Technology, Data & AI
69mentions · last 12 months↓
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The Science, Innovation and Technology Committee scrutinises science policy, research funding, innovation strategy, and the regulation of technology sectors across the UK. This House of Commons select committee conducts pre-appointment hearings for senior public office holders and takes oral evidence from government officials, researchers, and industry representatives. The committee has recently examined social media regulation and age restrictions, hearing from platforms on their responses to online harms and comparing approaches with Australia's regulatory framework. It has also scrutinised research funding priorities through pre-appointment hearings for the UKRI chair and inquiry sessions on STFC funding and CERN impact. Additional recent focus areas include science diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific region, with evidence from the government's science diplomacy team, and emerging technology governance issues including AI applications in government data security.
29 sessions published in the last 12 months · busiest week: w/c 1 Dec (2 sessions)
Click any cell in the heatmap to see the sessions held that day and the insights extracted from them.
457 insights
14 Jul 2026
The Committee scrutinised Innovate UK’s shift under Tom Adeyoola from project-funding to company-support, its concentration on industrial-strategy sectors and deep tech, and its weakly specified metrics for leverage, additionality, clustering and regional impact. Adeyoola said delivery plans by September should set out sector-by-sector targets, and that by next year programmes would be strategically aligned with clearer data and performance measures. The Committee also examined the Regulatory Innovation Office’s remit under Lord Willetts: using sandboxes, standards and ministerial steer letters to remove regulatory barriers in areas such as novel foods, drones, robotics, AI in healthcare, engineering biology and space. Willetts argued regulation is necessary for innovation but current UK rules are too restrictive, and confirmed RIO has no standalone published metrics beyond the wider regulation action plan, though it has specific targets in individual projects.
08 Jul 2026
The committee scrutinised DSIT’s priorities across AI, UKRI/physics funding, universities, online safety, misinformation, data centres, telecoms resilience and the US-UK pharma deal. Liz Kendall defended record R&D investment, the sovereign AI fund and AI hardware plan, and reaffirmed the under-16 social media ban and wider online-safety enforcement. The hearing exposed persistent committee concern about STFC governance and accountability, while the Secretary of State repeatedly said individual research-council decisions are for UKRI rather than ministers. She also committed to further work on deepfakes, AI labelling, ICO culture reform, 2G switch-off safeguards, and written follow-up on pharma-deal costing and mobile-phone blacklisting.
07 Jul 2026
The Committee scrutinised how UK agri-tech, UKRI/BBSRC, Innovate UK, FCDO and DEFRA should support global food security, with repeated tension between high-tech innovation for scale-up and low-tech resilience for calorie-dense food systems. Witnesses said UK support is increasingly more joined up, with single entry points, simplified schemes, long-running programmes such as DEFRA’s farming innovation programme, and a stronger scale-up focus. Ministers and officials said the UK now has one cross-Whitehall ODA R&D strategy, with food security embedded but not treated as a stand-alone mission; they also emphasised localisation, partnerships, and using the UK as an “investor” rather than a donor. The session also surfaced major concerns about prioritisation, regional data gaps, the complexity of regulation, the dominance of higher-value crops in innovation funding, and unresolved questions over IP, returns and the balance between global impact and domestic food resilience.
24 Jun 2026
The Committee scrutinised whether digital devices and social media are harming children’s mental health, sleep, attention, self-regulation and development, and whether policy should move ahead despite contested causal evidence. Ravi Iyer argued for precautionary age limits on accounts, burden-shifting to platforms, transparency over platform data, interoperability, and design changes to remove manipulative features. In the second panel, Damon De Ionno, Colette Collins-Walsh and Bernadka Dubicka described a growing pattern of harmful short-form content, privacy loss, cyber-bullying, exploitation, and sleep disruption, and recommended mandatory data sharing, ending commercial profiling of children, and safety-by-design backed by platform liability.
17 Jun 2026
The Committee scrutinised whether neuromorphic computing, tiny machine learning and photonic computing can reduce the energy, heat and water demands of AI and data centres, while still supporting UK industrial growth. Witnesses consistently argued for hybrid rather than replacement approaches: edge/on-device AI, optical accelerators and neuromorphic components are nearer-term complements to current digital systems, not immediate substitutes. They also stressed that current estimates of AI’s energy and emissions footprint are methodologically inconsistent, that more robust life-cycle and procurement metrics are needed, and that government should back interdisciplinary research, prototyping, packaging, software ecosystems, skills and responsible procurement. The panel generally welcomed the Government’s AI hardware plan, but said it underweights low-energy objectives, physical AI, and the translation of lab innovation into industry.
10 Jun 2026
The committee scrutinised how digital devices, social media and AI may affect brain development from infancy through adolescence. The witnesses stressed that the evidence base is still largely correlational and that neuroscience cannot pinpoint precise age cut-offs, but they also argued there is enough evidence to act on clearly harmful content and excessive use. Across the session, the witnesses pressed for stronger platform regulation, age-appropriate guidance for parents, digital-literacy and mental-health education, and more research on real-world brain effects, AI chatbots, and differential impacts on vulnerable groups.
14 Jul 2026
14 Jul 2026