Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of locating the National Artificial Intelligence Centre At Sci-Tech, Daresbury in Weaver Vale constituency as part of the Government's levelling up policy.

My Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister has announced an ambitious modernisation of the Armed Forces supported by more than?£24 billion over the next four years, including at least £6.6 billion for R&D.

This commitment includes a new agency for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate the research, development, testing, integration and deployment of world-leading AI and Autonomous Systems.

This investment will underpin the UK’s enduring technical edge and status as a global science superpower. A decision has yet to been made about the agency’s location.

Furthermore, the Government's unprecedented commitment at the last Budget to increase public investment in R&D to £22 billion by 2024 to 2025 will boost economic performance outside of London and the South East and level up across the country.

This investment builds on the achievements under the Industrial Strategy AI and Data Grand Challenge and the AI Sector Deal.

Some of the Government’s key investments across the country includes:

• 16 new AI Centres for Doctoral Training at universities across all four regions of the country, delivering 1,000 new PhDs over the next five years.
• New prestigious Turing AI Fellowships. This includes 15 new Acceleration Fellowships to accelerate the careers of our brightest AI researchers with the potential to be world-leaders in the next 5 years.
• Up to 2,500 places for AI and data science conversion courses starting this year. This includes up to 1,000 government-funded scholarships for students from underrepresented backgrounds.
• Funded up to £50 million for five new AI Centres of Excellence for digital pathology and imaging, including radiology, using AI medical advances. Three recently received a £50 million funding boost to scale up work to support the long-term response to COVID-19.

Founding The Alan Turing Institute as the UK’s national institute for data science and AI. Thirteen of the UK’s best universities make up the Turing’s core partners.