The new Labour Government has shelved £1.3 billion of “unfunded” investment for UK tech and AI projects promised by the previous Conservative government.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said no new funding for the programmes had been allocated in the previous government’s spending plans, and therefore will not be taken forward.
It included £800 million for the creation of an exascale supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh and £500 million of additional funding for the AI Research Resource, a scheme which helps fund computing power for AI.
An additional £300 million committed to the AI Research Resource has been committed to, the Government said, as this funding was already in place, has been distributed and will continue as planned.
“We are absolutely committed to building technology infrastructure that delivers growth and opportunity for people across the UK,” a DSIT spokesman said.
READ MORE: Edinburgh supercomputer waste heat could warm homes
“The Government is taking difficult and necessary spending decisions across all departments in the face of billions of pounds of unfunded commitments.
“This is essential to restore economic stability and deliver our national mission for growth.”
The Government said it was pulling together its own plans to invest in compute infrastructure as part of the development of its AI Opportunities Action Plan, which is being led by industry expert Matt Clifford, who played a leading role in organising the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park last year.
“We have launched the AI Opportunities Action Plan which will identify how we can bolster our compute infrastructure to better suit our needs and consider how AI and other emerging technologies can best support our new industrial strategy,” the DSIT spokesman said.
Andrew Griffith, the Conservatives’ shadow science, innovation and technology secretary, accused Labour of having “lower ambitions” for the UK’s tech sector.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he said: “If Labour have lower ambitions for UK tech sector – or the new Secretary of State cannot get the same level of support for DSIT from the Chancellor – that’s up to them but no one should be fooled by Labour trying to blame their predecessors.
“We increased public spending on research to a record £20 billion a year for 2024/25 and unlike Labour, we committed to increase that by a further 10% in our manifesto.
“AI and Exascale computer were both beneficiaries of this increased funding.”
The future of the exascale supercomputer project remains unclear, with the University of Edinburgh having already spent £31 million on a new wing of its advanced computing facility, which was purpose-built to house the supercomputer.
It had expected to begin the first phase of installing it in 2025, according to the university’s website.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel