Steve Yemm

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I want to speak about technological sovereignty from an east midlands perspective. Too often, Westminster debates are focused on venture capital or high-level digital strategy and so forth while the real foundations of our tech capability lie in specific industrial regions. The east midlands already has the capabilities to anchor British technological sovereignty. Derbyshire, and particularly Derby, is one of Europe’s most important aerospace hubs. Nottingham is home to two world-class universities, driving innovation in materials science, data science and advanced manufacturing. For Nottinghamshire and my constituency, this is about linking university research directly to local production; strategic public investment in sectors such as advanced manufacturing, with a focus on export focused technologies in particular; encouraging pension funds and public investment programmes to support domestic capital, rather than sending wealth abroad; and restoring political and economic confidence in post-industrial communities in the midlands like my constituency. Technological sovereignty is not just a slogan; it is a matter of real practical capacity and of the technologies that will shape the future being designed and built in this country rather than elsewhere. The east midlands already contains many of the pieces needed to secure that sovereignty. The task is to recognise them, back them and build a new national political economy that puts production, skills and regional industrial strength at the centre of Britain’s future.