Speeches by McDougall.

“There is an element of that because this is such a rapidly growing moment. The things that the AI champions have spoken about are deeply connected to the programmes that we already have in place as well. It is not that we are starting from scratch, but it will evolve.”

“We are leading it along with DSIT.”

“I will kick off on that, and others may have things to add. You see different levels of intervention in the skill space. I know that Skills England was here earlier. We were having the conversation earlier about its—”

“Yes, but you see progress from it.”

“It can be an answer. It is one of the answers, certainly, to the productivity challenge that we have. I have the industrial strategy brief within my portfolio, but small and medium-sized enterprises are another particular brief. Kanishka has spoken about the wider industrial strategy element of this and making sure tha…”

“My approach with the regulation is about trying to get that investment in, particularly on the scale-up side of things. I will let the DSIT Minister talk about the regulation of AI, because that is his part of it. Our focus is about unlocking regulation that encourages innovation and, in turn, allows investment into in…”

“Well, yes. The AI practitioner apprenticeship, for example, is a really interesting example of a skills intervention. Because you are teaching people the human interaction with the AI, rather than how to use a particular model, the skill that you are teaching them has the potential to be sustained. We see the work with…”

“It does. You will be aware of the Regulators (Growth Objective) Bill that we are bringing forward. We fully expect that the regulators’ uses of the sandboxing element of that legislation will feature AI pretty heavily. For example, I was talking earlier to some people involved in cancer research about how the sandboxin…”

“This was the third of the tech adoption roundtables that we have had. As I say, we are working to try to curate that offer by the end of the summer.”

“One of the things that we are working on at the moment as a test case is the idea of a tech town.”

“Consistently across the economy, we have challenges in getting investment in. The place where it is most pronounced in the UK is the scale-up gap and the ability to get financing in there. In the space of AI—we were just discussing this before we came in—there are some pretty encouraging figures about the amount of cap…”

“This will be my advice to the Prime Minister, but it is also something that should not be lost from this conversation, particularly the conversation about productivity. Part of the reason that we have a productivity problem in this country is that we have poor dynamism within the market. AI is a huge opportunity for sm…”

“It is not just a case of being bold without being reckless. Mr Aldridge was raising questions about the ethical issues and the regulatory side of things that DSIT oversees. We have to recognise that there is increasingly widespread adoption of AI at the moment. We can be very bold with our policies around encouraging t…”

“He was in the same meeting as I was.”

“Sometimes the conversation on this focuses on cost, and sometimes it focuses on support. Having those two conversations separately slightly misses the point. The experience from Made Smarter, when we had the particular tech element to it, was that people were not taking advantage of the cost incentives, because the sup…”

“That is the opportunity that we need in order to build scale across the economy.”

“Of course he does. It is in the Labour party manifesto. He has spoken about backing our industrial strategy, and this is an incredibly important part of it. The hon. Member for Exmouth and Exeter East (David Reed) spoke about how beautiful his constituency was. [Interruption.] Yes, I know—I am looking at him. Later thi…”

“Those people will still be able to have those contracts under the legislation, but we are talking about potentially hundreds of people in the right hon. Member’s constituency—that was his formulation—who rely on zero-hours contracts as their main form of employment, with no certainty of income from month to month. That…”

“I will take the right hon. Member’s intervention. Maybe he can say why he thinks those hundreds of workers in his constituency should not have the right to full-time employment.”

“As was said earlier, we believe that people working full time should be able to afford the basics in life. My point is that we are dealing with the issue of youth unemployment by incentivising businesses to employ young people. Many Opposition Members mentioned red tape. They will not have to wait terribly long to see …”