services to drive growth. We have announced £42 million for three frontier AI exemplars, driving departments to use AI to boost productivity and citizen experience. We are adopting a flexible “scan, pilot, scale” approach to AI adoption in public services and, just this week, the NHS published guidance on ambient voice technologies, which can transcribe patient-clinician conversations and more.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his reply. Could we bring this a little nearer to home? Perhaps he might say what we can do, if there is the need for it, to improve our performance and the efficiency and effectiveness of both Houses of Parliament. If so, what plans do we have to seek those objectives?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord. It is in the Government’s interest to help here as much as we can. However, as the noble Lord will know, that is a parliamentary accountability, not a government one. The Parliamentary Digital Service has issued guidance for Members and their staff on the use of AI, which is going to be updated regularly as required—and, of course, as the understanding around AI improves. Seminars on how to use generative AI effectively are available to all Members and their staff, and the Parliamentary Digital Service is looking at opportunities to apply AI safely to support the work of Members in both Houses.

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that caution is needed if public services, in an attempt to be inclusive but also to save money, convey information in languages other than English that has been produced by machine translation? That works pretty well for standard Romance languages and for German, but it is much less effective for languages with many dialects, such as Arabic, and it is currently virtually useless for Asian or African languages because they have not been used in AI training data. Is all this being fed into emerging AI policy and prospective regulation?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness. This is an incredibly important point. As the noble Baroness rightly says, the AI training datasets are often not on the right things, and this is an example where there is a need for training of models in different languages and dialects. It will be very important as part of public service improvements. I thank the noble Baroness for raising this issue—and yes, it is something that is being looked at.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

This Parliament and our Governments have a chequered history of procurement of software to be used in various government departments. Can the Minister kindly confirm that we will be more rigorous whenever we are procuring services to assist us in the deployment of AI in the public service?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

As I mentioned, there are three AI exemplars being used at the moment. They are: future customer experience; citizen AI agents —so starting with an AI agent to help young people to find a job or an education pathway; and the government efficiency accelerator. In all these examples, procurement is exactly one of the things that needs to be looked at. I have mentioned previously in this House that AI assurance services are part of this as well. The point raised, which is that it is easy to get the wrong thing, is right, and we need to look very carefully at this.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

Back in January, the Blueprint for Modern Digital Government stated the intention to establish

“an AI adoption unit to build and deploy AI into public services, growing AI capacity and capability across government, and building trust, responsibility and accountability into all we do”.

How will this new AI adoption unit ensure that ethical principles, safety standards and human rights considerations are embedded from the very beginning of the AI adoption process throughout the public sector rather than being treated as a secondary concern after deployment?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The deployment of AI has started, as the noble Lord recognised, and I have given the three headline exemplars—and others are being put in through the incubator for AI that sits within DSIT. He raises a crucial point, and that is why the responsible AI advisory panel is being set up, which will include civil society, industry and academia to make sure that this is looked at properly. An ethics unit is already looking at this, and there are many diverse groups across government. What the Government Digital Service is trying to do is to pull it together into something more coherent, of which I think the responsible AI advisory panel is an important part.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, a slogan from the early days of computing is, “Rubbish in, rubbish out”. Biased historic training data can bake discrimination and historic bias into the system, whether on stop and search, which we have discussed, or whether on insurability or employability, and so on. To flip my noble friend’s very positive and commendable Question, what are the Government going to do to ensure that there are safeguards to ensure that historic bias is not baked into the system?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Once again, that is a very important question. The noble Baroness is absolutely right. It is as true for AI as it is for other systems: rubbish in, rubbish out. Well-curated, properly understood datasets are crucial. It is one of the reasons that where there are well-documented, well-curated datasets that can be used to train models for government purposes, we will be pursuing those. We will use the AI assurance mechanism that I discussed previously to try to make sure that we identify where there are systems that carry risks such as the one the noble Baroness raises.

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that the US and China are currently responsible for the 80% of the world’s largest AI models. Does he agree that in an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment, and with clear evidence of diversions on values, Europe’s dependency could quickly become a vulnerability, in terms of not just public services but the upholding of our democratic values? Given that the EU and UK have complementary strengths and values in common, will he persuade the Government to pursue, with the EU, a shared attempt to close the competitive gap? Might this be on the agenda at the EU-UK summit in May, given that the trade and co-operation agreement is totally silent on AI?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

We are working closely with our friends in Europe on AI, both at the safety and security level through the AI Security Institute and more broadly. We have a bilateral meeting with France coming up in July, where this will be discussed. There is a need for all of us to think about which models we want to rely on and become dependent on and, indeed, where models can be made that are not general-purpose, wide, generative models but narrower models that can answer the questions we need to answer. Not everything comes down to broad, generative AI.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s plan to drive tens of billions in productivity savings in the public sector with AI is, of course, welcome. But does the Minister agree that any success here will depend on the effective measurement and reporting of progress? If so, what can he tell us today about how progress is going to be measured and what progress has been made so far?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

As the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, rightly suggests, between 4% and 7% of public sector spend could be reduced with a mix of digitalisation and AI. Both those things become important; it is not all AI, a lot of it is digital change. I have indicated the exemplars that are being piloted at the moment, both at a cross-government level and the ones being led out of DSIT as part of the incubator for AI. These are being assessed and evaluated. For example, programmes that look at the responses—sometimes tens of thousands—to consultations are being evaluated not only for the answers they give but for the time that might be saved by using them. So a series of metrics will be developed to understand the impact of these measures.

[Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government are to be congratulated on seizing the opportunity that AI presents to improve our public services; it is a great example of how it can be a great servant to humanity. Is the Minister aware, though, of concerns in the creative industries about it becoming a master rather than a servant of human activity? What measures are the Government taking to ensure that those concerns are met?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

Like almost every technology that has been introduced, this can do good and harm. The noble Lord is quite right to raise the question of where it is going to cause more harm and, indeed, where it does something that is not in the interest of the community. That is something that is being looked at; it is one of the reasons that the AI Security Institute was set up—to try to understand what these models will do and where we need to have particular concern for risks. He is also right that one of the aims that should be there for any AI is to free up time for humans to do the things that only humans can do. It is a very important principle, whether for application in the NHS or across the public sector.