Companies say more detail needed on tech work policies

A number of British technology companies have called on the new Labour government to provide more detail on technology policy following its landslide victory in this month’s general election. While the party outlined its policy positions on a range of technology issues in its manifesto last month, representatives from several tech companies and startups said they wanted more detail on Labour’s plans for regulation and investment in the upcoming parliament.

It starts with AI, said Daitaku’s director of AI governance solutions Jacob Beswick, who welcomed the broad commitment by Sir Keir Starmer’s new government to invest more in the sector. “As Labour expands its manifesto commitments, it will be helpful to understand the party’s vision for what these investments will look like,” Beswick said. This included whether they would be targeted at a specific part of the AI ​​value chain, “or whether they will be more broadly planned so that organisations that develop, sell, distribute and use AI are included, regardless of whether they rely on local data centres.”

Tech firms say Labour needs to provide more detail

Labour’s manifesto ties technology policy closely to wider goals to make the public sector and the economy more efficient. This includes liberalising planning rules for new data centres, removing uncertainty for R&D institutions by allowing them to write budgets for decades, and creating a new ‘Regulatory Innovation Office’ (RIO) to co-ordinate how different market gatekeepers approach deep technology issues.

However, the exact role of the RIO has not yet been defined, Beswick said. “We look forward to further clarification on how this will be implemented for all regulated industries and how this new Authority will support the industry in investing in and ultimately operationalising these technologies,” he said.

Beswick said further details about Labour’s proposed “National Data Library” would also be welcome. According to the party’s manifesto, the project would “bring together existing research programmes and help deliver data-driven public services, while maintaining strong safeguards and ensuring all public benefits are delivered”. Such guardrails remain undefined, Beswick said – and could have a disproportionate impact on organisations across the AI ​​value chain once they are written.

“These new safeguards could provide the private sector with some standards of good practice that could benefit organizations operating in the AI ​​value chain,” he said. But if poorly written, they could inadvertently create “harmful consequences for innovation and market activity.”

Questions about how the new government will use artificial intelligence

Labour has also called for new regulations to enforce the safe and ethical development of advanced AI models. However, cloud computing firm Snowflake has called for a more robust approach to sector regulation.

“It would be beneficial to establish industry-specific regulations, with a particular focus on sectors such as healthcare and pharmaceuticals and their unique needs,” said UK and Ireland country director James Hall. “For the pharmaceutical industry in particular, there needs to be more robust arrangements in place for the use of healthcare data, with internal investment to manage and protect that data. This could include profit sharing or intellectual property rights provisions where companies use UK resources.”

Hall also argued for Labour to provide more detail on how it intends to accelerate the use of AI across government departments. “We expect to see ‘chief AI officers’ appointed across government departments to ensure AI is a key manifesto priority for all parties, while a core data strategy with governance at its heart will help deliver AI goals,” he said.

Startups supporting new Labour government

Other tech leaders were more unequivocally supportive of the new Labour government in the U.K. Gregory Dewerpe, managing partner of climate tech startup noa, hailed the new government’s “broad range of policies” for his sector, which showed “an understanding of the urgent need to make progress on the transition to net zero.”

Mission Zero Technologies co-founder Shiladitya Ghosh was similarly supportive. Ghosh said he hoped the new Labour government would act on its commitment to closing the “gap between access to VC investment and securing infrastructure-scale capital” for startups, widely seen as a barrier to creating more British unicorns. He added that this would ultimately “encourage more climate tech founders to bring their businesses and jobs to the UK”.