Mike Martin

I thank my hon. Friend for her comprehensive intervention, which speaks to exactly the issues that I will raise. The key example is DeepMind, which was the world-leading AI company. We, the Brits, failed to create the ecosystem, funding and risk-taking capital to enable it to scale fully. It was then bought by Google, and now the British Government contract with Google rather than with DeepMind. That is exactly my fear: even though we are the world’s third AI power, that could move away from us very quickly if we do not create the right ecosystem to support our tech firms. If this Government are serious about supporting growth, we need to look at small and medium-sized enterprises. It will not surprise hon. Members that I have some examples from my Tunbridge Wells constituency. First, Capital Web develops AI software to help businesses to improve productivity. That is on the application side of AI; we are never going to compete on the frontier model side of AI, but the UK can certainly compete on how we implement those frontier models to work cases. I will also give a bit more detail about Adzuna, a firm based in Tunbridge Wells that helps people to find jobs. The problem in the UK is one of scaling up. We often have support for businesses that are very small. We might have research and development tax credits or innovation grants, or we might help them to spin directly out of universities. However, what just does not happen in the UK is moving them on from the position where they have a concept and patent and are perhaps ready to scale rapidly. Those firms are left to go abroad, be taken over, or perhaps wither and see the market move on and eclipse them. That is the real danger.