Open Artificial Intelligence Service

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[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.