Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to work with (1) universities, and (2) businesses, in the fields of (a) the metaverse, (b) blockchain technologies, (c) cryptocurrencies, and (d) artificial intelligence.

The Digital Strategy announced by my hon. Friend, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Tech and the Digital Economy on the 13 June, is the roadmap we will follow to further strengthen our global position as a science and technology superpower.

The Digital Strategy will lead to new jobs, skills and services that benefit and level up the whole of the UK. It will bring tech leaders together in a new Digital Skills Council to tackle the skills gap and to carry out a review of the UK’s large-scale computer processing capabilities. The group will look at the issue of digital skills from schools through to lifelong learning and at ways the industry can inspire the next generation of talent from a wide range of backgrounds to consider a digital career.

As an illustration of our commitment to this, we announced that the Office for Students (OfS) will be providing 2,000 scholarships to ensure we has more of the advanced digital skills needed to maintain the country’s leading position in cutting-edge AI and data science. The OfS allocate up to £23 million to universities to fund scholarships starting in 2023. Funding will be available for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds as well as black, women and disabled students to ensure the AI built and used in the UK reflects the make-up of our society.

In this new landscape, businesses will be critical to supporting our ambitions. The Innovation Strategy, published by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy in July 2021, focuses on how the government supports businesses to innovate by making the most of the UK’s research, development and innovation system.

As part of this UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will ramp up its investment in the technologies of the future including Artificial Intelligence, digital, and advanced computing, working with businesses to crowd-in investment and create world leading sectors and job-rich industries. Over the spending review period UKRI allocation for the 2022/25 financial year is £25.1 billion and will reach its highest ever level in the 2024/25 financial year (over £8.8 billion).