Speeches by Onwurah.

“I am sure that my hon. Friend is far too discreet to set out honestly her assessment of President Trump’s contribution to civilisation, but can she reassure my constituents—be they angered, insulted or just plain bemused by the pronouncements in the US national security strategy—that although we celebrate our cultural …”

“I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this really important debate. It is certainly the case that UK law applies to AI, just as it applies online. The question is whether AI requires new regulation specifically to address the threats and concerns surrounding AI. We refrained from regulating the internet—and I shou…”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman—a fellow engineer—for allowing this intervention. As the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee—a number of fantastic Committee members are here—I would like to say that we have already looked at some of the challenges that AI presents to our regulatory infrastructure and o…”

“Each of the Select Committees is looking at AI, including the Defence Committee, which has looked at AI in defence. AI impacts every single Department and security on cross-governmental issues. Although we are not talking about the process of scrutiny, we all agree that scrutiny is important.”

“There are many who seek the right and the ability to identify themselves, but who do not have it as it stands. We all have constituents who are experiencing that. My Committee has seen evidence that the figure cited by the hon. Gentleman is not recognised by the Secretary of State; it has been put forward by the Office…”

“Will the hon. Member give way?”

“The north-east has perhaps the strongest sense of regional identity in the country, and it benefits immensely from the brilliant Labour mayor, Kim McGuinness, who has the devolved powers and funding to make a real difference to the lives of the people in the north-east. I know that the Minister is working hard to devol…”

“7. What steps the Commission is taking to provide technology to improve the productivity of hon. Members.”

“I thank my hon. Friend for that response. My constituents expect me to spend their money and my time addressing their issues, not trying to manage an inbox flooded with lobbyist spam and by Russian and Chinese bots. Microsoft Copilot asks me if I want help writing emails to my constituents—I do not—but will not help me…”

“Had our productivity grown at the same rate as media speculation, the UK would have been in a much stronger fiscal position ahead of the Budget. All the more credit is due, then, to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer for delivering a Budget for working people, lifting children out of poverty and equip…”

“Are we paying for it?”

“I wonder about the time it will take to do that, but let us move on. Alexander Iosad, do you have anything to add? You talked about open source as a solution. How much of open source is being used right now in Government to support this?”

“That is not going to be easy, so that is a concern. I would like to talk briefly about legacy systems and how they amplify the challenge involved. Do you agree?”

“You say that digital ID complements—sits on top of—the digital transformation, so the challenge of digital transformation is part of the challenge of digital ID.”

“Laura Foster, do you want to add to that?”

“I am a little surprised by your response. You talk about digital ID being a problem that has been solved because we have digital ID attributes, but this is about every Government Department using the same process—using the same data fetch, accessing on the same platform or however it is implemented—and you have not tal…”

“I recognise that. How significant is the technological effort for the Government to create digital ID? Does making it mandatory increase the significance of that? Are there key technological choices that influence how difficult that is? That is a big question; it would be helpful to have short answers.”

“Thank you very much for inviting me, Dame Karen. It is a great pleasure to be here on behalf of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. I am afraid that I will try to get into what you have already called the boring technology choices, because they will drive whether this actually works in practice. We have h…”

“Just to say on that, they promised us a plan. The blueprint is a very high level. We were promised a plan, but we do not have a plan yet, do we?”

“I have two quick follow-ups on that. You are saying that we have in place the building blocks, but my understanding is that for a lot of the legacy systems—the Government’s definition of a legacy system is anything that is not on the cloud, but there are probably legacy systems on the cloud as well—we do not know wheth…”