Category: Technology

The speech made by Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology at the Mansion House in London on 3 September 2025.

I want to talk about a society and economy where AI benefits every person and community in the country.

Where there is opportunity for anyone, no matter their background. Where our huge potential for wealth creation isn’t centred in the capital but is distributed where talent lies – which is everywhere people are.

And where we finally become a country that celebrates entrepreneurial zeal, and those can who move from innovation to commercialisation, and thrive in a modern Britain.

To get there, the question I’m seeking to answer in government isn’t ‘do we want to be a country that adopts AI or not’…because AI is going to happen. We know it is.

That’s true for every country from Britain to North Korea.

The better question is: do we want to use all the power and agency we have, as a government to shape how it unfolds?

This will be my focus tonight.

And what better setting than here, in Mansion House.

The place where the future of this country has so often been debated, and yes, defined.

Almost 70 years ago, in April 1956, this room was the setting of a major Cold War summit.

Where Nikita Khrushchev came, after Stalin’s death, with a delegation from the USSR.

On the way here he stopped by Claridge’s. Clearly nothing is too good for the workers.

Before coming for dinner here, with Clement Attlee and Anthony Eden.

Mansion House was done up, looking its finest.

The Lord Mayor gave a speech.

And the team put on a delicious spread, as always.

It was a huge effort.

But we know now, looking back at history…the charm offensive didn’t really work.

Khrushchev returned to the USSR as resolved as he ever had been to lead, through technology.

Racing to be first to the space rocket, the microchip, the bomb.

Thankfully, those Cold War days are behind us.

But on the world stage, the tech competition remains as fierce as ever.

Only this time, the defining competitive advantage of this century – I believe…is going to be AI.

Artificial intelligence will shape our economies, our security, and our place in the world.

Those who wield it in their national interest – who invest in the right skills and hardware, while they have the chance…will be the economic superpowers of the future.

Look at the US, and China.

Or the Gulf states, vying to compete.

Time and again, we see that a nation’s sovereign interest rests on its technological edge.

It’s the lesson Khrushchev almost learned – but not quite.

You see, in the years after his Mansion House visit, Khrushchev set about increasing the USSR’s tech capacity.

As part of the plan, he wanted to have his own Soviet Silicon Valley.

He ordered the creation of a new city, on the outskirts of Moscow: Zelenograd.

The city had its own cinema, billboards, homes and offices. And a massive statue of Lenin.

And the whole place was designed for engineers, racing to design microchips.

The idea was simple: copy what worked in America, but do it faster.

The Soviets got their hands on a prototype for a US microchip, the SN-51.

Alexander Shokin, the official in charge, summoned the engineers of Zelenograd into his office, and he ordered them:

“Copy it, one-for-one” – without a single deviation.

This, ultimately, was their big mistake.

The Soviets chose to imitate rather than innovate.

At a time when the pace of change in chips was impossible to keep up with, without their own domestic research capacity.

American speed proved too difficult for the Soviets to match.

Individual US entrepreneurialism outpaced Soviet central control.

And Silicon Valley won the chip race.

Today, history is repeating itself in the development of AI and the new technological revolution.

And the UK must think like the US, not act like the USSR.

The computing power needed to train leading AI systems has doubled roughly every 6 months for the last decade.

If we don’t keep up – with a domestic AI ecosystem of our own, on British shores, we’ll always be beholden to others, following where they point us.

Buying off-the-shelf, from overseas.

That’s a precedent I am not willing to set when it comes to our military tech, the integrity of our NHS, and data protection.

Or when the prize is a huge competitive edge for our economy.

Fortunately, we’re starting from a good place.

We currently rank third for AI, after the US and China. We have 4 of the world’s top ten universities. The lowest corporation tax in the G7. And more venture capital investment than anywhere else in Europe.

Only this year, the chief executive of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, said the UK is in a ‘Goldilocks’ moment for AI.

Because we are country not burdened by over-regulation, or a lack of ambition.

Britain is striking the right balance.

I remember, before this government came to office, I spent ages asking businesses what they needed from us.

You certainly weren’t shy in telling us.

Take AI seriously. Regulatory reform. Make sure we don’t fall short on talent.

And ever since, we’ve been getting on with it.

It started in January, with the AI Opportunities Action Plan.

It outlined the 50 steps we are taking to grow the economy, and create scores of new jobs as part of the government’s modern industrial strategy.

An early priority for me was skills.

In June, we launched our TechFirst programme – backed by £187 million in funding which will bring digital and AI learning directly into the classroom and reach every secondary school pupil in the country.

Next, we looked at the workforce. Forming a skills partnership with firms like Barclays, Amazon, BT, and Google.

Together, committing to train 7.5 million people in AI – a fifth of the country’s workers.

It’s fantastic to see how so many of you have risen to that challenge.

After that, we looked at hardware.

If we wanted to compete, we knew we had to improve our physical machinery.

The raw processing power we have on offer, here in the UK, to churn through the mountains of data that will be required.

The Compute Roadmap I set out in July charts that course.

And I recently launched Isambard – our new supercomputer, the most powerful in the country.

A machine that will be able to process an unthinkable amount of information, in seconds.

We have another one, Dawn, in a lab in Cambridge.

And I’ve announced the creation of a national supercomputer that will be based in Edinburgh.

All told we’re on track to increase our compute capacity 20-fold between now and the end of the decade.

We have our plan for the National Data Library.

AI is pretty straightforward in its basic form. It is chips. It is data. It is software.

We talk about chips a lot. We talk about software a lot. But we need to talk much, much more about the data that fuels it.

AI is only as good as the data it uses, and Britain has the best data in the world.

We will be safely harnessing it to power scientific and medical discovery, to drive our understanding of the human condition, and as potentially the biggest engine for the commercialisation of innovation in our country’s history.

And we’re not slowing down any time soon.

Our next big priority is our AI Growth Zones.

These will be dedicated hubs of AI development.

The first will be just 60 miles away, in Culham.

And we’re getting spades in the ground for sites in Wales and in Scotland.

Each has the potential for a full campus – bringing together companies, researchers, and investors.

These efforts have been met by a wave of commitment from the private sector.

With £14 billion in investment announced by firms like Vantage Data Centres, NScale, and Kyndryl.

A brilliant British company, Synthesia, has announced they are expanding their London office just a few weeks ago.

And global firms like Cohere, Open AI, and Anthropic have followed suit – choosing our capital as their home from home.

That is a vote of confidence not just in our tech sector, but in the UK’s future.

So this evening, I’m proud to publish the next 2 parts of our plan.

The first is a roadmap for a new British AI assurance industry.

Backed by a fund worth £11 million.

In the next few years, AI assurance will bloom into a unique profession, worth up to £18.8 billion to our economy, based on a growing pool of independent experts with the skills to verify that new AI innovations are secure, and trustworthy.

We hope it will give firms the tools they need to build trust with both customers and markets, especially smaller teams, who lack the in-house expertise to do this work themselves.

Applications for that fund will be opening in the Spring – please do keep an eye out.

Lastly, we’re looking very closely at regulation.

I know this is a crucial issue for many of you. So I want to make it plain:

British companies shouldn’t have to wait months for approvals, whilst competitors overseas race ahead. If AI can speed things up, even a little, then we will do everything we can to make that a reality.

As part of this effort, today we announced our new AI regulator capability fund.

Designed to support 5 UK regulators – from Ofgem, to the Civil Aviation Authority with up to £2.7 million in funding, to help them both use and regulate AI better.

Whether it’s a new AI assistant. Analysing huge datasets. Or streamlining approvals.

This is our challenge to regulators:

Use every tool at your disposal to get new products to market quickly, without sacrificing safety.

In aviation, for example, this might mean getting faster at clearing the skies for new drone technologies.

Or, for the Office for Nuclear Regulation, we’re investing more than a quarter of a million pounds in a project that will enable the nuclear industry to test new AI tools in nuclear plants.

Including things like making us more efficient at handling high risk nuclear waste.

I want to personally thank the team at our Regulatory Innovation Office, set up last year, for being so forward-looking on this. I’m immensely proud of the work that it’s already doing.

So that’s where we are today.

A little over a year after I first set foot in the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology, I don’t think a single person in this room could say, hand on heart, that we haven’t got stuck in.

And it’s starting to pay off.

In our first 12 months of in government we’ve attracted more than £44 billion worth of investment into the British AI sector. The average deal last year was worth £5.9 million.

And we have doubled the number of AI firms in Yorkshire, Wales, the Midlands, and the North West compared to just 3 years ago.

We have learned the lesson of history: countries can only prosper if they get the big calls right; if they decide to go beyond the expected and embrace the future; to innovate not imitate; refusing to be constrained by the problems of today by taking on the challenges of tomorrow.

In these uncertain times, I am certain that’s what it takes to get a global competitive edge.

So, if there is anyone here who still doubts our commitment.

My message to you is simple:

Britain is preparing for the challenge of the new technological revolution.

We want you to keep investing here, keep building here. List here. Scale here.

And if you invest in Britain, you will share in that competitive edge.

I look forward to working with you all as, together, we create the security and opportunity society people are counting on us to deliver.

Thank you.

The speech made by Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, at the Tobacco Docks in London on 9 July 2025.

Thank you for having me, and thanks also for acknowledging the GOV.UK App, which I’m sure you’ve all downloaded.

If you haven’t already, then you should be doing so now. And I don’t if you’re looking down at your phones while I’m speaking, if what you’re doing is downloading the GOV.UK App – which is already outselling the Bible on the app store, I’m reliably told.

When I came into office a year ago, I was told to deliver an App, with a digital wallet, with a chatbot, and with a digital driving licence attached to it, I was told it couldn’t be done in one parliament, that it couldn’t be done in one 5 year period.

My response was I’m sure Google and others don’t take that long to design and deploy their technology. Let me see a timeline.

The timeline came back to me a week later, and it was now 3 years.

We did all of this, the start of the deployment of GOV.UK App, within one year of government.

Within 15 months, all of those services I’ve just outlined will be deployed and put to the benefit of citizens right around the country.

And that for me is a source of huge pride, because we’ve used technology to wrap services around individual citizens needs.

Right now, as all of you know, too often citizens are being wrapped around the needs of services themselves.

And this is a profound change as we go forward.

Now, sometimes I’m accused of being “too close to big tech”.

And I could have no better place to have this argument out on the table with you now.

In May, The Guardian criticised me for meeting with the sector 70% more than my predecessor. Now, to this crime, I plead guilty.

In truth that was just 28 times over the course of a 6-month period, that equates to around twice a week over that time.

As Technology Secretary I simply will not apologise for meeting with technology companies – that is the job.

Just as meeting with the families of victims of social media, regulators, founders, overseas governments and the creative sector, it’s all part and parcel of what I’m paid to do on behalf of the people’s government.

But I don’t do these meetings just because I’m paid to do it.

I do them because they matter:

keeping children safe or from social media – it matters;

making sure Britain is the best prepared for developments at the frontier of AI – that matters;

and securing better deals for the taxpayer for the billions of pounds spent every year on software, cloud services, devices and information technology – that matters.

So today, I’m here to acknowledge our agreement for an entirely new way of working with Google – and how that will impact our public services.

It’s an agreement that recognises our value as the UK government as a huge client to their organisation.

And how important their technology is to help us deliver the changes to public services to make them more in-touch and more in-tune with citizens. And better value for money for taxpayers.

The agreement signals and signifies our determination to exploit the full potential of a partnership between government and Google, with much more collaboration between their UK AI lab, DeepMind, and my own AI developers in my department, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology with a new digital centre of government.

We’ve already used Gemini to build “Extract”, a specialist AI tool to help councils convert decades-old, handwritten planning documents and maps into data in minutes.

It could be pivotal in our plans to stop bureaucracy from holding up the construction and ultimately help us build 1.5 million homes that we’ve pledged over this parliament.

We know that tools using the same technology are capable of transforming Whitehall itself, the NHS, and other essential services that millions of people across our country rely on.

So, with more hands-on support, I can’t wait to see what our 2 teams deliver together.

Google are also aiming to train up 100,000 public sector professionals with the skills that they need to use this technology by 2030.

That’s going to help us hit the target the Prime Minister set earlier this year, where we’ve committed to double the number of digital experts across government…

…essential to shaking up decades old processes and making public services work in the way people expect services to work in the 2020s – whether that’s in the NHS, policing, benefits or tax.

And, perhaps most importantly, we are looking to the sector to help shake off the legacy technology that costs the taxpayer an absolute fortune and leaves us vulnerable to outages and to cyberattacks.

More than one in 4 public sector systems run on this “ball and chain” tech – rising to 70% in some police forces and NHS trusts.

With contracts signed decades ago, and a high costs of exit, we’ve seen a few tech companies really taking liberties with the public sector.

In the worst cases, contracts have made it impossible for public sector organisations to move on. They’ve locked up their data up in vulnerable, archaic servers…

…only to have the price of maintaining the tech hiked up, year-on- year, with no sign of light at the end of the tunnel.

Now, as Technology Secretary, I am determined to break free from these costly chains once and for all.

Through agreements like this we can transition public sector organisations trapped by the ball and chain of legacy products and services, and to migrate to the cloud.

That move alone will liberate public service organisations and use the latest technology, and more freely explore the wider market moving forward. That is what I am determined to do.

All in all, this partnership could see Google invest hundreds of millions of pounds in Britain’s public sector technology.

Helping to deliver my ambition to bring the public services people use every day, drag it into the 21st century.

Without deals like this in place, we had hundreds of public sector organisations…

…police forces, NHS trusts, local councils, government departments and many, many more…

They were simply just going it alone in negotiations with big tech companies.

And they just don’t have the experience and market clout they need to drive the best deal for taxpayers.

They end up paying the full shop-front rate or even being entirely mis-sold tech that doesn’t work for them in the first place.

But they’re all buying on behalf of the same client: you, the British taxpayer.

And that taxpayer is footing the bill for an annual £21 billion for buying the same technology time and time again.

That’s why I’m determined to secure a new deal for buying tech for the British taxpayer.

For too long, too many governments haven’t done enough to build the positive business relationships that Britain needs to prevent the taxpayer being short changed when it comes to procuring tech – from healthcare services, policing systems right through to benefits processes, and bin collections, right down to street sweeping.

Just as with Google on this strategy, when I negotiate with Tech companies, I am negotiating on behalf of the British taxpayer.

Britain will be using technology in more areas and more than ever before.

So, my message to big technology companies is clear: bring us your best ideas, bring us your best tech, and bring it at the best price.

In return, you’ll get access to the biggest client in the country, one that will be increasingly intelligent and increasingly digital.

And as we start to operate as a more intelligent buyer of technology, new opportunities are going to emerge.

The first one that I’m pushing for, is to make sure that, whenever possible, UK technology companies- large and small – get a fair shot at winning a contract.

Our upcoming marketplace – the national digital exchange – will make sure more and more UK tech companies can get their slice of the £21 billion pie.

That means more money for companies operating here in the UK, workers and founders.

It will help us to achieve the economic growth upon which Britain’s future prosperity lies. And it will improve the public services on which British citizens depend.

Now I want to acknowledge the foresight of Google in signing this key agreement, and I want more to follow. I want it to stimulate many similar co-operation agreements with the full range of international and domestic technology companies.

That is in the interests of higher economic growth, more jobs, better public services and greater value for taxpayers.

Thank you very much for having me along today.

The speech made by Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, on 1 July 2025.

Last week, I represented the British government on a trip to Singapore.

I was there to celebrate 60 years of partnership between our 2 countries.

And drum up investment into British technology.

It was my first time in Singapore.

And it struck me that it’s a place that has mastered the art of reinvention.

From traditional fishing village to global financial centre.

Small trading post to one of the most competitive economies in the world.

An economy that, like ours, knows that the key to staying competitive is being squarely focussed on the future.

It’s a similar idea that brings us together today.

Because this is a sector that’s also defined by an ability to reinvent itself.

Where centuries-old banks have had to rip up the playbook.

To compete with nimble, digital-first firms.

And where new technologies have made the way you work unrecognisable from how it once was.

One of my first proper jobs was in a finance team.

It was 1989, and I worked in the purchase ledger at The Body Shop – a hero of the British high street at the time.

I matched goods that came in with invoices.

And inputted all of that into an arcane mainframe computer.

I’m sure quite a few of you will remember those days.

And the change after change you’ve seen your institutions through since.

Because before PIN codes, there was paper.

Before blockchain, there were books of accounts that landed with a thud on the desk.

Before cashless, there was ‘Cashier number 3 please’.

These are changes that financial services firms have not just weathered, but pioneered.

To keep this sector as the engine of economic growth it truly is.

And to keep creating products that improve the lives of working people.

Over the past few years, another change has rippled through the sector:

AI has reshaped what’s possible.

And there’s not a sector of our economy it will leave untouched.

There’s a simple difference between this change and those that came before:

Sheer speed.

In past waves of transformation, industry and the state alike could afford to dip a toe in.

To spend a few years seeing how the water feels.

This time, we need to jump.

Since joining government, I’ve been clear that the UK will not be swept along as others lead the AI revolution.

We’ll shape that revolution here.

6 months ago, we launched the AI Opportunities Action Plan.

Setting out how the UK will seize the massive potential for economic growth that AI offers us.

Growth that’s at the heart of our Plan for Change.

Since that launch, we’ve opened up applications for areas in the UK to become AI Growth Zones – hotspots of AI infrastructure and investment.

And had over 200 responses.

The full weight of government is behind the plan.

With the Chancellor announcing £2 billion to deliver it, as part of the Spending Review.

And a Modern Industrial Strategy that doubles down on our commitment to AI…

…as one of the 6 frontier technologies our digital and tech sector plan focusses on.

Crucial to that plan is adoption.

Because talking about the power of AI to grow the economy is all well and good.

But unless companies use it, that growth only exists in theory.

Not in practice.

Financial services is at the front of the pack here.

Around 3 quarters of firms surveyed by the Bank of England the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) already use AI.

That’s the 3rd highest rate of adoption across the economy.

That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.

The UK led the world in open banking.

We led the world in near-instant digital payments.

And our reputation in fintech is second-to-none.

The most valuable private tech company in Europe is Revolut, a British fintech.

Our fintech crown is one I’m infinitely proud of.

If we’re to hold on to it, you need a government that continues to back you.

That doesn’t just call for you to keep exploring new technologies.

But actively enables you to do it.

When I talk to firms about adoption, they tell me about 2 barriers more than any other.

A lack of skills.

And finding their way through a web of complex regulation.

On skills, we’re partnering with 11 major tech companies to train 7.5 million workers in the UK with essential AI skills by the end of this decade.

So that a lack of expertise will never put a ceiling on what you can do.

Regulation shouldn’t be that ceiling, either.

In her Mansion House speech last year, the Chancellor set out a vision:

For a regulatory environment that cares about managing the burden we put on businesses.

Since then, she’s launched a radical action plan on regulation to kickstart growth.

My part in that is making sure we ease the burden on businesses when it comes to adopting emerging tech.

About 9 months ago, I launched the Regulatory Innovation Office.

A dedicated unit to curb red tape.

And get game-changing tech into the public’s hands quickly and safely.

It’s already delivered results.

Apian, a British start-up founded by NHS doctors, is now freed up to use drones to take blood samples from Guy’s Hospital in London Bridge, over to a lab in St. Thomas’ for testing.

Before the NHS had the okay to work with them, those samples were carted over in vans.

The journey took around half an hour.

More if they were snarled up in traffic.

After support from Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO) and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), each delivery now takes just 2 minutes.

Beds are freed up faster.

NHS waiting lists go down.

And a crucial difference is made for patients where every second counts.

Thanks to RIO’s close work with regulators, companies have made advances like these in fields like space or engineering biology, too.

But I want more sectors to benefit from the breath of fresh air it offers.

Instead of being stifled by a blanket of bureaucracy.

So, today, I can announce that RIO is joining forces with digital regulators.

To consolidate a labyrinth of regulation, and make it easier for innovators to bring AI products to market quickly and easily.

This marks a significant boost for fintechs.

Right now, your efforts to use emerging tech can get mired in a lack of clarity.

Because there’s no single port of call on what you can do with AI.

You’re left going from regulator to regulator, picking your way through different sets of rules.

For start-ups and scale-ups without big legal teams, that’s nigh-on impossible to navigate.

And for bigger banks and firms, it’s days of productivity sunk.

Now, RIO is teaming up to the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF).

To bring all of that guidance together into a one-stop shop.

A digital library that lets you quickly search for answers.

These are changes that firms of all shapes and sizes can take advantage of.

Up-and-coming fintechs to household-name banks will go from idea to impact faster:

Using AI to spot credit card fraud hours before humans can alone.

To get instant answers to your customers.

To analyse stocks, so people can get more out of their investments.

We’re clearing the path for you to harness AI to stay ahead of the game.

And to make people’s lives fundamentally better.

Because I know this is a sector that will keep reinventing itself.

Just as I know that AI will continue to bring profound, positive change to the UK.

With the right backing on adoption…

Access to skills…

And clarity on regulation…

We’ll make sure that this isn’t just a change that fintechs and banks are part of.

But a change that you lead.

The speech made by Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, on 16 June 2025.

The speech made by Peter Kyle, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, in Olympia in London on 10 June 2025.

Last Thursday, I was in Salford for a CyberFirst event.

Hundreds of girls from across Greater Manchester were there.

Some of them were busy playing e-sports, hidden behind VR goggles.

Others were programming robots – or learning how to pitch a tech business.

But all of them said the same thing.

They were excited for the future they were starting to see. And what it meant for them

What really struck me was their ambition, hope and sheer enthusiasm.

It was as humbling as it was inspirational: but it made me think.

In government, we spend so much time talking about risk.

What happens if reform goes wrong?

Who is responsible – and who do we hold to account?

We often talk about making the state feel more like a start-up.

Less slow and static.

More agile and active.

But we have unique obligations to our citizens that we simply cannot ignore.

Duties to defend our national security and protect public health.

To make our streets safer and borders stronger.

It is understandable that these obligations might make us more cautious about change.

But, when countries or institutions become preoccupied with avoiding risk, they risk resisting innovation.

They might delay reform.

They might grasp too tightly to the here and now…

…and lose sight of the possibilities tomorrow could bring.

When this happens, caution slides into complacency.

Incrementalism gives way to inertia.

Worrying about getting every aspect of change right becomes fear of change itself.

And fearing the challenge of change is the fastest route for a great nation to become mired in stagnation.

When I spoke at London Tech Week last year, that’s what I saw.

Our citizens, they wanted change.

The sector wanted change.

But a refusal to face up to the risks change brings – or face down resistance to it…

…meant that government after government were stuck with a model we all knew was failing.

Suddenly, the real risk wasn’t trying something new.

It was doing nothing at all.

People waited months for hospital appointments.

Young people couldn’t find a good job in the town they called home.

Businesses unable to innovate, unable to invest, or unable to grow.

Stifled by a regulatory regime that was stuck in the past.

Unsure about whether to waste time applying for government contracts – because they always seemed to favour the same old suspects.

Undecided about whether to stay here in the UK – because they just couldn’t access the capital they needed to grow.

Too often in the last decade, Britain felt like a country short on ambition, long on apathy.

Where optimism shrank in the face of opposition.

On this stage last year, I said it was time for a change.

Time to seize the power of technology.

And wield it to deliver us towards a better future.

That is exactly what we’ve done.

I said we’d tear up planning rules.

And we have, making it easier to build the infrastructure that powers our digital economy.

I said we’d radically reform regulation.

And we have, cutting the time it takes to get new products and services onto the market and into people’s hands.

I said we’d design new digital tools with a streamlined state and make engaging with government easier than it’s ever been before.

And we have, from a digital driving licence and an app that will put public services into people’s hands.

To a new tool that will digitise decades-old planning records in minutes, slashing the time it takes to make decisions and get millions of new homes built right across our country.

And a platform that lets people in the public sector rate and review tech products, saving over a billion by helping councils and schools get better deals faster.

Now none of that has been without risk.

In early trials, the government chatbot we built started speaking French.

I’m relieved to tell you that, after a brief flirtation with life across the Channel, it’s firmly back on British soil.

But – even if its identity crisis had lasted a little longer – how many people would rather we’d stopped at the first sign of trouble?

What’s a bonjour here, an au revoir there….

… compared to hours spent on hold, waiting to work out whether your benefit payment has been made and made on time?

Trawling through webpage after webpage to work out what you need to do to start a business?

Because our choice actually was a simple one.

Towards a future that is bright, bold, but risky.

Or back to more of the same: stagnation and a slow but certain slide into decline.

Today, we find ourselves at another critical moment.

The risks we take – and the investments we make – will determine the path our country follows in the decades to come.

And we must once again seize the opportunities in front of us with courage and conviction.

With a record £86 billion in funding for R&D, that is exactly what this government is doing.

For the first time, our modern industrial strategy will include a dedicated digital and technologies sector plan.

Building on our strengths in 6 technologies with the greatest potential for growth:

From AI, advanced connectivity and cyber security…

… right through to engineering biology, quantum, and semiconductors.

Behind that plan is a very clear mission.

To build a faster, fairer economy. A society that offers opportunities for all.

One where we don’t settle for buying these technologies off the shelf.

We make them here.

And we use them to shape a better future for every citizen.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister unveiled £1 billion in backing for our bid to increase our country’s compute power twentyfold by the end of the decade.

Today, I can go further.

A new partnership between my department, Imperial College and the World Economic Forum will see London host the new Centre for AI-Driven Innovation.

This is the first World Economic Forum Global Centre to be based right here in Britain.

Focused on accelerating the adoption of AI, it will ensure that we can embed AI across our economy and put it to work for working people.

And this is just the start.

Boston might be the birthplace of biotech.

But – with Google DeepMind on one side and the Crick on the other – King’s Cross is emerging as a global powerhouse for AI-driven drug discovery.

Today, we’re launching a new project, OpenBind, to create the world’s largest database explaining how drugs interact with the proteins they target.

20 times bigger than all the data collected worldwide over the last half a century, OpenBind will provide an exceptionally detailed picture of how diseases work.

And it could cut the cost of developing new treatments by up to £100 billion.

The results for the health of our people, our nation and our economy could be revolutionary.

As Demis Hassabis said himself, this is a brilliant initiative for UK science.

But initiatives like this will only succeed if we can attract top global talent.

Our tech success story wouldn’t have been possible without brilliant people choosing time and time again to call Britain home.

In an ever more competitive world, we simply cannot afford to lose that status.

So, we’ll be introducing a new scheme to attract the brightest and best brains to Britain.

Today, I can announce that we’re working with Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) and Pillar to double Encode AI for Science Fellowships and get top AI talent from around the world working in UK labs.

We’re also launching Turing AI Global Fellowships, which will bring AI experts from across the world to the UK and support them to carry out cutting-edge research.

At the same time, we’re starting a national skills drive at home, giving over a million students the chance to start careers in AI.

And creating a new generation of British leaders as our country enters the digital economic age.

Leaders just like the young people I met in Salford.

Talking to them about their hopes for the future, I couldn’t help but think about my own journey through education

Struggling with dyslexia, my teachers didn’t see any potential in me.

I was held back in remedial classes, I left at 16 with no qualifications to my name.

No sense of what the future would hold.

It wasn’t until I got a job at the Body Shop.

Until I met Anita Roddick.

And she saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.

Sending me out to give speeches for her.

That I got over my fear of public speaking.

I then went to university.

And my life began to change.

I choose to tell that story.

Not because I think it’s unique.

I tell it because I think it’s all too common in this country.

And I think it says something about what is at stake right here today.

This government don’t take risks lightly.

Nor do we pursue change for change’s sake.

We choose the path of progressive change. To build a modern economy and opportunistic society.

We do so because any alternative leaves Britain poorer, weaker, more vulnerable in a complex world.

Less able to promote and protect our prosperity and security for all our citizens.

In the last year, the work of progressive change has begun.

But we will only succeed if you take risks, too.

If you choose to join us in transforming Britain for the better.

As the place you pick to build new data centres.

Or train new AI models.

The country you choose when you’re developing life-saving drugs.

Or designing the next generation of chips.

A bolder, brighter future for Britain is in our hands.

We’ve spent the last year getting the foundations right.

Now, it’s our opportunity to build.