Speeches by Malthouse.

“None of them has had any impact; not a single thing has changed.”

“They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Many of us feel that way about these statements, and surely the Minister must be starting to feel that way, too. He must recognise that the E1 settlement would represent the final and complete collapse…”

“To be honest, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West makes a good point. Presumably, he will vote in favour of enforcing the underlying regulations, but none of us know whether they are any good. In fact, we have had no say over whether they are any good—we just have to take them as handed down. I asked the Minister …”

“I am finding it hard to understand how the Minister can claim that there will be no impact on businesses in Northern Ireland. To give a practical example, many production lines nowadays have built-in AI safety monitoring systems. At the moment, companies in manufacturing have to certify that AI against a national stand…”

“I am grateful to be called, Ms Jardine. I do not want to detain the Committee too long, but I have some points of clarification for the Minister. First, will the Minister confirm that the regulations concern the enforcement of machinery standards that flow into Northern Ireland by dint of the Windsor framework without …”

“So nothing will change.”

“In his statement, the Minister urged the parties to comply with international law, but he will know that many are coming to the view that the UK’s compliance with international law is very often a cosmetic or paper-based exercise. The Srebrenica judgment established that a state breaches its obligations under the genoc…”

“I too am grateful to the Minister and his colleagues for the flexibility they have shown so far, and I will come and see him on Monday. First, could he be a little clearer about how dynamic he will be on quotas? At first look to me and the businesses in my constituency that are concerned, some of the quotas look a bit …”

“I am asking you to inform the next conversation. Which of these allied technologies is the most exciting?”

“Instead of a solid state, with fixed architecture on a piece of silicon, this will be something a bit like the later stages of—what is that Schwarzenegger movie where he is a robot?”

“When I go on my iPhone and I use—whatever—Apple AI, there will come a time when that AI is operating autonomously for most of my tasks on my phone and not pinging a data centre.”

“Is it made from physically different materials?”

“I wanted to explore that subject a little further, not least because you have answered my primary question in saying that, although you might make it less power consumptive and therefore presumably less heat productive, consumption may well then rise. You might slow the growth marginally, but actually the overall impac…”

“I declare a bit of an interest, in that I have been tracking this low-orbit solar technology that we seem to be leading, along with the Japanese, where we launch solar cells into low earth orbit and it microwaves the power back to a grid sitting out in the North sea. It is on 24 hours a day. It is that kind of thing. I…”

“Just for clarity, I draw attention to my entry in the register. I just want to ask you a bit about the wider impact, environmentally and otherwise, of this technology. In the previous panel, we established that there are technologies out there that are going to reduce the power draw required for whatever technology the…”

“Yes—the later Terminators are more liquid and can adapt to function, versus the initial Terminator, which can be blown to smithereens.”

“How is it different?”

“Do we have these materials?”

“Forgive me if I am not understanding. My assumption was that you are saying that data moves from being a lake to being a river, or a circular river, if you like, a bit like that Diana memorial in Kensington. It is constantly circulating in the system, rather than sitting in a lake somewhere.”

“The chip itself is different.”