Science, Innovation and Technology Committee 

Oral evidence: Work of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, HC 504

Tuesday 3 December 2024

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 3 December 2024.

Watch the meeting 

Members present: Chi Onwurah (Chair); Emily Darlington; George Freeman; Dr Allison Gardner; Tom Gordon; Kit Malthouse; Josh Simons; Dr Lauren Sullivan; Adam Thompson; Martin Wrigley.

Questions 1 - 47

Witnesses

I: Rt Hon Peter Kyle MP, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology; Sarah Munby, Permanent Secretary, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Peter Kyle and Sarah Munby.

Q1                Chair: It is my great pleasure to welcome the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle, and the permanent secretary in the Department, Sarah Munby. We really appreciate your coming to see us. We have a two-hour session to work together. This is the beginning of a relationship between the Committee and the Department, which we anticipate being constructive and illuminating. The value of science is a shared belief across the House and all parties represented here.

I wanted to start by asking you, as the relatively new Secretary of State for what is still a relatively new Department, if you could set out, in a few brief sentences, your ambition for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

Peter Kyle: Thank you, Chair. Congratulations on becoming Chair, and congratulations to everybody who is on the Committee. I hear, loud and clear, the spirit of the words with which you introduced me. I will try to play my part and to be as open-hearted and informative as possible. Having been on a similar Committee for a long period of time, I know just how much it can contribute when that relationship with the Department is a constructive and functional one, and I will do my best to make that so.

In terms of my, and the Government’s, ambitions for the Department, the best way to explain it shortly is to express the desire of what we did when we were designing our programme of government. We wanted to create a Department, building on the achievements of the previous Government. I appreciate that the creation of DSIT was the right thing to do. We wanted to build on it. We wanted to make it a Department that contributes towards economic growth.

We wanted it to become a Department that played a much more assertive role in support of the Government’s transition towards digital technology and the way that Government transacts itself between and within Government Departments, so that we have a smoother and more efficient running of Government. We also want it to play a much greater role in transforming the relationship that individual citizens have with their state.

All three of those areas are things that the new DSIT has become. It is my ambition that DSIT can contribute meaningfully to those three areas and, through the course of today, more light will be shed on how we intend to achieve that. All of these areas that I have just mentioned are high-growth ones that will have an impact on the future of our country and on individuals succeeding and fulfilling their potential, yet there is nothing inevitable about technology achieving any of these things. I believe, with every fibre of my being, that the Government have agency in the way that technology, science and R&D impact society, and it is my desire to use that agency to make sure that everyone, from every background and every part of our country, benefits equally from it.

Q2                Chair: Thank you, Secretary of State. It is very good to hear your passion and your ambition for the Department. In the interests of declaring all interests, I should say that the Secretary of State and I worked together in the Opposition on the development of some of the policies and ambitions for the Department. That naturally leads to the next question. How would you assess your first five months in post?

Peter Kyle: It is your job to assess my first five months in post. What I have tried to do is to deliver a set of machinery of government changes. We are the only Department that was allowed to make significant machinery of government changes. That was because the Prime Minister accepted that, to achieve the three broad ambitions that I set out before, we needed to restructure DSIT.

We have consolidated digital services from and across the centre of Government into one unit to create the digital centre of Government. That is not because I wanted to hoard power, influence and resource, but because, in order to match the delivery function with the ambitions that we set out, we had to do things differently.

The first stage of this transition was, over the summer, to design. Let me pay absolute tribute to Sarah, her team and all officials in DSIT, including those who have joined DSIT from other parts of Government. The alacrity and enthusiasm that they have shown, and the experience that they have brought to bear, have far exceeded the expectations and hopes that I brought into this post.

We have consolidated digital services from across Government, but it is really important to say to the Committee that we have separated governance from the delivery aspects of digital. The powerful digital centre of Government, which creates one of the most powerful digital centres and capacities of any Government anywhere in the world to be at the disposal of those frontline public services and Departments, is governed by the interministerial group in which Pat McFadden, for the Cabinet Office, Darren Jones, for the Treasury, and I are now responsible for governing digital services from across Government, including the digital centre. That means that there is a governance and a performance management regime, if you like, that sits above the engine of digital that we have created.

We now have three action plans that have been under way since the beginning. One is Matt Clifford’s AI action plan, and two are what I would call reform plans—the review into the digital centre and how it is structured and, alongside it, the state of the digital state review, which has done an assessment of the digital capacities of each Government Department. This is the first time that this has ever been done. It is a skills assessment and a capacity assessment. It is a view of what the digital transition could achieve, and what the demand and need are within each Government Department. These two reform programmes and the action plan are all coming into the phase where we can start to consider releasing it to the public, at which point you will see the structural reforms coming together with the purpose for each of these new units in the digital centre. From the new year, you will see us pivot dramatically towards delivering within Government and services for the public.

Q3                Chair: There is a lot of interest in the digital centre, and we will be coming to discuss that in a few minutes’ time. I just wanted to ask you to say, if you were to appear before us in six months’ time—and I hope you will—what we should hold you to account for delivering. You have indicated some of the things that you intend to deliver in the new year. Looking forward six months, what should we be holding you to account for?

Peter Kyle: I would like to be held to account for the focus that we have on R&D and science towards the national missions of our country, not just those that we set out as a Government, but the priorities that the country has. We have an outstanding scientific community. The work that UKRI and all of our funding bodies do is exemplary. We need to make sure that we are demonstrably delivering the priorities that the country has, which we will be setting out in a speech by the Prime Minister later this week. With the establishment of an industrial strategy council, which will be setting out some industrial priorities for our country, I want to make sure that our R&D community and the work that we fund plays its part in delivering it.

You should look very closely at the way that Government Departments, working with DSIT, begin the digital transformation within and between Departments. Your Committee will be instrumental in shining a light on the progress that we make with that.

Then, of course, there is this area of citizen empowerment, which technology can do. The 1997 Government, led by Tony Blair, dramatically improved the governance of our public services by driving governance closer to communities. It is my, and the Prime Minister’s, belief that technology can empower citizens directly by clever, wise and safe use of data, as well as the way in which digital services can deliver services into the pockets of citizens into the long term. I hope that the Committee will recognise changes and steps in those directions in the coming months.

Q4                Chair: You will see that there are a lot of nodding heads around the Committee and a lot of agreement on the power of technology, and we certainly wish to see it realised. Permanent secretary, you spoke about the reorganisation and bringing teams from different Departments—Government digital services, for example—into DSIT. When will funding for these bodies be allocated to the Department? Have all staff in these bodies moved into DSIT’s offices?

Sarah Munby: For all practical purposes, staff are already transferred now, so we are operating as one Department. Formal payroll transfer always takes a while after a machinery of government change. We expect that to happen in the summer, but that is the final formal step. We would hope that staff would say that, at the moment, they feel that they are fully operating as members of the DSIT team. The formal budgetary transfer happens at supplementary estimates, but, again, for all effective purposes, I am the accounting officer for that spend now.

The vast majority of budgets are already sorted. We know exactly where we are. There are a few last bits to tick and tie, particularly as it relates to managing any costs of transition and splitting funding of that between Departments, but I would say that it is really points of detail. At the moment, we are up and functioning as DSIT, including our new teams, which have been enormously welcome.

There is a huge amount of opportunity to go after, not just in looking at those operational matters of bringing the teams together, but in finding the policy, delivery and content connections across topics such as data and AI. We have really started to see that happening over the last few months, which has been fantastic.

Q5                Chair: We will be coming back to that as well. Finally from me, you talked about some of the funding that has come with the groups from other Departments into DSIT. What trade-offs do you anticipate, Secretary of State, or expect to make as part of the upcoming spending review?

Peter Kyle: I do not expect there to be trade-offs. We are not a mission lead. There are five missions for this Government. DSIT is not the lead for any of them, but we are, to use the phrase that the Prime Minister has used, the foundations upon which all of the missions sit. It is not going to be possible for us to meet any of the missions that the Government have set without clever use of the areas for which DSIT is responsible.

In that regard, you will see that, from the first spending review, it was a source of frustration for me, if I speak candidly, that, while I and my team, and Sarah and her teams, were earnestly negotiating and in discussions with the Treasury—with full discretion, as you would expect at a moment like this—rumours were flying around in the media, which, unfortunately, were finding foothold among the scientific community, who normally rest their professions on peer‑reviewed and evidence-based research, but who were believing every rumour out there that I was going to take a scalpel to the R&D budget. We came back with an 8.5% uplift.

You will see that this is a Government, from the Treasury to 10 Downing Street and right through DSIT, that recognise the value of R&D, innovation, the scientific community, life sciences and the technology sectors. These are all high-growth sectors. It is absolutely important that we get our country rooted into the high-growth sectors of the future and to create the great jobs that our citizens really need and deserve. I do not see trade-offs. What I do see is greater co-operation between DSIT, frontline public services and Government Departments across the board.

Q6                Chair: That endorsement for investment in DSIT is welcome. The challenge of working across Government, as you set out, is something that we will be returning to. I am now going to hand over to George, who is particularly interested in that relationship with growth, which is so important to the missions and to our future prospects.

Q7                George Freeman: Secretary of State and permanent secretary, it is very nice to see you. Could I just echo the comments, as a former Minister, about how nice it is to hear the degree of continuity of mission? There will be disagreements about implementation, and our job is to hold you to account. This sector is risky and long term enough that that continuity of mission is really key. Personally, I welcome the commitments that the Government have made about growth, industrial strategy and the £20 billion a year for R&D in a difficult round. These are good signs.

I wanted to ask about growth, and I have three linked questions. You have been very clear about, Secretary of State, and gave a very compelling vision of, a digital Department driving a much more digitalised Government for citizenship, for public service efficiency and for growth. Does that mean that DSIT is really focused on that digital piece and not so much on exploiting the other bits of science research and technology innovation, from semiconductors to advanced manufacturing, and from fusion to meteorology, and using those to drive growth? Does that responsibility now pass to DBT?

I am just wondering whether, under the science and technology framework, that is still a DSIT mission or whether, in the establishment of the new Department, that broader piece now shifts. It would be interesting to hear, politically as well as organisationally, perm sec, how that fits within the machinery of government.

A linked point is on private sector investment. You will remember that I tried to get this going, but, I confess, did not finish it. It seems to me that, if we are going to have a growth conversation, we really need to know what the private sector figures are alongside the £20 billion of public money, by sector, by place and by Department.

Thirdly, in terms of clusters, if we are really going to harness R&D for growth around the country, how do you measure that?

Those are my three questions—first, on DSIT’s role and whether it being a digital Department means that that broader growth responsibility passes elsewhere.

Peter Kyle: Growth is going to become a priority for every Government Department. The Health Secretary said, quite wisely, that his is a growth Department, because, unless you have a healthy nation and you get waiting lists down, we are not going to be able to maximise our potential as an economy. Every Government Department is tasked with figuring out its role within growth.

I hope that, as a Committee and as Members of Parliament who are scrutinising Government, you will see a much more integrated workflow going forward between Departments. We know that this is tough. We know that it is easy to say at the start of a Parliament, but we are absolutely determined to deliver that going forward.

In terms of DSIT’s direct influence on growth, there are a number of aspects to it. The first is the formal links that we will have to the industrial strategy. There are seven priorities set out by the Department for Business and Trade. We are leading on two of those—bioscience and digital technology—so we will have a direct link into the industrial strategy.

There will certainly be new priorities that come with this Government and with our agenda. I am not going to be naive and say that, with prioritisation, there does not come de-prioritisation. We are working through that now and will be very up front and honest when you see areas that are no longer the priorities of the Government. We have settled the first spending review. We are in the process of implementing that and understanding what that means at a granular level, right the way through all of our funding bodes and the different parts of DSIT. When we have completed the process, we will be very open about it, because we are not going to resile from it.

We are also taking on some of the challenge of diffusion of digital technology into the broader economy, which is why I would say that we are directly an economic Department now. This is one of the things that, conceptually, I have struggled with the most, coming in, because the economy is not taking up digital technology enough, particularly at the smaller end of the medium-sized business community.

We are about two thirds of the way behind America when it comes to organic adoption. Government cannot do that kind of transition to the economy, but we cannot stand back and say, “It is not doing it organically to itself”. Therefore, there has to be a role for Government to do so. I am thinking very creatively, and I have stopped some of the funding programmes that we have inherited, so that we can take a look at how to be more assertive with the digital technology take-up in the broader economy. [Interruption.] 

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

On resuming—

Chair: Before the vote, Secretary of State, I think you were about to finish your remarks on clustering.

Peter Kyle: The only part of Mr Freeman’s question that I did not answer was about clusters. We recognise areas and partnerships that add up to more than the sum of their parts. There are, clearly, areas in the scientific and research community that do that. I have spoken to the university sector to try to understand ways in which we can have greater leadership from universities in order to deliver greater clusters. Again, partnerships that add up to more than the sum of the parts need to have good, steadfast leadership with a clarity of vision. They will be different for each area, by definition, and that is what we need. I am very open to that conversation and quite keen to pursue it in those terms.

The second thing to say on that is that the AI action plan will have something to say about area-based development, based on the opportunities that are offered by modern technology, science and innovation, and we will probably pick up on that conversation at a future meeting.

Q8                George Freeman: Could I ask the permanent secretary the same question, although it is more of a machinery of government point? I am very conscious of the work that you did when we were setting up the Department—without much notice. From your point of view, is DSIT, in the S&T framework, still the lead Department for turning R&D into industrial growth? Through the S&T framework, do you have the leadership and the leverage to drive that conversation across Government, or does that now sit more with DBT as the industrial strategy Department?

Sarah Munby: There has not been any change in departmental responsibilities in that area. As far as we are concerned, we still play the same role as we did before, only with some added tools in our box, as it were, when some of the work on digital and AI across the public sector interacts with our work on science and innovation. The use of AI in healthcare would be an example that could fit into both of those categories. It is an expansion and a strengthening, but there has been no reduction in focus, as part of that, on the areas that you are talking about.

Q9                George Freeman: If it is not DSIT, who in Government would be looking at the £20 billion R&D figure and asking, “Are we getting good private sector co-investment off the back of that?”

Sarah Munby: That is a core DSIT responsibility, in partnership with both DBT and other sector-owning Departments across Government. You would expect us to work with DEFRA on that question as it relates to farming. For the question overall, it remains, effectively, exactly as it was before.

Chair: It is a very important point. What that says to me and to the Committee is that we will be holding you to account for that interface between the £20.4 billion budget for science, and business, industry and growth. It is a key interface. It is the classic thing where Britain is great at having ideas but very bad at turning them into money and jobs, so this is something that the Committee will hold you to account on in the future.

Q10            George Freeman: I am not going to pretend that it is easy, but we need to get to a point where we can say, “We invest £9 billion a year in life sciences”, or whatever the figure is, “and the private sector number is X and going up. Space is not going up. Why not?” The same is true for the clusters. I tried, but we did not get it over the line. It is really important to have some kind of data, so that we can look and go, “Why is that public money not unlocking private money? What are we doing wrong?”

Sarah Munby: You will be pleased to hear that we have been working with the ONS on how we get better at being able to cut R&D data in a way that is intelligible by sector, in the way that you are describing. We do not have those numbers yet, but that is in hand.

Q11            Kit Malthouse: I just want to ask a couple of questions, one of which is connected. The leveraging in of private sector money is critical, and some of that is attracted by the co-funding or risk sharing, or whatever it is, that comes out of the Budget. Quite a lot of it operates within the wider fiscal environment. Is that fiscal environment, post-Budget, conducive to the kind of risk taking that is required, for example, in life sciences, or are there particular areas where you would like to see amendments, perhaps, to encourage the private sector to put its money where its mouth is?

Peter Kyle: You have seen from the investment summit that we have been quite successful already in unlocking additional investment into the economy, particularly on technology and digital infrastructure. You will have noticed that I have updated digital infrastructure to that of critical national infrastructure. The planning reforms now take digital infrastructure as a national priority.

Regulatory reforms were called for by the sector, and the Regulatory Innovation Office is now up and running and piloting. These were things that were being called for by industry, and delivering it so quickly into Government has unlocked a lot of investment. Of the £63 billion that was committed in the investment summit, £24.3 billion was directly AI-related.

You will notice that over half of that committed was AI and life sciences-related, so we have shown success.[i][1]

The other thing that I would put on the radar in that regard is our ambition to, in certain circumstances, move to 10-year funding. We know that that is a key way of unlocking greater private sector investment. At the moment, we are figuring out and doing the detail on where that can be most effectively deployed. We are very open-minded as to where that can be deployed, but our key metric for it is using it in circumstances where the stability that 10-year funding can offer will leverage and unlock private sector investment. We looked at the aerospace sector, where, in one particular area, up to 10-year funding was used in certain circumstances, and the return that it unlocked from private sector investment was almost double that in other sectors. It is a key motivation for us, moving in that direction.

Q12            Kit Malthouse: I am quite interested in the results of the investment summit. Would it be possible to drop us a note enunciating what the £24.3 billion of projects were, so that we can track their progress? I am very conscious, having been a Government Minister, that, very often, these announcements are made but, in terms of implementation, never quite transpire, and, three years down the line, everyone has forgotten them. It would be quite helpful for us to be able to at least track some of these groundbreaking projects, particularly on AI and life sciences, where I have a particular interest.

I was probing you more about retail capital investment. We will often get big investments coming in, which may or may not materialise—and fingers crossed that they do—but it is more about retail investment. Things such as the enterprise investment scheme are not necessarily brilliantly configured for investment in life sciences research, for example. The limitations on size are not brilliant. I just wondered whether this was an area that you are likely to look at, but I will park that with you. I realise that you are not the Chancellor.

The 8.5% uplift in R&D funding was very welcome. I hope that you will not take this the wrong way, but given what we are debating today, a proportion of that is swallowed up in national insurance contributions—given that a large number will be going to research scientists and others. Do you have a number for what the dead-weight cost of that tax increase is? Are you getting representations from organisations that will be impacted, such as the Crick, where we were on Tuesday? The Crick employs 1,500 people and has a budget of £200 million or so. I would imagine that the NI cost to it is going to be more than £2 million. Have you had representations from those organisations, in the same way that we are all getting it from hospices and what have you, about whether you can help them?

Peter Kyle: The Budget was the first step forward when it came to stabilising university finances, which is the majority of funding that goes through our R&D budget. We will not be able to get to where we need to be to offer the security that the university sector needs—and to where we as a country need that to be—in one step.

That uplift is going to directly benefit. You have also seen tuition fees increase. We are working in tandem across Departments to do our bit to make sure that we can shore up the finances and the environment in which higher education and research facilities are operating.

We know that the Budget impacts different organisations in different ways. However, as I said, we have had the headline figure, but we are now in the process of getting down into the weeds of how the funding is going to impact different sectors and organisations as it filters through.

We want to make sure that this is not just an across-the-board uplift based on every award that was made in the last one, two or three years. We need to prioritise really ruthlessly to make sure that we are delivering in those sectors that have the biggest potential and in those research programmes that have the most impact. We are choosing as wisely as possible. That process is unfolding now, so it is not possible to say how it will impact different institutions.

Q13            Kit Malthouse: So you would be intending to put more money into areas that are impacted by the national insurance rise.

Peter Kyle: We are going to be investing in those areas that have the biggest impact in research potential.

Q14            Kit Malthouse: Sorry, but I thought that you were implying that you were going to look at what the impact of the national insurance rise was on, for example, the Crick and to say, “We will give you another 3 million quid, so that you do not have to cut your research budget”.

Peter Kyle: This is research-focused. Right across Government, we are supporting organisations in scientific communities in different ways, particularly in universities. As the Chancellor said at the Dispatch Box during the Budget, we cannot solve every problem in one go. In those key areas, you can see where we are investing and where we are able to unlock private sector partnership investment in digital infrastructure, for example, through the use of R&D budgets. You will see how we are partnering and leveraging. DSIT is now far more outward-facing—this is not a criticism of what went before—and is working in partnership, trying to design and use Government spending as wisely as possible to unlock private investment as much as possible.

Q15            Kit Malthouse: Forgive me, but that is not really what I was asking about. I understand that. What I am trying to get to is how much of the 8.5% is going straight back to the Treasury.

Peter Kyle: As I said, we have not allocated it yet.

Q16            Kit Malthouse: Will we be able to get an estimate of what that figure might be? Some of that number will be on existing research programmes, which you are continuing. Some of it will go to the Crick, which is a standard organisation. Some of it will be new. There must be an impact within the Department that is being assessed.

Peter Kyle: When you are talking about £13 billion of spending, and yet we have not allocated the 8.5% uplift, it is impossible to say which areas are going to get the uplift, if there is one, or are going to get greater investment. I am sure that it is something that we can return to, but you will see that R&D and life sciences in this country are in a good state and have a great potential ahead of them.

Kit Malthouse: As I said, there was lots to welcome—do not get me wrong. I am just trying to work out what the figure is.

Peter Kyle: No, I understand.

Q17            Adam Thompson: Secretary of State, coming back to the point that you made about moving towards a 10-year funding settlement, I just wondered whether you would comment on how that might affect research staff contracts and particularly productivity around research staff, given the issues that many research staff find with short-term contracts, meaning that they spend a lot of time looking for the next contract.

Peter Kyle: When we were putting together the programme of government, this is something that we heard time and time again. We know that three-year funding, for example, means that you spend the first year getting up and running, the second year doing, and the last 18 months being riven by insecurity about what happens next.

In certain circumstances, but not all, that is just not ideal in terms of getting the best talent, that talent feeling rooted and secure, and planning for the long term. It is not ideal when it comes to the potential for private sector investment getting involved in a project that they know will be delivering over the long term. We do not know yet. I would very much welcome any insights that the Committee has to offer in areas where we could maximise the potential for 10-year funding.

I would just say to the Committee that we will not be taking our foot off the accelerator when it comes to expectations for extending from one to three to 10-year funding programmes. They will be monitored and performance managed, and we will have, in fact, higher expectations of what can be delivered, simply because of the potential for leveraging talent and investment in those programmes.

Q18            Chair: During the visit to the Crick, we also heard how welcome the 10-year funding cycles would be. I think I heard an expectation that that would translate into greater security for early-career researchers.

Peter Kyle: I hope so.

Q19            Emily Darlington: It is nice to see you, Secretary of State. First of all, can I really welcome the 10-year R&D settlement? It was one that I was not successful in securing under the last Labour Government, but we argued for it vociferously, and it is really exciting in terms of efficiency and scientific discovery.

I want to link directly to mission delivery. You have already said that, while your Department is not the lead in any single mission, it is essential for every single mission. Like us, you have this cross-governmental role when it comes to R&D, so I wanted to understand—more broadly than just growth, but for each of those mission deliveries—how your Department is able to oversee the R&D spend in other Departments and how you are able to flex your own departmental spend in order to support those mission deliveries that are so essential.

Peter Kyle: That is such a good question, because all of us in this room have a passion for the potential of science and technology, and its achievements. In Government, of course, it is tenfold that, because there is a lot more that Government need to do in order to deliver for citizens up and down the country.

We have five missions and five mission boards. I sit on three of the five mission boards. In the last Budget, you may have missed it, but an R&D mission fund was created with £25 million. At the moment, we are figuring out the details on how to allocate. Patrick Vallance spoke passionately about this in its development. He and I believe that science and technology are, of course, recognised across all of Government and all Government Departments, but there are some singular challenges that are faced by those five missions, which have not been cracked by individual Departments over time.

With the relationship that DSIT has with stakeholders and with the scientific community that it funds through universities, and with the ability to bring together partnerships, could we take on and contribute to some of those singular challenges that have bedevilled Departments and that Governments of the past have faced? That is the purpose of the fund. I hope that we can show some successes, so that, perhaps, we can build on it into the future. Who knows?

My having a formal link in three of the five missions brings us into the room, but you will also see that there are work groups, workstreams and workshops already going on between DSIT and most Government Departments to try to figure out what that specific relationship looks like and, as we build the digital centre and restructure DSIT, how it can evolve into a resource from which Government Departments can draw down.

That is where I aspire for our Department to get to—not where we are beating down the door of Government Departments but where we have resources that other Government Departments cannot have, do not have access to internally and cannot easily access and buy off the shelf externally, and where, therefore, we are a desirable resource for other Departments to access.

Sarah Munby: We usually find that, in any particular area of research, you have a Department that might be funding, out of its own R&D money, more applied research, and you will have bits of DSIT money, for example through UKRI, that are going on some of the early-stage research. We want to make sure that that whole journey is joined up, so there are a whole series of official-led structures that try to make sure that that is working well. We usually find that that is pretty positive and collaborative, because it is absolutely in everybody’s interests to make sure that that spend is being used in a complementary way, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Q20            Emily Darlington: That is what I was trying to get to. Perhaps I can have a quick follow-up on a very specific bit of your funding, which leads to how we work together, but this is on a global scale. You are allocated a proportion of the spend in the official development assistance programme. What priorities do you have for that spend over the coming year? How do you see that funding that sits within DSIT developing in terms of our global role in science?

Peter Kyle: DSIT contributes to the global programme, the International Science Partnerships Fund. We will be maintaining support for that fund.[2] I have not yet made decisions on whether we adjust that funding, based on global trends and the priorities of this Government, but we certainly seek to leverage the very best of the British scientific community and put that to good global use, and that will continue. You will know that I have a background in international development as well. These are issues that I personally care very deeply about.

Sarah Munby: We would expect to refresh those priorities more formally as part of the upcoming SR2 process.

Q21            Chair: The spend on science that is outside the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is considerable, at about £7 billion. The Committee recently wrote to you to ask whether, as the champion for science, you could report to us on science spend across Government to enable us to better track and scrutinise it. You wrote back to say that you would look to do so, which we very much appreciate, but you did not give a timeline as to when you would be able to get back to us with an update on progress. Could I ask you to give that now?

Peter Kyle: You are right that I, and we, are the champion of science across Government, but the Treasury is the champion of money across Government and is the Department that holds the data that you are after. We do not hold the granular data on individual spending, but what we are trying to do in response to your letter, in order to be as constructive as possible, is to figure out how DSIT can work with the Treasury, so that we can make sure that your Committee has the information that it needs, whether it comes via the Treasury or via my Department.

Q22            Chair: How quickly would you expect to make progress on that?

Peter Kyle: In due course.

Q23            Dr Sullivan: Looking at developing growth and all those sorts of things, we need people with the skills, and a pipeline for science. You said that you sit on the three boards. How are we identifying the skill gaps but also inspiring youngsters to choose science with practical skills?

Peter Kyle: It is a really broad question. Firstly, we are working very closely with the Department for Education, which is establishing Skills England at the moment. It is also undertaking the largest review for a generation of the national curriculum for secondary education. DSIT is integral to those reviews. We are feeding in as much as possible. I have to say that the Department for Education has been very open-hearted in the way that it has been engaging with us on that. We want to make sure that the voice of science is heard loud and clear.

Popularising science is something that successive Governments have struggled with. Sometimes it is actions that happen outside Government that capture people’s imagination. We have had conversations about how we can raise the profile of science. If you look at the latest round of Nobel prizes, we are really fortunate to have two British-born scientists, one of whom—Sir Demis Hassabis—is still living, working and leading science in a really aspirational way here in the UK. It was a good moment for science to see that, and it is one that certainly will persist.

I am very open-minded as to how Government play a role in inspiring generations of young people by science. It is just that, when you say the words “Government” and “inspire”, they are not often words that sit comfortably in the same sentence, but I am very open-minded.

Another thing that I have been trying to do is meet some of the social media influencers who are inspiring. There is a schoolteacher who is rapping science, whom I have met and been in touch with, and who has hundreds of thousands of young followers. These are not people who we need to ask to come on to our turf and start explaining nerdy policy in our language, but we need to be as available as possible to explain ourselves and to fit our information into terms for which they are outstanding communicators.

Q24            George Freeman: There was a thing in DfE called the future skills unit. As Minister of State, I was quite frustrated, because, when you went to clusters around the country and asked, “What is holding you back?” whether it is the Glasgow space cluster or the Teesside hydrogen cluster, the answer very often was a lack of skilled staff coming through the system. When I asked the DfE future skills unit, it was more of a bottom-up look at the curriculum. It seemed that there was a gap between the regional R&D clusters and the skills. I leave this with you but, in the new wiring of Whitehall, it will be an issue that we keep returning to.

Peter Kyle: I hear you. I will take it back.

Chair: Everybody on this Committee is particularly keen to champion science and its positive influence, and to engage with young people and people of all ages. Given the change and the growing importance of science and technology in everybody’s lives, we will be following closely how the Government can reflect and build on that, and equip everyone with the skills that they need.

Q25            Adam Thompson: I ask this next question as the MP for Erewash, a constituency in the east midlands, which is consistently the worst-funded region in this space. We have a lot of start-ups and scale-up businesses in my constituency. How are we going to improve the environment and landscape for start-ups and scale-ups?

Peter Kyle: We know that there is something missing in our investment landscape. Quite often, I hear the general statement that we are not good at it, so let us be really proud about what we are really good at. We are really good at starting up. We have more start-ups per head of population that anyone on the continent of Europe. We are consistently near the top of the league globally on start-ups.

There is a challenge that our economy faces, which is that, from start-up to scale-up, and then for the higher end of scale-up, it dwindles. The lack of capital available in the economy is clearly a challenge. We are a global economy. We are, quite rightly, an outward-facing trading nation. That means that we have to compete and think globally. When you have the potential for businesses and innovators to accept the sorts of timelines that go with this very significant investment that can come from Silicon Valley, it is sometimes just too tempting for them to ignore. It might feel irresponsible for them to ignore it, because they might miss out domestically.

We are good at start-ups and, if there is anything about your area that I need to know about, I am all ears. The Chancellor is carrying on the Mansion House process that was started by Jeremy Hunt when he was Chancellor, but we have accelerated the programme of reform for pensions. We know that we need to get capital into our economy. We know that that capital needs to be diverted towards areas of growth that support innovation and get it out into the economy as quickly as possible. The Chancellor has moved really swiftly on that and that is something where we will be noticing a difference rapidly.

There are other barriers to innovation and upskilling. One thing that has been driving people away is the regulatory landscape here, which can sometimes be too burdensome. Having set up the Regulatory Innovation Office in DSIT, where we have an innovation that aligns with the priorities of the nation, we want to make sure that the regulators are taking on some of the burden of compliance and that we are expediting it safely through that regulatory process, so that innovators, right at the point where we need them to be commercialising, are not so bogged down with compliance that they just give up and go elsewhere for it.

There are lots of things that we can do—it is not just investment—in order to become the partner that people need. Just a moment ago, Mr Freeman was talking about a sense of partnership. When I go and meet all these innovators, in the higher education private sector or elsewhere, everything is partnership-based. Partners, partnerships and clusters are so commonplace up and down the country. When you ask about what the role of Government has been in their journey, the conversation usually stops or slows, and eyes go down to the floor or roll round the room. It is always a story of planning problems, regulatory problems or funding problems, or that it has taken too long to get what it takes.

Perhaps naively—and I do not mind being called a utopian—I hope that this Government, over the decade of national renewal on which we stood at the last election, can get to the point where there are innovators out there who see Government as a partner towards getting their innovation out into the economy and benefiting the health and wealth of our nation, rather than always being the thing that holds people back.

Q26            Adam Thompson: The point that you made about start-ups is really important. We are good at that. Focusing on scale-ups, though, I have had a lot of local small businesses saying, “We struggle with scale-up and often have to turn abroad for funding”. How are we going to work on that scale-up aspect?

Peter Kyle: We have to tackle the investment landscape. Our economy is under-capitalised. I have even had senior figures from the London stock exchange coming and explaining where the issues are. It will be very hard for us to compete in terms of the overall capital at the disposal of some investors and venture capitalists when it comes to the speed with which Silicon Valley VCs invest, but we can offer other incentives to stay as well.

We certainly are looking very closely at how we can get more capital into the sector and make sure that we incentivise the investment landscape as much as possible. The Treasury is currently looking at this. DSIT is looking and working with the Treasury to see how we can get that sector more mature.

Through the rounds of investment that companies need, there are fewer and fewer VCs and other sources of finance that are available here, so everyone ends up going to the same few, and it becomes more and more burdensome. Because there are fewer of them, the risk profile gets higher with each investment. That is a problem that Government cannot solve on their own, but we can create the economic landscape into the future that can try to tackle it.

Where we have the innovation that the UK Government and regulatory landscape is incentivising to stay here, and where there is the first for innovation to be put to use within Britain, then hopefully the investors and VCs will come and see their role as landing here, investing here and domiciling here into the future. That is certainly what we are working towards.

Q27            Adam Thompson: Tying into everything you have just said, Secretary of State, skills, as we know, sits within the Department for Education, and you have said before that the decisions on those talent visas lie with the Home Office. We have touched on it a little bit, but can we commit definitely to a cross‑Government approach there and can we work closely with the Home Office to make sure that those talented international people are coming over here and focusing their talents in the British economy?

Peter Kyle: Britain is the best place in the world to come and put your scientific skills to use. You will be rewarded for it, you will be celebrated for it, and you will find a great environment to work in.

I do not underplay or downplay the challenge that the Home Secretary has in dealing with the overall migration challenge the country faces, but she is also engaging fully with Departments about the specific sectoral opportunities that exist out there as she makes those tough decisions going forward.

Q28            Adam Thompson: How will the Government’s review of technology differ from the previous review that was done on proinnovation regulation of technologies? Will the Responsible Technology Adoption Unit play a role in delivering on its findings?

Peter Kyle: Do you want to take that, because it is comparing two that I was not involved in?

Sarah Munby: The previous GCSA review was specifically about regulation. This is much more about what it would take to get the technology fully adopted, so not coming at the lens that the issue is necessarily regulation. Indeed, we know that, for a lot of the well established technologies, the reason that a small business does not for example adopt a CRM system is not a regulatory issue. There are a whole series of other issues that are preventing people from taking technology up.

It is starting at that end of the spectrum. What is the problem? What would it take for a set of interventions to really make a difference to the problem the Secretary of State talked about earlier in this session around technology adoption?

Of course, it will suck out and adopt all the wisdom of that previous review. It is not going to be looking again at that. DSIT officials from the team that you mentioned and others are very closely involved in the work of that review.

Q29            Chair: Just to pick up on the points that Adam was raising there, we took evidence from Make UK, Startup Coalition and the Royal Society, which all pointed to skills being a key barrier to scaling up and maintaining our position in world‑leading research.

We clearly need to look at skills, both from the point of view of the curriculum review and driving home‑based skills, and in terms of access to skills from the global talent base. As Adam talked about, we hope that that is something that the Government are looking at on a cross‑governmental basis, and that you will be able to come back to us with progress in that area.

There is another point I just wanted to ask you directly, Secretary of State. Adam talked about some of the regional aspects of growth. That is a huge opportunity to get growth levels across our country to be the same as we have, say, in the greater south-east. The previous Government did make commitments around targeting the level of R&D spend outside of the greater south-east and the growth in that level. Can I ask if you will be looking at it on a regional basis yourselves, or if you are looking at it from different perspectives? You talked about priorities earlier.

Peter Kyle: I am. Of course, yes, we will be continuing to look at the regional aspects and also committing to those targets. For me, we have several opportunities going forwards. When you see what the new DSIT is doing and the way that we are restructuring DSIT, we are going to be active in diffusing technology into the economy. We are going to be using technology and data in a far more strident way to make sure that we can get the digital transformation of Government and the relationships citizens have.

That means we have to have a set of reform principles that we apply, and one of those has to be that every citizen across the United Kingdom has access to and benefits equally from this latest reform the Government will be undertaking.

For example, does technology level up opportunity for individuals around the country? Is equity built in from the outset? We know full well that it is not at the moment, and we will be speaking more in the coming weeks and coming period about digital inclusion. This is something that I care very deeply about and that Chris Bryant will be leading on. We will have some announcements in due course on it, but these are principles that have to be baked in from the absolute outset in order to get it right.

I know that you have championed diversity in science, Madam Chair. I know that there is a long way to go, and I would say the challenge extends beyond science and goes into the technology sector. If you allow me one moment to reflect, I had a pretty difficult pathway through education myself and my journey getting into university was not a smooth one. Reflecting back on it, it was quite obvious that no individual said that people from my background should not go to university—“Therefore he is rejected”—but the system itself was very, very clever at diverting people like me away from it. It was only through persistence in going back to secondary school at the age of 25 that I got in.

I see something that is not dissimilar within parts of science and technology today, where every organisation will have programmes. All organisations and individuals care quite deeply about diversity in their organisations, but the system overall is pretty good at diverting some people from certain backgrounds with other characteristics away from their organisations and sectors. It is something that we and certainly some of those sectors need to reflect on.

Chair: I think the whole Committee shares my pleasure in hearing that commitment. Every member of this Committee has a background or connection with science and engineering, and I am very pleased that we have women on this Committee who have huge experience, who can act as role models in that regard, and who all share and will be scrutinising your commitment to increasing diversity.

We talked already about the digital centre of Government, which is a significant change in DSIT’s remit and a significant part of the Government’s ambition. I am going to ask Josh to kick us off with inquiries in that regard.

Q30            Josh Simons: As you know, Secretary of State, I am extremely excited about this agenda and element of DSIT’s new remit. I wanted to ask about some of the specifics on what the digital centre of Government means and how we can judge how it is going. The first question is about measurement. How will you, and how should the Committee and mostly important the public, judge and measure what success looks like in terms of that aspect of DSIT’s role?

Peter Kyle: The digital centre is now quite publicly spoken about and quite widely known. What is not known is that I have also set up a delivery unit within DSIT, because DSIT has never been a delivery Department before in that sense. We will be delivering services to citizens, which you will see next year.

We are now responsible for gov.uk and One Login. Further services are being onboarded into that at regular intervals now. Each time they do so it drives efficiencies throughout Government, but crucially it makes life so much easier for citizens and people when they try to access Government services. The One Login app is very successful. Recognition of gov.uk is ubiquitous throughout Britain, and we want to build on those brands, which you will see next year.

The delivery unit is now up and running, and we are in the process of having a dashboard, you will be pleased to hear, that I can access, as Secretary of State, for all the priority areas that I intend to deliver on into the future.

I will try to find a way that is appropriate for the Committee to be updated in a more regular way on the delivery of individual programmes, because there are going to be a lot of programmes. There are the three reports, or the two reports and one action plan. Coming up into the new year you are going to see a series of announcements as well.

It is incredibly important for me as Secretary of State to feel as connected to that delivery as possible. It is true that, when you become Secretary of State, you feel quite distant from the frontline of delivery. I want to close that gap as much as I possibly can, in the way that I am accessible in doing the job but also that I have the metrics with which I can update almost daily and weekly the progress for those key priorities.

Citizens will notice that Government is coming closer to them in the coming year. You will be able to demonstrably see actions within Government, which are leading to efficiencies, effectiveness and tackling fraud across Government. These are things for which you can hold me personally and my Department to account.

Q31            Dr Sullivan: My experience in Kent county council with some of the dashboards and scorecards we were presented with is that they showed everything as absolutely rosy, but it is not and it was not. You mentioned the touchpoint with reality, in the sense of whether things are getting better or feeling better. How will we be able to share those milestones alongside the KPIs?

Peter Kyle: I have a slight advantage because I am setting it up for the first time, so it will be modelled really on what I have asked for specifically, which is granular information on the progress of projects and priorities for the Department. Sarah and I speak about this quite often. We are trying to make sure we get it right.

I am not going to be doing all of this in public because I want to find areas of underperformance and give it the support it needs to get up to speed. I want to find areas that are excelling and make sure that the talent that drives success is rewarded appropriately. That will be the ethos for this Department.

DSIT has never in its 18-month to two-year existence had to think about people and citizens, because it has always been broadly a funding body. Now DSIT thinks very, very much about the citizen experience. Just last week on a joint visit to St Thomas’, we looked at scanning equipment that was having a profound impact on cancer patients. That is a joint project funded by UKRI, which is now having a profound impact on the frontline of health and radiography in this country.

I want to make sure that the Department itself thinks of the citizen experience as it executes its daily business in all parts of DSIT, not just in those one-project areas.

Q32            Martin Wrigley: It is nice to meet you. It sounds like a fantastic, fascinating Department that you run, and I cannot imagine how you pick that up and get into that in five months, so that is amazing. I have a few practical questions, looking at some of the things in the Data (Use and Access) Bill—I have four. How ready are you for what I understand is the review of the adequacy decision of data transport between the UK and EU, which is due in June next year? How ready are we for that review?

Peter Kyle: We are ready for the review. The relationship that I established in the first fortnight or couple of weeks of coming into office with the European Commission is one that I welcomed. We have had several conversations now from my position with the relevant commissioner in the European Union, and we have reached a pretty good place on this. There will be announcements coming up. They have their processes that they need to go through and discretion is very important to them. We have our processes to go through and discretion is important to us.

Of course, the legislative programme means that there are certain things we can or cannot guarantee, because the EU wants to see legislation passed before meeting the criteria they have. But I am very content with the place that we have landed in the relationship with them.

Q33            Martin Wrigley: Excellent, that sounds good. Looking at the changes that you are proposing for the information for the ICO, how are you ensuring that it retains the full levels of independence that it requires to keep the adequacy levels?

Peter Kyle: I am completely content, simply because the Information Commissioner himself has fully endorsed the changes that we have made and the direction of travel that we have had. We have independence baked into that particular office.

We also have an Information Commissioner who speaks very candidly, as you will see when you have him before the Committee at any point. I do not think that there is any chance that that commissioner or commission are going to in any way be pushed around by Government.

Martin Wrigley: There are a couple of other things in the Bill, including the NAU—the map of everything that is underground.

Sarah Munby: It is the NUAR—national underground asset register.

Q34            Martin Wrigley: Fantastic. I come from a local council background, where we have literally, in the past three months, had to change the idea of putting trees in the pedestrianised area of the street because they suddenly found pipes underneath. How do you deal with the accuracy of the data, because the data as presented is not reality? In the descriptions I can see lots of requirements to lodge data, but no processes for updating and judging the accuracy of the data that is in there. Is there anything there to deal with that?

Peter Kyle: The fact that we stood on a prospectus and manifesto based on a decade of national renewal has given licence to people like me—and thank you for your words at the beginning; I am having the time of my life in this job. It gives licence to people like me to undertake programmes that are going to take quite a long time to come to fruition. The national data library is another example of it, but that should not stop us starting now.

For me, where there is something that I am unlikely to be in position as Secretary of State for when it comes to fruition, that means I just want to get it started more quickly and lay the foundations for it, rather than seeing it as something to kick into the long grass.

The map that you are referring to is going to take a long time to get right, but the fact is that we have not had it for 200 years. The majority of roadworks that blight people’s and community’s lives are not actually doing. They are just exploring in order to know what is underground so they can start the work that needs to happen. This has gone on for far too long.

We all see this as constituency MPs. I did a visit to Worthing, where a heat network is being installed at the moment, which is staggering. They are going to have a huge heat exchange on top of a car park. The heat network is going through the city and heating public buildings, and is soon to be heating streets and neighbourhoods too. They discovered, unexpectedly, when they were digging one street up, that there was very thick, very significant live electric wiring, which they felt was multiple decades old. After several weeks of inquiry they still could not say where it started or where it ended. They have no idea what this is powering.

It is pretty extraordinary to know that we live in a country where that kind of infrastructure is under our feet, but nobody understands what on earth it is there for. It will take time, but we will make as much progress as possible as swiftly as we can.

Martin Wrigley: I am delighted that you have started that, because that is long overdue, like you say. That has been a blight on most of our lives for a long, long time.

Chair: When I was working at Ofcom in 2007, we tried to do that just for telecoms infrastructure. To your point, Martin, the lack of accurate data was such that we decided we could not do it.

Q35            Martin Wrigley: When I first started my professional career, we tried to do that for telephone lines for one customer, but we could not even do that, because they did not know what they were paying for. They were paying the bills but they did not know where these phones were.

My final question is about the words in the Bill about the determination of information standards in the NHS. Again, it is not to be underestimated. I saw 15 different definitions for one TLA that was used in terms of whether people turned up for their appointment or left, or whatever they did.

There are words in there, but the process is yet to be described, perhaps. How does that go forward to become useful, in terms of not only the nature of the information but also the exchange of information within the NHS? Is this again, like the NUAR, something that is a start?

Peter Kyle: We anticipate some fairly rapid movement here. The use of data in the NHS is a really challenging issue. There are a lot of legacy systems. Different health trusts, primary care settings and individual hospitals are using different data being stored in different ways, which often are not interoperable within the same health trust, let alone between health trusts.

We need to put information in the hands of citizens. We need to make sure that doctors have access to as much information as possible, simply because patients need that. It delivers better health outcomes.

Somebody in my private office—congratulations to her—has just become pregnant, but the maternity card that she has to carry around is a physical card, which comes through the post. She then has to put manually on it, in writing, her national insurance number and the rest of her details, and she has to carry this yellow bit of card around with her all the time so that maternity nurses can update in writing what is happening and the progress with her pregnancy.

Should she be somewhere and need to have some kind of medical attention or go into early labour, if she does not have that card with her, there is no way of accessing the information that medical professionals have been collating about her pregnancy. This is absurd. It is utterly absurd that we still live in this world. These are the issues that the data Bill seeks to start to modernise.

There are a couple of areas to mention. First, the spread of innovation through the NHS is now a Secretary of State level responsibility. That is important because we need to work at it. The Office for Life Sciences is chaired jointly between me and the Health Secretary. We have met and interacted with it jointly. You will see that the most advanced work that DSIT has with another Government Department is health.

The data Bill itself will require common frameworks and use of data, absolutely appropriately, for the first time, but it will also require the sharing of data within existing GDPR regulations. We will never dilute the need for safety, privacy and respect for individuals’ data, but we do need it to serve people better, and that means the NHS has to get serious about the way it shares data within the NHS itself.

The data Bill will put quite strident requirements for it. It is long overdue, and the Health Secretary, the Department of Health and the NHS will have to implement these requirements. The Bill stipulates outcomes. They are going to have to get cracking pretty soon with delivering on it, not just because of the Bill but because this is how they need to move forward to serve patients in a way that is fit for the 21st century.

Chair: Data is a key area of so much of what your Department is doing and what we are looking at. There is a lot of interest.

Q36            Emily Darlington: Just to follow up on that point, you are right that we have to get the NHS right, but if we are serious about our ambitions around health and social care, and particularly other support that may be cross-governmental, how are you futureproofing that so the NHS and, let us say, a local authority on the social care side would be able to share data in order to best support that?

What is your future map looking like in terms of how that data sharing between public authorities and Government Departments happens around the individual, while protecting their data?

Peter Kyle: You just perfectly described the need for the national data library, which is in the scoping phase now. This is going to take a long time to deliver, but we are expediting it as quickly as we can. It is being led by Maggie Jones, who is our outstanding Minister from the House of Lords.

Over time, all Government data from central Government, public services, local government, the regions and the nations will have to be shared in a way that is interoperable and standardised, so that it can safely be used, respecting people’s privacy, and collated between Government Departments where necessary, but stored in such a way that it can be accessed for research purposes—again, safely, respecting privacy and anonymised—so that we can make sure that we are fully capitalising on the potential that data has to transform the scientific understanding of medicine in the 21st century and the digital age.

If we do that, it has the benefit of tackling the challenge you have just set out about interoperability. On top of that, it means that we can use and turbo-charge the British scientific community and access to data from within our country, which can provide a scientific resource that no other country can have, and when used wisely, securely, can lead to the kind of medical leaps and bounds that the potential for British science has.

That is why it is worth starting it now. The national data library is in its scoping phase now, and into the new year you will start to hear more specifics about how we move forward.

Q37            Dr Gardner: I just want to lead on the aspects of the Data (Use and Access) Bill, and this links back to your wanting to really transform the lives of citizens and make it easier. One aspect of that is digital identity. I am chair of the APPG on digital identity—so I ought to mention that—and I met an amazing officer from the office of digital identity and attributes, who was really excited about the potential transformational change of having this identity verification system going through.

At the moment, it is only accessing HMRC, the Welsh Revenue Authority and Revenue Scotland. Are there any plans to broaden that to other Government Departments, for example DVLA, because we know that it used to have access to the gov.uk verify system? Driving licences are a de facto identity document, but also one of the most used ones for fraud. Trying to ensure that citizens are able to verify their identity safely, protecting their data and protecting them from fraud and scams, is very important. Are you planning to broaden this out across all Government Departments?

Peter Kyle: One Login requires the verification app, which has now been downloaded, I believe, 7 million times.[3] That means that people can log into One Login safely and securely. They will know that the data they share and the interactions they have with Government services will be secure. We can know as a Government that the people accessing the services are the people they say they are. That is absolutely essential.

As services onboard into gov.uk and One Login, then of course access to those services will widen. HMRC is in the process of onboarding. DVLA is in the process of onboarding into One Login and, again, will benefit from all those services. It also drives quite considerable efficiency savings when Government organisations onboard into it. There is a capital outlay, but the savings start in-year, so there is a lot of incentive to doing so. So yes, there will be. The data Bill also, do not forget, provides the legal framework for the private issuance of digital ID.

Dr Gardner: Yes, I was about to ask.

Peter Kyle: Do you want me to carry on talking?

Dr Gardner: Carry on, yes.

Peter Kyle: Stop me if I am not framing the question in the way you had hoped. The Bill will provide the legal framework for private sector provision of digital ID. That is a market for which there is considerable demand. We are one of the very few advanced economies that do not allow digital ID to be provided by the private sector, backed up by the Government. There will be a kitemark issued by the Government for those who adhere to all the standards that we would expect.

We believe the market for that could reach £800 million,[4] but crucially there are a lot of people, young people in particular, who need digital ID services, for example if they are renting or want to go out to a bar. There is lots of very obvious demand for it. The combination of One Login for accessing digital services, the private provision of digital ID and outright digital ID services takes us a big step forward.

Q38            Dr Gardner: They will be signed up to the trust framework, but will these private providers have access to the same data, such as DVLA data, as One Login? Where are they going to get their data from?

Peter Kyle: Forgive me if it is too technical to go into all the detail, but there is the mechanism for Government, for secure identification purposes, simply to guarantee that the person is the person they say they are. But we are not involved in the provision of digital ID services. We do need to make sure that national standards are upheld, and that the person who is being issued with a digital ID is a British citizen who is able to access services in the UK.

Dr Gardner: We want to have a simpler system where everybody does not have to have a thousand apps for digital verification on their phone. That is the point I was trying to get at.

Q39            Chair: When will I have access to this digital ID?

Peter Kyle: It depends on the Houses of Parliament. Now—

Chair: That was supposed to be a brief question.

Peter Kyle: If you can have a word with the colleagues in the House of Lords who have just tabled 230 amendments to it, then we can certainly expedite it through Parliament as quickly as possible.

Q40            Chair: Are you saying that as soon as this Act has passed, every British citizen will be able to access a digital ID if they want one?

Peter Kyle: Via the private sector, yes.

Q41            Josh Simons: I have a quick follow-up on the very exciting-sounding national data library. Is that data purely for research purposes, or, given the value and interesting and helpful patterns that you might find in it, is there the possibility that it can be used for delivery purposes in the future?

Peter Kyle: The data library is going through its scoping phase now. We will consult very extensively as we move every step forward. I am very, very aware that data is a sensitive issue, which is why my language has been very measured about reassuring the public that privacy and safety have to be baked in from the outset. We have to not just say that it will be—we have to demonstrate to the public and people that their data will be kept safe and secure, and that they are in control of their data.

As we move forward, at each step of the way we will need to take the public with us, because if we lose public confidence we will not be able to achieve things. We learned that with GM crops in previous generations. We understand what it is like when Government lose the argument with the public, even when there might be solid scientific evidence for it. We are very mindful of that.

The crucial element now is for scientific purposes for the national data library. But let us not confuse that with what Government Departments should already be doing. We are way behind a couple of other countries, but what frustrates me is not when we get behind other countries; it is when we get behind what we are capable of as a Government and a country. The NHS has a really good app in many ways, but it can get a lot better. We could be doing a lot more and showing much more ambition about getting Government into people’s pockets.

As a progressive politician, this is personal for me as well. I care passionately about the welfare state, but the bigger the gap between the way people interact with the welfare state and the way they interact with banking, commerce and shopping services in the rest of their lives, the more vulnerable our welfare state is.

There are lots of reasons why we should be reforming and modernising our state, and in the digital age, that has to fully integrate digital technology. There is no reason why you have to wait for a data library before doing that, because Government Departments should now be doing so with enthusiasm—not because reformers like myself go on about reform, but because every citizen of our country wants the Government to be accessible. They want to be empowered with information and they want to have greater control over their lives, in a way that reflects how they lead their lives today. Too often, citizens have to fit in with public services and Government, when, really, we should be in the business of fitting in with people’s lives.

Q42            Chair: You have powerfully set out the prize of digital transformation—which is a progressive prize—as you champion citizens, their data, their control of their lives and Government in their pocket. Before we move on to artificial intelligence, I want to touch briefly on a point that has not been raised much, which is about the workforce issues, particularly in the civil service. In a private session on procurement, we heard the phrase, “There has been no big, successful public IT procurement project”. We also heard from the TUC about the importance of involving the workforce.

As an engineer and technologist myself, technology is not diffused unless those who are using it are demanding it. How are you working with the civil service across Government to create demand for this digital transformation? I note that the advisory board that you set up on public service transformation, led by Martha Lane Fox, does not include any representation from the trade unions. I wondered if that was perhaps a gap.

Peter Kyle: It might be a gap; I am happy to look at it. If you see areas that I can be doing better on or may have overlooked, I will never be defensive about that.

I mentioned the inter-ministerial group before. The first thing we did back in July was put a moratorium on all non-critical digital spend across Government of more than £1 million. That had to be referred in, so that we could check that it conformed to the standards and the priorities that this Government have. We are trying to get a grip on digital procurement and digital investment across Government, to co-ordinate it, and to make sure that it is taking account of the needs we have already spoken about today.

The second aspect is the capacity of the digital centre. I believe that when you see the scope and scale of what we have created, it is already attracting people who have previously not been attracted to working for Government, for lots of different reasons: the scale of what we are capable of doing, the scale of the ambition we have as a Government, and our willingness in certain circumstances to remunerate in ways that recognise the highly skilled nature of it. It would be good to have your support as a Committee when the decisions I have to take in certain regards have to be made.

This sounds counterintuitive, but it is not: there are a lot of people in the tech sector who are highly remunerated, highly qualified and very highly skilled. They care very deeply about public service but have never really had the ability to express it before or feel the pathway into it. I hope the digital centre and the AI Safety Institute—which we might come to—are doing work of a quality and calibre that can actually attract that kind of talent into it.

I acknowledge that, too often, Government Departments buy off the shelf in a way that means the data is locked into contracts that are too long; the data is not interoperable between Government Departments and gets locked away; and it becomes very difficult to move away from certain systems at the other end. I hope at some point that we can have a specific conversation about legacy systems, because they are blighting our ability to get our Government to where they need to be. That is a very major problem. It is a capital problem as well as a technical problem. It is also a national security problem that we face.

Ultimately, you will see that a lot of the areas that we will be talking about into the future are being designed in-house, either with the digital centre, with the support of the digital centre, or within specific capabilities that are coming into public services. That is exemplified by the work of gov.uk, One Login and some of the other areas that we are trialling within the civil service at the moment—trying to bring digital technology and AI in, all of which is designed in-house to a standard that easily matches what is available out there. That is a credit to the civil service officials, and the creativity and expertise of people who are brought into Government.

Chair: That is very good to hear.

Q43            Dr Gardner: Thank you for mentioning legacy systems; they are a bugbear of mine. In your opening speech, I might have misheard, but I think you referenced the AI action plan, and then you said, “But I call it the reform plan”. That pricked my ears up. Could you explain that?

Peter Kyle: Sorry, I should have made it clearer. I commissioned three reports the week I came into office. The first is the AI action plan, which is all about action.

As for the two other reports, the digital state of the state is a review that will be reporting in the forthcoming period on every Government Department, its capabilities and the digital skills that exist within it. It is going to shine a light on the digital capacity of each Government Department. That is the second report.

The third is on the structure of the digital centre and how it relates to its ability to deliver. The action plans and the policies I am announcing give purpose, but we need to have the structure that matches the purpose, so I commissioned a third review, which is into the digital centre itself.

Two reviews are about reform of the state. The first one I mentioned—the AI action plan, led by Matt Clifford—is about society more broadly, our capacity to meet and exploit the AI potential that we have as a country, and how Government have agency to help the country get there.

Q44            Dr Gardner: I am so glad I checked. I thought you were trying to reform AI. I thought, “Go for it”. Talking of which, the AI Bill or AI safety Bill was originally suggested by the prior Government, and very focused on LLMs at that point. You have reiterated in the King’s Speech that that is happening, a very tightly focused bit of legislation, and that it will reduce current regulatory uncertainty. What would be the key components of the upcoming AI Bill?

Peter Kyle: To clarify, the previous Government had a voluntary code. I praise the previous Government for establishing the AI Safety Institute. The Prime Minister of the time, Rishi Sunak, did our country good by establishing that, but also contributed towards a global good, because the expertise that has emerged from the AI Safety Institute is leading the way on understanding safety. I give absolute credit to the people who are driving that institute, because the institute itself is delivering safety work that is keeping up with the conceptual work of the frontier labs themselves. That is quite a feat and something we should have national pride in.

When you think of the power of the emerging technology of frontier AI—we are talking about frontier AI, not general-purpose AI—and when you see the capacity and the potency of that technology, the time has come to put it on a statutory footing. Let me be very clear about this: I am not seeking to disrupt the settled regulatory levels that exist by the voluntary code.[5] I am not changing the voluntary code itself; I am merely putting it on to a statutory footing.

When people understand in more detail the potency and capacity of some of the emerging technology out there that is coming, I do not think any of us as individuals could go on TV and justify why, when we have a technology of this power to do great good for our country but also to pose some quite specific challenges for our country, we should leave such power as a voluntary code among the companies themselves.

Let me be clear—because it is incredibly important to the sector, which might be listening—that I am not disrupting the regulatory level we have reached through the voluntary code. I will merely be enshrining that code on to a statutory footing and doing a second thing, which is making the safety institute an arm’s-length body, so that the sector itself and the country can see that we have a safety capacity in our country that will not get drawn into the rough and tumble of politics and will not have games played with it by any Minister of the day, including me.

It will have a long-term future with a long-term, clear set of objectives set in statute, and the ability to work with and alongside those frontier labs to make sure that their models continue to innovate and continue to lead the world. We need those models developed in America and the UK under liberal democracies to get there first, but in a way where we can have safety baked in at the outset.

Q45            Dr Gardner: My second question looks at how the Regulatory Innovation Office, the AI Safety Institute, which is going to become statutory, and ARIA evaluate developing technologies and how they plan to interact. There is a fourth strand on that. All of those are looking at development and getting the innovations into deployment, but I seriously worry about the lack of interest and focus on post-deployment monitoring and control. We know the MHRA has post-market surveillance, but a lot of the liability falls on the providers, particularly within healthcare.

To sum up, how will RIO, the AI Safety Institute and ARIA interact? Also, how will you ensure that we monitor post-deployment in any work that you do?

Peter Kyle: Those individual organisations will not interact. The AI Safety Institute needs to have independence to focus entirely on predeployment safety issues in the most conceptual way. You raise a really interesting point on post-deployment. I want to reassure people about post-deployment, where the regulators have power and where they do not. We have tasked every regulator with doing an assessment on how non-frontier AI is going to impact the sectors they regulate. That includes every regulator across society and the economy. My Department is providing funding where needed. If there is a capacity issue within an individual regulator that may not have the digital skills to even do the assessment, we will work with it to make sure that that assessment can be done.[6]

Pre-deployment testing by the AI Safety Institute makes sure that all the issues you can imagine are taken care of before deployment at its most frontier and conceptual level. Let me pay tribute to those organisations that have established relationships that are extremely commercially sensitive, which we fully respect, and work with them to make sure that they are made aware of any safety issues. They are able to take advantage of that before deployment.

Once technology is deployed, it becomes the responsibility of every regulator to make sure that the implications of AI in the sectors are accounted for. That work is ongoing. Let us be really clear about the technology we are talking about: AI is a general-purpose technology that will bring productivity tools to every office in the land at some point in the near future. It is going to be used by radiography departments to get sharper and more precise scans done, so we can get to disease earlier. It is going to impact how we as households heat ourselves, and use and consume energy and electricity. It is going to make sure that the National Grid is powered and deployed in a much more efficient and effective way.

Because it is a general-purpose technology, it is therefore going to impact all areas of society, which is why I do not want us to tumble into a specific piece of AI legislation that tries to name every possible use of it and then gets us bogged down into over-regulating based on lots of aspects of it. I am very closely monitoring how the regulatory landscape evolves over time to see how we can give a soft landing to innovations that land in society and our economy—so we do not stifle them—but also have the ability to update them over time so that they keep up and everybody has the powers they need in order to shape it.

Dr Gardner: That is a point well made, but as you scale up, harms can also scale up. There is a handover between one type of regulator within a sector that will monitor the development and the ones that monitor its use. Remember that AI is a changing technology. Within the health sector, you will have MHRA, which does the medical regulatory and the development; that will hand over to service delivery, which is CQC. At that point, who is in charge of what? How are those things monitored? I just make the comment to you that sometimes there are little glitches and gaps in that process of handover between regulators.

Chair: I suggest that the Secretary of State could write to us on that.

Q46            Dr Gardner: Do you agree with Lord Vallance in his previous role as chief scientific adviser that this Committee should “Leave ARIA alone and let them get on with it”?

Peter Kyle: As a rule of thumb, I always agree with what the Ministers in my team have to say, although thankfully I am not accountable for what they say before they become Ministers in my Department. The general point that he was making is a valid one. ARIA is set up for a very specific purpose, and that is to do high-risk investments. All of us, whether in Parliament or Government, are not usually comfortable with risk. That is something I am very aware of. There have been several occasions when I, as Secretary of State sitting with outstanding officials, have had to have conversations about risk and my willingness personally to shoulder it, in order to encourage officials to go away and not be hindered by having to look out for any potential handling issues as some of the areas make it out into society.

Let me give you an example. On gov.uk we recently launched a chatbot, trialled with businesses in beta form. This is a very un‑government thing to do, because we all know what happens when you let loose an early-design phase chatbot on society. It comes up with some pretty crazy results in certain circumstances, and there are people out there who are very well trained to know how to get chatbots to say and do pretty crazy things.

The advice that came to me in its first iteration was for me to keep as far away from it as possible, but in fact it was very important for me to explain to civil servants why I wanted to be absolutely associated with it, launch it personally and be filmed interacting with it. Okay, it did speak French at one point, but at some point the efficiency gains it will be able to deliver are going to be extraordinary, because through that gateway it has access to 700,000 websites. It sometimes takes people seven hours—and in some cases days—to get the information from Government if you want to set a business up in a specific area and understand the legal implications of hiring staff. We can get that down to seven minutes through those interactions with that chatbot.

I want to own the risk so that we can be a Government who better reflect the way that technology is developed out there in society. Otherwise, we are never going to get to the point where we can keep up with the people out there who are innovating at such breakneck pace. We should be learning from them, not trying to differentiate ourselves from them. That bit of DSIT that is at the cutting edge of taking risk is ARIA, and I will always stand by its ability to do things that will even make me uncomfortable.

Dr Gardner: That is fantastic.

Chair: That statement that you want to own the risk associated with risky scientific development and innovation is a really interesting one, and a strong message of a public sector and a Government that are willing to take risks in order to deliver. As a Committee, we will be very keen to scrutinise the consequences of that. Recognising that science, innovation and technology is a risky business and a risky sector is very important.

In the last five minutes, we want to cover online safety, space, life sciences and infrastructure.

Q47            Josh Simons: Good luck doing this in 30 seconds. Is the set of legislation and Government bodies that we currently have adequate to combating at speed the way that algorithms in social media can promote disinformation, as we saw in the riots?

Chair: We have an inquiry on this.

Peter Kyle: There is a cultural challenge with algorithms in the private sector. I am committed to publishing how algorithms are used in the public sector and in Government Departments. The previous Government published one of the reports, the algorithmic transparency report.[7] I am trying to get us to the point where every Government Department can publish it regularly. I want to get there as quickly as I can.

Let me take a step back and try to do this in one minute, rather than 30 seconds. In the private sector, my frustration is that we have got to a situation with online activity where it is acceptable to release a product into society without having to prove its safety before release. Algorithms are therefore playing a key role in driving some of the potential harms in that. Everything on this table, from the bottles to the pens and stationery, has to be proven safe before it is released. However, with online activity that is not the case. The sector has matured with that philosophy.

If you look at my philosophical approach to this in the short time I have been Secretary of State, take the example of intimate image abuse, where I enacted a power six to eight weeks ago whereby in a short space of time companies are going to have to prove that the algorithms themselves are preventing those images going online, and that, where they do appear online, they can be removed in a reasonable period of time. That shows that safety is baked in from the outset, so that algorithms are there to keep people safe, not exploit vulnerabilities. That is increasingly going to be my direction of travel.

It cannot just be achieved by me legislating and regulating in Whitehall. It cannot just be achieved by me saying that I want it. It cannot be achieved domestically by the UK acting alone. It is going to require a degree of statecraft to work with our global counterparts, particularly the United States. It is going to require statecraft being applied to companies in a way that we have only really deployed Secretary of State to Secretary of State in the past, in order to explain what we are doing and understand the companies and their culture.

We cannot stand in the way of innovation and creativity, but we have to make sure it is done safely. We expect the privilege of having access to our society to be a privilege and not a right. We expect the responsibility to be built in from the outset. We are not there yet. We are taking steps. Some of the measures coming out next summer in the implementation of the rules from Ofcom will be another step forward, with age verification and others.

Chair: That sends a clear message and also a challenge to various actors.

Emily Darlington: I am glad we are doing an inquiry on this. Hopefully we will help you figure out some of the answers.

Chair: If you have any direct contact with Mr Elon Musk and can encourage him to come and give evidence to this Committee, we would very much appreciate it.

Secretary of State, we have questions on space, life sciences, cyber-security and infrastructure. We could have carried on this discussion for much longer, but that is partially a consequence of the openness and the honesty with which you have responded to the questions we have put to you so far on a wide range of subjects. We really appreciate that; it is a really good basis for an ongoing relationship.

If you can be as open and frank as you have been with us, we will certainly seek to continue to be as constructive and engaging with you. We share very similar ambitions with regard to the importance of science, innovation and technology, the importance of driving those benefits to citizens and the general public, and the importance of working together constructively across Parliament and across the country.

Permanent secretary, can I say a huge thanks from the Committee for all the work you are doing to enable the Secretary of State to answer our questions and to deliver for the country? We look forward to inquiring again of you in the future.

Peter Kyle: I will be pithier next time, I promise.

Chair: We want to raise the level of debate on science, innovation and technology, and you have helped us do that.