Digital Government

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (in the Chair)]

We begin with a Select Committee statement. Dame Chi Onwurah will speak on the publication of the third special report of the Science and Technology Committee, “Rewiring the state: Delivering digital government: Government response”, HC 651, for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of the statement, Members will ask questions on the subject of the statement, and Dame Chi Onwurah will respond to those in turn. Questions should be brief, and Members may ask only one question.

[Dame Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)]

Thank you so much, Ms Furniss. I am really grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement on the Science and Technology Committee’s report entitled “Rewiring the state: Delivering digital government” and to discuss the Government response. I place on the record my thanks to the Committee Clerks and specialists who supported this complex inquiry, as well as to all those who gave evidence, in person or in writing.

Both the previous Government and the current one have spoken of their ambition to make the UK a truly digital state, transforming citizens’ experiences of the health service, the education and justice systems, and indeed all public services, increasing productivity and efficiency and reducing costs. I am a tech evangelist; I believe that technology should make the world work better for people, and my Committee welcomes and supports the Government’s ambitions, but our report raised serious concerns about how achievable they are.

In our report, we identified four building blocks for successful digital transformation. The first is money. Money always matters, but we found that inadequate data on digital spend prevents the Government from making informed decisions or holding those responsible to account. The second is people. Do we have the right people and skills to deliver digital transformation and cultural change to ensure that skills are valued and embedded in leadership roles? For example, how many permanent secretaries have the digital experience required? The third is information and data security. There are serious data hygiene failures across the public sector. Public bodies hold public data on trust; it needs to meet the highest standards. The fourth is delivery. We need a detailed and measurable plan to ensure the success of the digital transformation agenda.

We also identified four barriers to realising the benefits of digital transformation. The first is hype. Both tech companies and the Government are guilty of this. Tech companies hype their solutions, often without reference to the problems, and the Government talk up the impact, such as the supposed £45 billion annual productivity saving from digitalisation. Hype undermines the credibility of the Government’s arguments, confuses and demoralises civil servants, and encourages the belief that over-optimism, rather than achievement and honesty, will be rewarded.

The second barrier is legacy systems. Outdated, obsolete or unsupported IT infrastructure, systems, hardware or processes pose an unacceptable level of risk. Our report found that, without a plan to address legacy systems, the Government’s digital ambitions will struggle to be achieved.

The third barrier is vendor lock-in. If significant costs or reductions in functionality are associated with changing vendors, we have vendor lock-in, whereby vendors can hold the Government hostage, raise prices, require additional contracts or reduce performance. The public sector depends on a small number of large digital and technology providers—such as Palantir, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services—and the Government appear to be worryingly comfortable with that.

The fourth barrier is lack of technology sovereignty. While the over-reliance on a small number of foreign vendors exists, the Government cannot set out to deliver their own sovereign digital agenda for the United Kingdom or fully support a competitive UK tech ecosystem. The Government should set out a public sector definition of sovereignty.

Palantir is a case study in three of the four barriers. Palantir’s relationship with the NHS began during the covid-19 pandemic when it was paid a nominal £1 fee to provide what its chief executive Louis Mosley described to us as “aggregating data”. It is now hyped as being uniquely essential to the NHS’s mission to save lives. It is a clear example of growing vendor lock-in as well as an over-reliance on foreign tech giants. Our report called on the Government to commit to exercising the February 2027 break clause in the federated data platform contract.

I thank the Government for their response, which came from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, although I understand other Departments were involved, so it is a welcome example of cross-Government working. Some parts of it are excellent, particularly the commitment to develop a strategy within the Government Digital Service to end vendor lock-in. That is a real step forward, as is the commitment to strong central co-ordination to drive progress on fixing legacy systems across the public sector, which is what we recommended.

An action plan is promised, as well as a remediation plan, subject to security considerations. The Government also reveal that 36 tech company employees have had access to either the federated data or specific datasets assigned by NHS England when initially Palantir said that none of its employees had access to it. So there is more transparency.

Other parts of the response are less encouraging. Significantly, in response to our recommendation that GDS develop and publish a framework to evaluate the performance of digital spend, we are told that they cannot count spend by Department. So as we embark on a complete digital transformation, we do not know how much is being spent and on what. How can we ensure that Ministers make informed decisions and can be held to account? Every single Government Department might be buying the same cloud services from the same vendor, and we will not know or be able to assess our resilience or performance.

Despite repeated data breaches, the Government refuse to share which public bodies and Departments meet basic data hygiene practices. That is due to “security considerations”. So we cannot hold Government to account for bad data management because it might alert the Chinese—I fear they know our limitations better than we do. Rolling out AI-driven public services over bad data infrastructure is a recipe for disaster and will require strong, rigorous standards and implementation to address it.

On open source, the Government are inconsistent and contradictory. They agree it is an important tool against vendor lock-in, but reject our recommendation that public bodies prioritise open-source tools and technology over proprietary offerings, citing the “essential commercial accountability” offered by suppliers of proprietary software. So is open source a good or a bad thing? The Government did not even engage with our request to provide impact assessments relating to the US CLOUD Act 2018, under which US headquartered companies can in principle be compelled to provide the US Government with access to UK customers’ data held in their UK data centres. The Government accept the need to strengthen sovereign capability and they promise updates, but reject a cross-Government strategy on sovereignty or a definition. They confirm efforts to support UK start-ups and scale-ups through procurement.

Two further key issues: we learned for the first time that the digital inter-ministerial group has been replaced by an official-level bimonthly digital executive committee, which sounds like a significant downgrade, just as digital is moved from the centre of Government—the Cabinet Office—to DCMS. Yet there is no commitment to appointing a dedicated Cabinet-level Minister responsible for driving effective digital transformation across the public sector.

Yesterday in the Committee hearing with Ministers on the machinery of government changes, the diffuse nature of responsibilities was apparent. Ministers and officials spoke repeatedly about working together effectively, but it does not give confidence that digital transformation will be achieved when there is not one person accountable for it or able to impose digital standards.

Finally on Palantir, the Government state that if a decision is taken not to extend Palantir’s contract, then the contract includes measures to support transition and continuity of services. I have since had a letter from the Minister for Health Innovation emphasising the significant costs associated with moving to another vendor while denying that there is vendor lock-in. I am seeking further clarification.

The British people deserve a modern, flexible digital state designed to meet their needs, with public services that improve their lives. Trust is essential to achieving that and bad data hygiene, outdated systems, vendor lock-in, hyped solutions and lack of sovereign capability is a recipe for failure. Without clear leadership that can drive and deliver the scale of change needed, we remain very concerned that there will be no successful digital rewiring of the state.

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[Gill Furniss (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to ask a question, and that questions must be succinct.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee, and the Committee itself for all its hard work. Advanced technology is what the Government are tasked with doing. Moving forward with modern technology is the way forward; however, I have two quick comments.

First, on the relationship between Government and business, it is important that businesses are able to keep up with the Government’s technological advances. That is the same for individuals. I am not tech savvy, and nor are some of my constituents. The Government’s way of doing business could limit their interaction with Government and their ability to take part. The hon. Lady also wisely referred to data protection. Many of us are suspicious of where our data ends up.

I have made three points there. You were very clear, Ms Furniss, about being allowed one question; I hope you will forgive me for my three ideas around the one point.