Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)

I thank noble Lords for continuing the debate with which we ended the previous session: the very important topic of the technological and digital sovereignty of the UK. That is very important to this Government and we are taking action on it. It possibly has not been focused on enough in past years but, across many areas, that is what we are doing. We are clear that we need a coherent approach and a clear direction. We obviously need to take into account that technologies and markets evolve, and the core of that approach was set out in the modern industrial strategy and the Digital and Technologies Sector Plan. That set out the direction of travel, and the Government will continue to consider how our priorities are best articulated. Our objective, as I articulated at the end of July, is not complete independence but strategic resilience through a combination of domestic capability, diversified international partnership and targeted management of critical dependencies. This allows us to access the best of global markets while capitalising on our domestic capabilities. That is why we already have in place a range of regulatory and non-regulatory frameworks that enable us to embed those objectives through existing industrial, technological and resilience strategies. I will talk to some of those now. For essential services in scope of the network and information systems regime, such as drinking water, health and energy, all entities are required to manage and mitigate the risks posed to their systems that deliver essential services. This includes the risks set out in the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. On market concentration, which the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, referred to, the CMA is acting. It concluded an investigation into the cloud services market in July last year, highlighting competition issues arising from market concentration. It has since announced packages of actions to improve competition in cloud services. This work has directly informed our thinking, as we develop a more strategic approach to how the public sector procures cloud services.