Chi Onwurah, chair of the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology committee, has launched correspondence with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) about UK expertise sovereignty coverage that raises basic questions.
On 10 March 2026, Onwurah, the MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West, opened a Technology Sovereignty Debate within the House of Commons, placing into query the independence of the UK’s expertise technique and approach.
During the talk, she spoke in regards to the NHS’s involvement with US information administration provider Palantir, stating that its chairman and founder, Peter Thiel, holds “a political worldview which is at odds with British values”.
Following the talk, Onwurah despatched a letter to Kanishka Narayan, minister for Science, Innovation and Technology, in search of clarification about expertise sovereignty. In it, she requested in regards to the authorities’s plans for technological self-reliance and information governance.
Her questions included: “Can you confirm that the UK does not seek to treat the Big Tech companies as sovereign states?” and “have ministers or officials in the department [for Science, Innovation and Technology] discussed the impact of the US Cloud Act, the Patriot Act, and entity list tools, with Microsoft, AWS [Amazon Web Services], and Palantir in regard to UK data sovereignty?”
In a response letter, dated 15 April, Narayan stated: “Although some global technology companies operate at significant scale and across multiple jurisdictions, which may require a strategic and coordinated approach, they remain private sector actors and do not possess sovereign authority. Companies operating in the UK are subject to UK laws and regulatory frameworks, which are set by Parliament and enforced by independent regulators.”
He highlighted DSIT’s ongoing and upcoming investments and investigations, such because the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA’s) designation of Google and Apple with Strategic Market Status in cellular ecosystems, which led the tech titans to commit to fairer app store practices.
Narayan wrote about financial methods to increase Britain’s place in worldwide tech. On 16 April, DSIT launched the Sovereign Al Fund to spend money on early-stage Al firms, within the hope that it could appeal to startups to the UK.
Highlighting “foundational relationships” with the US, European Union, Japan, India, China and others, he insisted on the significance of worldwide collaborations in the direction of AI. However, Narayan didn’t reply whether or not the federal government intends to watch how a lot public service infrastructure will depend on “foreign-based cloud technology”, and made no particular reference to Palantir.
During the parliamentary debate, Onwurah talked about Elon Musk’s determination to turn off Ukraine’s Starlink capacities throughout an important assault in opposition to Russia for example of the dangers of cloud dependance.
Currently, AWS and Microsoft dominate British cloud use, making up virtually 80% of the market, with Google coming in third.
An investigation into AWS and Microsoft by the CMA led UK cloud suppliers to demand stronger regulation. In July 2026, the Government Digital Service (GDS) will publish a National Cloud Strategy.
Onwurah stated that Narayan’s letter fails to set out a “coherent strategy for achieving technology sovereignty”. Instead, she stated the UK should establish the way it can grow to be self-reliant, and what dangers are linked to conditions the place “interdependence is unavoidable”.
“It is impossible to judge whether the £22bn spent annually on public sector research and development is serving the UK’s long‑term interests if we do not know how it is contributing to our technology sovereignty,” stated Onwurah.