Notes from Liverpool: What have we learned from the Labour Party Conference about the UK government’s evolving approach to data and AI?
Party conference season rolled round again in the UK, and data and AI questions were prominent.
This year’s Labour Party Conference saw numerous events exploring technology’s role in sovereignty and geopolitics, public services, and economic growth. They reflected the growing role technology is playing in politics, with recent major announcements on US-UK deals, investment in compute and data centres, direct deals with major technology firms and the Prime Minister’s recent announcement on the introduction of a national digital ID.
Party conferences are always an odd affair – a blending of interest groups, corporate sponsors (this year, with abundant tech industry presence), committed party supporters, policy wonks and media engaged in a mixture of serious conversations and fresher’s weekesque parties and gossip. Amongst the melee, it’s hard to distinguish the signal from the noise.
One benefit of attending, however, is to be part of an osmosis process which sees particular phrases, issues and priorities permeate the national policy discourse. These go beyond announcements or formal set pieces. They set the scope of a shared political imagination.
This year’s Labour Party Conference was particularly useful following a recent reshuffle to assess any changes from Liz Kendall, the new secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, and incoming ministers.
As the dust settles, what have we learned about the position of the government on technology?
AI is still understood as a race
Liz Kendall described the UK as being “in a race for our lives”, warning that “unless we seize the benefits of AI we will fatally fall behind”.
It’s important to acknowledge the primacy of this metaphor. The global AI arms race narrative is predicated on the assumption that the economic benefits of AI will be transformative but zero-sum, with gains primarily accruing to the country or region that ‘achieves’ breakthrough capability or deployment first. We have seen this logic shape foreign policy, approaches to competition and economic growth, and regulatory debates – as well as sharp increases in public investment and greater entanglement of tech companies with the state.
Even if the government embraces the idea of a race as a mental model for AI development, it should still ask whether being a first mover should be the aspiration. Rather than tying ourselves to US technology development, the UK should consider being a strategic fast follower, dodging some of the issues that come with riding the first waves of the AI hype and adopting technology as evidence on its impacts and efficacy builds up. The success of China’s DeepSeek demonstrates the potential for the UK to pause to ensure it pursues the innovations that yield the most value.
AI = growth, but for who?
AI for growth, productivity and efficiency was high on the agenda, in line with widely held assumptions on the economic benefits of AI and the productivity wins it should deliver.
Alongside these assumptions, there were welcome noises about better distributing economic growth and opportunity in every community. Kendall acknowledged that the “sheer degree of optimism” and “belief in change from the [AI tech] sector” was “not matched by the mood in the country”, and that “people need power over their lives and their decisions”. The values of agency and dignity, particularly related to jobs, were more prominently discussed than last year.
Public trust is rising in the order of the agenda
Relatedly, the level of public trust in AI came up in every technology conversation, and beyond. The Tony Blair Institute (prominent at the conference), whose new public research aligns with that of the Ada Lovelace Institute’s, highlighted that trust is a precondition for adoption, which in turn is a precondition for transformation and growth.
I’m hopeful that an organisation that is so pro-technology taking public trust seriously will reinforce its importance within government and these research findings aren’t interpreted as needing to ‘sell’ successful AI examples to win over a ‘fearful’ public – something we’ve previously heard from civil servants. As we’ve argued before, we need a more thoughtful engagement with the conditions necessary for people to be comfortable with AI adoption.
Read more: Why public legitimacy for AI in the public sector isn’t just a ‘nice to have’
More needed on the ‘how’
Kendall’s aspiration not to “fight the changes that are inevitable, but fight to shape them to work for people and place” and the reiteration of Kanishka Narayan – the newly-appointed parliamentary under-secretary of state for AI and online safety – that Labour has always engaged with questions of power and collective bargaining signal a welcome emphasis on people and society.
But now the hard work to translate rhetoric into credible policy proposals begins. Political passivity is unlikely to deliver actual agency, dignity, power and opportunity across the country.
The concentration of power in the hands of a few AI companies has intensified the digital economic trends of the past two decades, with the same firms controlling the data, talent, platforms, hardware, market share and capacity for vertical market integration necessary to rapidly develop and deploy AI systems at scale.
Ensuring that technology’s benefits are shared – not just accumulated – will require actions across AI regulation, competition, liability, procurement and industrial strategy. It might require sector deals, new workers’ rights and participatory governance to rebalance power over technology. If we are at the foothills of an industrial revolution, we will need fresh thinking on economic and social policy to shape an inclusive positive future.
Read more: Do we need a ‘What Works Centre’ for public sector AI?
What wasn’t mentioned
With regards to this, one notable absence was any new announcements on regulations to ensure AI is trustworthy and trusted – by the public, but also by the companies and the services adopting it. Quietness around regulation mirrors a wave of deregulatory attitudes among national and international policymakers, no doubt in part in response to the geopolitics of the moment.
As we have long argued at Ada, regulation is necessary to ensure that those best able to manage risks and harm at each point of the AI value chain are credibly incentivised and empowered to do so. And again, if we go by what the public expects, people’s desire for regulation has jumped up by ten percentage points in the last two years to 72%.
Relative quietness surrounded also the topic of digital ID. This was surprising, given that prime minister Keir Starmer had just confirmed the introduction of a national digital ID scheme, but may have reflected the sharp drop in public support for it following the announcement. By aligning the introduction of digital IDs to migration policy and committing to roll out without specifics by the end of the Parliamentary term, the prime minister’s speech spurred concerns around civil liberties, the hardening of attitudes toward migrants, and the government’s ability to execute widescale effective digital projects.
Read more: UK government plans to roll out compulsory digital ID
Nuts and bolts
Elsewhere at the conference, debates around cutting-edge AI were firmly brought down to earth with discussions about the “total mess in legacy systems”, as chair of the Science and Technology Committee Chi Onwurah MP put it. The Afghan data breach was a prominent example of high-harm failure, and concerns were raised that lessons hadn’t been learned.
In a similar vein, MPs talked about their role in dealing with failure demand in their surgeries. One backbench MP requested that less time and resources are spent on cutting-edge technology and made a plea for refocusing spending on fixing mundane disconnected data systems and digital service design.
An increased focus on young people
Young people arose in many conversations around technology. Whether the issue is young people being harmed by underregulated technology, or not being adequately skilled for an unpredictable future, or missing out on entry level jobs displaced by AI, the youth were the most prominent group of concern. Given the clearer moral case to intervene in markets, the emotive nature of the issues, as well as the tactical importance of the youth vote to Labour, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one area we see stronger government intervention on.
Read more: Troubling or trusted: Citizens’ sentiment on big tech in public sector AI
About Imogen Parker
Imogen is Associate Director (Society, justice & public services) at the Ada Lovelace Institute. Imogen’s career has been at the intersection of social justice, technology and research. In her previous role as Head of the Nuffield Foundation’s programmes on Justice, Rights and Digital Society she worked in collaboration with the founding partner organisations to create the Institute. Prior to that she was acting Head of Policy Research for Citizens and Democracy at Citizens Advice, Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and worked with Baroness Kidron to create the children’s digital rights charity 5Rights. She is a Policy Fellow at Cambridge University’s Centre for Science and Policy.
