Dame Chi Onwurah

It is an important question. I am not in a position to choose our allies, but I agree in principle that we should be working with the European Union. I do not think it should be a choice between the European Union and the US, though they may make that the choice. I certainly think that we should be working with our European allies in order to form a large market for secure and ethical technology, which is in the interests of everyone. Finally, we need to monitor the future sovereignty implications of current research, so that that can influence our investment and mergers and acquisitions policy, and so that key technologies and companies are not easily allowed to go abroad. This debate has attracted a large amount of interest, so I have tried to be as brief as possible. I have asked the Minister many questions; if he cannot answer them all, he can write to me. In summary, we need to understand what we can own, control or lead on ourselves, what we can access that is in the hands of allies we trust, and how we can manage the things we must get from those we do not trust. We must always remember that how we develop and deploy our human capital will be critical to our ability to achieve any kind of technological sovereignty. I urge the Minister to be honest about where we are. We do not want to sleepwalk into technological serfdom and/or some kind of techxit—a technology Brexit.