Credit: Adobe stock

Product innovators such as Tunstall Healthcare, Nyobolt, BMW Mini, Thales, Google, Amazon, Toyota, and many others, who are significant investors and employers in the UK, are increasingly concerned about a complex and untransparent technology licensing system.

That system is the licensing of Standard Essential Patents (SEPs). SEPs cover technologies that are voluntarily contrib­uted to standards such as 5G, wi-fi, and video compression for streaming, with a binding promise to be licensed on fair terms. While smartphones and computers have long supported these standards, the connectivity boom means that these standard­ised technologies now reach into key British growth sectors such as automotive, energy, and medical devices. However, the current situation acts as a brake on British ambition.

The problem lies in how these technologies are licensed. Royalty demands are often disproportionate to the technolo­gy’s underlying value and are made under the threat of market exclusion through court-ordered injunctions. The Intellectual Property Office has identified serious concerns in this area, noting evidence that licensing demands have exceeded court adju­dicated rates by up to 500 times.¹ UK courts, too, have repeat­edly found that SEP holders demand royalties far exceeding a fair rate and rely on the threat of injunctions in negotiations.²

These are not abstract concerns, but direct costs borne by innovative companies operating in the UK. Smaller companies are often hit hardest. The government’s Telecoms Supply Chain Advisory Council noted SEPs are “very highly concentrated among a small number of companies, none of which are UK-owned.” The result is a one-way outflow of value from the UK economy.

Yorkshire-based Tunstall Healthcare provides connected devices that enable elderly and vulnerable people to live inde­pendently at home. Its wearable alarms and remote monitoring systems are used by local authorities and NHS trusts to reduce hospital admissions and improve care.

These devices depend on standardised connectivity tech­nology like 4G and wi-fi. Hundreds of thousands of patents are alleged to be essential to just these two standards alone, meaning companies like Tunstall must negotiate licences with multiple SEP holders, often through opaque and complex processes. Despite facing unfair demands, the cost of being unable to sell products owing to a court-ordered injunction is greater. Challenging the demands is also costly; one recent litigation cost £31m. Even large companies will settle at exces­sive cost to avoid this outcome.

UK companies face millions of pounds in excessive fees, but the impact is not confined to balance sheets. For health-tech, higher licensing costs are passed down the supply chain – to the NHS, local authorities, and ultimately to taxpayers. Lost R&D and reduced product functionality harm businesses and customers alike. Other medium-sized businesses, such as Nyobolt – an innovative, Cambridge-based smart battery systems company – have also reported how SEP licensing uncertainty directly reduces investors’ willingness to provide growth capital.

This week, a large group of UK and global companies will gather in London for the Fair Standards Alliance’s General Meeting. Our message is clear: without reform to curb exces­sive demands, the current system will continue to stifle inno­vation, deter investment, and place innovative UK companies at a structural disadvantage.

We are calling on the government to legislate for this pro-growth measure in the next session. Find out more at www.fair-standards.org.

We are hosting a reception in Parliament, with many companies in attendance.

Please drop by from 3.30pm to 5.00pm in the Home Room on Tuesday 19 May, to hear these concerns first-hand.

References

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1. Intellectual Property Office, ‘Consultation on Standard Essential Patents’, 15.07.2025
2. IAM, ‘Ask versus outcome: FRAND valuation, judicial analysis and the continuing gaps in SEP litigation’, 16.01.2026

To mark May’s Arthritis Awareness month, our upcoming report, The Silent Treatment: Why an Arthritis Diagnosis Matters, highlights the key barriers to a timely and personalised arthritis diagnosis. The report brings together insights from people with arthritis and healthcare professionals to highlight the delays and issues faced at each stage of the diagnosis pathway.

The importance of a diagnosis for people with arthritis cannot be underestimated – in terms of the treatment and support it offers for proactive symptom management, the role it can play as part of secondary prevention, and the validation it can provide for those who have been struggling without answers. It’s critical to get things right.

Arthritis can affect every aspect of someone’s life, from their ability to work, care for family, move independently and live free of pain. Last year, Arthritis UK’s research report, Left Waiting, Left Behind: The Reality of Living with Arthritis, surveyed almost 8,000 people, with 32 per cent stating that arthritis severely or very severely impacted their life in the past year. 60 per cent reported living in pain most or all of the time due to their arthritis.¹

Alongside the impact on the individual, a delayed diagnosis can also come at a cost to the NHS. For inflammatory arthritis, early diagnosis directly reduces the risk of permanent joint damage, persistent pain and disability in the long term. Therefore, delayed diagnosis can lead to higher costs overall for the health system, as patients may then need intensive treatment with high-cost medicines for longer periods.²

Delayed diagnosis also costs the economy. If people are left waiting without the right support, they may struggle to stay in or get back into work. One study cited in the report, which looks at a type of inflammatory arthritis called axial spondyloarthritis, has estimated the economic cost of a delayed diagnosis to be £193,512 per person. Based on estimated prevalence rates of axial spondyloarthritis ranging from 0.3 to 1.2 per cent of the UK population, the total annual economic cost of delayed diagnosis was estimated at between £3.1bn and £12.5bn.³

Delays can beset the entire diagnosis pathway, beginning when people first experience symptoms. The limited societal understanding of arthritis and its symptoms means that people may downplay symptoms and delay seeking medical advice. Commonly held misperceptions, for example, that only older people can get arthritis, mean that people may dismiss symptoms.

Heard of osteoarthritis and I associated it with being like an old person’s illness. So, I just brushed it off that I didn’t have that

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(Lived experience workshop participant)

Once people do enter the health system, they may face additional delays. Despite the best efforts and dedication of healthcare professionals, they are working in a stretched system that has not historically prioritised musculoskeletal (MSK) health. It means people’s symptoms may be missed; there are delays to diagnostic tests, referrals and appointments; and limited availability of health professionals and services to deliver the multidisciplinary support people need.

When people receive their diagnosis, they may not just be presenting with physical deterioration. They may often be struggling with other aspects of their wellbeing, such as their mental health. The National Early Inflammatory Autoimmune Diseases Audit found that between 2023 and 2034, 60 per cent of patients had probable depression or anxiety at the time of diagnosis.⁴

This underlines the need for a holistic approach that factors in what people are struggling with at the point of diagnosis, including their mental health. Crucially, for people with arthritis, diagnosis is more than just a label. It can be the gateway to the information, care and support that can be life-changing.

People need a personalised conversation that factors in their needs and sets them up for the road ahead, as they process being diagnosed with a long-term condition. To deliver these effective diagnosis conversations, health professionals need the appropriate training to support them to do so and training that supports them to diagnose and care for people with arthritis more generally. Despite the increased prevalence of MSK conditions like arthritis, this has not translated into proportionate MSK content as part of the medical curriculum. Healthcare professionals could benefit from supplementary training and courses to boost confidence and fill in any knowledge gaps.

Think it was quite clear my mental health wasn’t great, but that was never really discussed. It was well, you know, we’ll get you on this treatment and these meds should do the thing that should help

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(Lived experience workshop participant)

A formal diagnosis, with a name and clearly communicated information, equips people with the language and confidence they need to speak about their condition, explain how it affects them, and articulate their needs. Additionally, simple signposting, such as to the Arthritis UK website, can unlock a range of information and support, including on work and benefits. Access to these resources could make a big difference to someone’s ability to work or access information about financial support.

I think the validation is so important, [it provides] a huge sense of relief that [I] haven’t been imagining it… would have been really good to have it some years previously when I was still working, because I’ve been in so much pain at work

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(Lived experience workshop participant)

The barriers around an arthritis diagnosis also demonstrate a broader issue. At a system level, MSK conditions lack the strategic prioritisation, national strategy, dedicated local or regional leadership, and sustained infrastructure.

Urgent action is needed now to improve the rate and experience of diagnosis for people with arthritis. People with arthritis should not be left in pain, in the dark, or given the silent treatment while they wait for a diagnosis. Getting it right from the outset will deliver benefits across the health and social care system and wider economy, allowing people with arthritis to get control of their lives back.

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1. Arthritis UK. (2025) Left Waiting, Left Behind: The Reality of Living with Arthritis. A lived experience survey [Online]. Available here: https://www.arthritis-uk.org/media/3tgj3rxh/ arthritisuk_leftwaitingleftbehind_report_digital.pdf
2. Getting It Right First Time (2021) Rheumatology GIRFT Programme National Specialty Report. [Online]. Accessed here: https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ Rheumatology-Jul21h-NEW.pdf
3. Zanghelini, F., Xydopoulos, G., Howard Wilsher, S., Afolabi, O., Webb, D., Eddison, J., Ingram, T. A., Clark, C., Hamilton, J., Sengupta, R., Gaffney, K., Fordham, R. (2025) What is the economic burden of delayed axial spondyloarthritis diagnosis in the UK?, Rheumatology. 64(9):4913–4920. https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/64/9/4913/8120097
4. National Early Inflammatory Autoimmune Disease Audit (NEIAA) (revised 2025) State of the Nation Summary Report 2024. Accessed here: Ref.-428-NEIAA-SoN-Report-2024-revised-March-25.pdf

(Illustronaut/Alamy)

5 min read19 May

One of the challenges of writing about Brexit’s lingering impact on the UK economy is that, outside of a Marvel movie, it is still not possible to experience a reality that never came to pass. Every assessment therefore involves comparing the UK’s economy as it exists today with one that might have existed had the UK remained a member of the EU.

This is both standard economic modelling practice, and a source of frustration for those who argue that the economic impact of Brexit has been overstated. After all, how can anyone know with certainty what would have happened if the vote had gone the other way?

What should be less controversial, however, is that putting new trade barriers between yourself and your largest trading partner comes with economic costs, even if we can debate their scale and duration.

The question from a UK perspective is whether the additional flexibility associated with controlling its own trade and regulatory trajectory has been sufficient to offset the trade and investment costs of leaving.

On trade, the UK initially moved faster than the EU in securing new deals with Australia, New Zealand, and India, alongside accession to CPTPP. But the EU is catching up, or arguably overtaking, with the announcement of its own agreements with Australia, New Zealand, India, Indonesia and with Mercosur, the South American trade bloc.

More importantly, the economic gains associated with modern free trade agreements tend to be modest, often amounting to little more than fractions of a percentage point of additional GDP. They were always unlikely to compensate fully for the additional friction introduced into UK-EU trade.

Perhaps the clearest recent example of Brexit-related flexibility has been the UK’s approach to the United States under President Trump. Here, the UK was able to move more quickly and secure more favourable tariff treatment in several sectors, while making fewer concessions overall – although the bioethanol sector may take a different view. Unlike the EU, the UK avoided large investment pledges and purchase commitments, while also securing the first, and currently only, dedicated pharmaceutical arrangement with the US.

On regulation, the revealed preference of the UK – particularly in the context of food and manufactured goods – has been that it rather likes EU rules after all. Despite some targeted changes, for example in respect of gene editing of crops or fertiliser usage, successive governments have chosen to retain EU food safety rules and product standards in all but name.

There has been a quieter but more sustained divergence from the EU on services rules, where the UK has opted to take a more flexible, pro-innovation approach. This is most evident in areas such as AI, where the UK has so far opted for a lighter touch framework than the EU.

At the same time, proximity and economic exposure mean that EU policy decisions continue to have an outsized impact on the UK, despite Brexit. Measures such as higher EU tariffs on steel or efforts to promote a more explicit “Made in Europe” industrial agenda risk compounding some of the trade friction already created by Brexit itself.

So, what comes next?

Some degree of rapprochement with the EU was always inevitable. Recent discussions have focused on targeted measures – for example, an SPS agreement to improve agri-food trade, and linking the UK and EU emissions trading systems (ETS). Both make sense. Reducing inspections, cutting paperwork and removing irritants such as “Not for EU” labels would ease costs at the margins, while ETS linkage could help avoid unnecessary costs for carbon-intensive exporters.

But these are practical improvements, not macroeconomic game changers. They should improve trade flows in specific sectors without fundamentally changing the overall trajectory of the UK economy.

On regulation, the revealed preference of the UK – particularly in the context of food and manufactured goods – has been that it rather likes EU rules after all

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The government has nonetheless signalled that it wants to go further. Rachel Reeves and others have hinted at closer alignment with EU rules in areas considered to be in the UK’s “national interest”, while legislation expected later this month would give ministers greater powers to facilitate more dynamic alignment with EU regulation.

The trade-off, however, remains fundamentally the same. The kind of frictionless trade the UK says it wants – fewer checks, smoother borders, easier market access – increasingly resembles the arrangements enjoyed by countries such as Norway or Switzerland, both of which depend on accepting shared rules and ongoing alignment. In other words, the economic benefits are difficult to separate from constraints on autonomy.

The EU, meanwhile, remains understandably cautious about opening ambitious new negotiations without clarity on what the UK is prepared to offer in return. There is also the question of durability: whether any deepening of the relationship would survive a future change of government in Westminster.

The next phase of Brexit is therefore unlikely to involve a dramatic reset. More likely, it will consist of incremental and occasionally messy trade-offs, with modest economic gains in some areas and political friction in others, gradually determining where the UK chooses to position itself between autonomy and market access. 

Sam Lowe is a partner and Kathryn Watson a director, both at Flint Global

(Ascannio/Alamy)

9 min read19 May

Imagine sharing your most private thoughts and questions without fear of disclosure or judgement and receiving answers that appear expert and dispassionate.

The attraction of AI tools for children and young adults wrestling with the challenges of growing up is, in some senses, understandable.  

So too, however, are the concerns of those who say chatbots are no substitute for genuine therapeutic expertise – or simple human kindness.

That children are using AI to try to manage their mental health just confirms for some the extent to which adults have abrogated responsibility for their welfare to machines. 

“I was having a conversation with [ChatGPT] and asking questions, and it told me I might have anxiety or depression. It’s made me start thinking that I might?”

The above is a snapshot of a 12-year-old girl’s call to Childline, shared with The House magazine, after she had spoken to an AI chatbot.

Darker still, in the most devastating cases young people have died after interactions with chatbots, with some families accusing the tech of instructing those vulnerable teenagers to take their own lives. 

Teachers are certainly starting to notice their students using the technology for support. Polling by Teacher Tapp, carried out on behalf of The House magazine, shows that just under a fifth of secondary school leaders are seeing students using AI chatbots such as ChatGPT to support their mental health. 

While the UK government has clarified that some chatbots are in scope of the Online Safety Act, many experts feel the act is not fit for purpose, with gaps and loopholes meaning young people are still able to access potentially harmful content. 

With AI being included in the government’s consultation on further measures to prepare children for the future in an age of rapid technological change, how are children using the technology, and should a form of age restrictions – like those discussed for social media platforms – also be introduced? And with children’s mental health services bursting at the seams, could the technology be a hindrance, or a help?

“There’s a disconnect between how parents perceive children’s use of AI and children’s self-reporting,” school head Damian McBeath tells The House.

McBeath, who is principal of John Wallis Church of England school in Kent, first started to hear about his students using chatbots to seek help with their mental health about a year ago.

His concerns about the new trend have heightened in the last six months. McBeath is concerned that the impact of AI on young people could be even more acute than the concerns that have emerged around social media.

“We are already seeing more children with mental health difficulties. If we don’t get ahead of AI, my personal view is that this is going to be more damaging than social media. If left unchecked, it is going to cause more harm and we are going to see more cases of children who are harmed because of access.”

McBeath is particularly concerned about the technology’s impact on the most vulnerable children, describing it as potentially “hugely dangerous”. He is also concerned that young people testing extreme views on chatbots could be left unchecked and in some cases encouraged. 

The sentiment that AI is the next social media in terms of harms is one that is shared by many.

Data shared with The House by the NSPCC, which runs Childline, shows that between April 2025 and September 2025 Childline delivered 367 counselling sessions where AI, chatbots and related terms were mentioned. This is over four times as many as in the first six months of 2024-25.

So far in 2025-26, over half (191) of counselling sessions with Childline mentioning AI have been about wellbeing (mental and emotional health, suicidal thoughts and feelings, self-harm), including using chatbots for support and AI therapy apps. 

The NSPCC tells The House that children have raised instances of using AI to rate their looks, body and weight, to “diagnose” eating disorders and to plan long fasts or calorie restrictions.

Conversations have also uncovered instances of AI chatbots being unable to give correct safeguarding advice, including dissuading young people from telling safe adults about abuse or telling the child their experience is not abuse.

Tory peer Lord Nash, who proposed that the government introduce a social media ban for children under 16 within 12 months, would like to see the same age restrictions applied to AI chatbots.

“The issue is that social media has come for our children’s attention, and AI is now coming for their affection, and it is very worrying.” Nash is concerned that AI could “further damage parental relationships with children” and hinder young people’s abilities to “react socially in the real world”.

The onus, he says, should be on the companies to prove the safety of their tech before it can be accessed by young people. The peer thinks the claim that technology in schools has a positive impact should also be called into question, as “most” of it is “completely unproven about its effectiveness”.

The issue is that social media has come for our children’s attention, and AI is now coming for their affection, and it is very worrying

Lewis Keller, senior policy and public affairs officer at NSPCC, says the charity’s priority with the government’s consultation is that personalised encounters with AI chatbots “should be removed for child users”. He would also like to see Ofcom working with the AI Security Institute “to make sure that we’re actually doing the proper risk mitigations that are specific to AI chatbots”.

Debbie Keenan, a senior accredited counsellor with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, says the use of chatbots “should be approached with caution”.

“If a therapist were to sense that a child was in danger or needed additional support, they would be able to take immediate action,” Debbie explains. Chatbots like ChatGPT however, have no means of doing so.

“If I felt as a therapist that a child was in crisis or needed signposting on, I would do that in the room; AI doesn’t do that. Whereas counsellors are regulated, we’re ethical, we’re constantly training and upskilling, with loads of training, AI isn’t doing that and it has that lack of real empathy.

“It’ll tell you what you want to hear, and it’s reassurance, but it can’t read if the person’s distressed, dysregulated, if there’s suicide ideation, which you could pick up in the room by having someone sat opposite.”

Could there ever be a place for using AI chatbots to triage children to mental health support?

While Debbie feels that such a tool could be useful for giving “quick coping strategies”, she feels “the danger is for vulnerable people who may get more and more isolated and not reach out to a real human for connection”.

Connie Muttock, head of policy at the Centre for Young Lives, says: “Chatbot technology could be harnessed safely to offer stigma free, accessible pathways into the right support – but that support needs to be available, and currently there is a 55 per cent treatment gap for children’s mental health.”

Like Nash, Muttock believes that the government “should not allow tech companies to offer their services to children until they can prove they are genuinely safe by design and are not causing more harm than good”.

“The use of AI chatbots is now widespread amongst children, despite growing evidence that many are encountering harmful content. We should be very concerned that some children, particularly vulnerable children, could become reliant on chatbots at the expense of human interactions and quality advice from trained and accountable professionals.”

OpenAI told The House that its age prediction system means if a user enters their age as under 18 at sign up, or the system estimates they are “likely under 18”, it applies “teen safeguards by default”.

The company added that it has made “several updates to ChatGPT’s default models and strengthened its responses in sensitive conversations”, and has worked with mental health experts “to help ChatGPT more reliably recognise signs of distress, respond with care, and guide people toward real-world support”.

Chi Onwurah, Labour chair of the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee, believes there is still far more to be done. She was concerned by Google’s comments when a representative for the company appeared before the committee last year.

If we don’t get ahead of AI, my personal view is that this is going to be more damaging than social media

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“Google said that they don’t give advice, they give information. But I don’t think that distinction is clear to a child,” Onwurah says.

As the government continues to consult on the prospect of a social media ban, many will be watching and waiting to see whether AI is also brought under this umbrella. 

Professor Victoria Goodyear, professor of physical activity, health and wellbeing at the University of Birmingham, told the Education Select Committee last month that the lessons learned from social media must be applied to AI: “We need to be future-proofing so that we are not in this situation in 10 years’ time with AI.”

A government spokesperson encouraged those experiencing mental health problems to seek support from qualified professionals, telling The House: “AI chatbots can have a role in supporting early conversations or signposting people to information, but they should not be relied upon for diagnosis or medical advice, particularly when it comes to children’s mental health.”

They added: “This government is committed to raising the healthiest generation of children ever by expanding access to early mental health support, and we have delivered on our promise to recruit 8,500 more mental health workers across children and adult services three years ahead of schedule.”

And yet the pull of AI tools remains strong. As the government tries to walk the difficult tight rope of both embracing and being wary of AI, the true impact of its genesis on young minds may not be known for many years to come. 

Tanya Reynolds as Mariella and Siena Kelly as Anna | Photo by Helen Murray

4 min read19 May

A fresh and furious play, the performances of 1536’s central characters are absolutely brilliant. These three sparky young women of Essex are supported by a superb production which makes highly effective use of a black scrim. Yes. I had to look that up.

The early parts of 1536 present a wonderful portrayal of the kind of relationships which can exist between young women. On stage and screen we often see blokes joshing – yet not so often women, especially those with little education, wealth or ‘interesting lives’. 

Before the plot unfolds, we witness loving and raucous teasing – a highly charged conduct, very rarely revealed to those outside the inner circle; the joy fairly radiates and is instantly appealing.

In the play’s programme we find a quote by Hilary Mantel: “History is not the past… it’s what is left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it.” And then the programme states this: “Women of the past were ground to such powder that history’s sieve catches nothing of them.”

In that sense 1536 is letting us hear something of the conversations that must have happened during the arrest, incarceration, show trial and execution of Henry VIII’s second wife Anne Boleyn. This is Mantel’s version of “fiction stepping in” which is not to say the conversations were ahistorical, only that they have to be inferred. 

Powerful men can still have a catastrophic impact on women’s lives

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Set against the backdrop of Boleyn’s arrest and execution in faraway London, 1536 is darkly comic in places, but elsewhere it resonates intensely with depressing aspects of life in the 21st century. Powerful men can still have a catastrophic impact on women’s lives, especially the lives of poor young women. But don’t get me started on Jeffrey Epstein.

Boleyn was arrested on 2 May 1536 and executed just 17 days later on 19 May with only a show trial in between.

Relying on two-day old news, at first the women find it hard to believe “the Queen” could be in any kind of serious peril. For the young women the story quickly moves on from gossip to something a great deal more serious: the nature of their lives and likely futures – and how closely they are tied to the men in their current or future existence.

The next bulletin from the capital reveals that while adultery is ordinarily a matter for the Church courts, in the case of a woman who apparently bewitched the King, and tricked him into marrying her, it becomes a capital offence for which the sentence is death.

The fact that everyone knew Henry pursued Anne for years and changed the law – and indeed the established Church – solely to make it possible for him to marry her counted for nothing.

As further news of Boleyn’s alleged offences emerges the women realise the lurid details are having a ripple effect, feeding misogyny, and amplifying it in their everyday lives. Which brings us right back to the present day.

We have seen it often – a woman is monstered in social media and newspapers, her reputation and life trashed. Lies are created then embellished, believed particularly if she is a woman engaged in public life – or, as in this story, just a lively poor young woman with dreams and aspirations above her class and sex.

Find time to see this play – though with an age rating of 14+ (there are sex scenes but no nudity) it’s something to bear in mind when deciding who to take with you.

Baroness Thornton is a Labour peer

1536

Written by: Ava Pickett

Directed by: Lyndsey Turner

Venue: Ambassadors Theatre, London, WC2 – until 1 August

‘March Against The Machines’ protest outside Google’s London headquarters in February 2026 (Ron Fassbender/Alamy)

6 min read19 May

The next US presidential election may be more than two years away, but the jostling to become the Democratic candidate is well under way, and Gavin Newsom’s success at turning Donald Trump’s social media game against him with mocking ALLCAPS tweets has put him at the front of the pack.

Critics have identified a potential problem with California’s governor, however – he is, they say, far too close to Silicon Valley’s leaders.

Given how far-reaching and fast-acting the changes wrought by AI are likely to be, some think the next US presidential race will be fought as the so-called techlash becomes significant.

Already, another senior Democrat has put himself at the head of the rebellion. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, has lambasted Newsom for opposing new taxes and regulations on big tech.

Sanders is also benefiting from a growing voter backlash over the proliferation of data centres – the physical infrastructure that AI needs to power its tools – across the country.

The impact on rural areas in the US might even be a factor in the mid-terms, some commentators believe, weakening Republican support in some heartland areas the Democrats are looking to flip in their effort to seize control of Congress.

“A few months ago, when I proposed a moratorium on AI data centres, it was perceived as a radical, fringe and Luddite idea”, Sanders said recently. “Well, not any more.”

Twelve US states are now considering data centre moratoriums, with over 50 passed in towns, cities and counties locally.

In the UK the issue is, as yet, more muted, but there are already Cabinet tensions over how far the government should go to accommodate the energy-hungry centres.

So far the protests have been tiny – but government insiders can see what is happening in the US and worry the movement could spread.

Ministers – and data centre developers – are keen to emphasise the upsides, such as clean jobs in post-industrial areas. In a data centre, there is little risk of a life-changing injury – it is not physically punishing work, nor is it something that requires extensive training.

But providing sufficient energy is a challenge and the government was forced to acknowledge that it wrongly gave planning permission to a £1bn redevelopment of a landfill site in Buckinghamshire because they had not adequately assessed electricity demand stemming from the new data centre.

Foxglove, an activist legal firm also campaigning on data centres, believes the government has failed to account for a growth in data centres in its energy and emissions plans.

Tim Squirrell, head of strategy at Foxglove, tells The House: “The government doesn’t seem to have a clue what it’s doing about data centre emissions. There is no way that projected emissions can fit in the carbon budget without serious changes, but so far neither DSIT nor DESNZ seem willing to acknowledge there’s any trade-off between building hyperscale data centres and delivering on our net-zero commitments.”

Opposition to data centres in the UK may so far be low key, but there is a chance that it will grow and merge with other building concerns around tech – from social media use among children to the access to NHS data.

When I proposed a moratorium on AI data centres, it was perceived as a radical, fringe idea… Well, not any more

Elon Musk’s forays into UK politics – backing Tommy Robinson, for instance – have done little to improve public perception of US tech leaders. The dealings of Peter Thiel’s company, Palantir, with the UK state, including the NHS, are almost as controversial. The huge wealth and influence of a small group of Americans is only going to grow.

And then there is the spectre of AI-driven job losses as evidence mounts of a dramatic collapse of entry-level posts in some industries especially vulnerable to automation from the new technology.

Given the scale of the coming impact, some of the political discourse around AI can seem almost touchingly naive – touching that is, if it weren’t so important.

Speaking from an autonomous car juddering forward outside Parliament, Tech Secretary Liz Kendall recently admitted she didn’t use AI for work. “I use AI personally rather than at work, I’ve got to be honest. I’m much more likely to use it in my personal life,” she told Newsnight’s Matt Chorley, interviewing her from the front seat of a somewhat cramped saloon car.

Her predecessor, Peter Kyle, does use AI but found that his prompts were subject to Freedom of Information requests.

MPs like Mark Sewards who have experimented with AI to deliver constituency casework have found it to be a bruising experience. While the chatbot Sewards created was ultimately jettisoned in December due to the burden it placed on his staff, Sewards strikes an optimistic tone about balancing the benefits of progress and listening to the growing transatlantic tech backlash.

“A lot of the fear is based on very real observations of the power of tech to influence politics in a negative way; just look at what social media has done to us over the last 20 years,” he says.

“We’ve got to strike a balance between regulation and innovation. It’s one of the reasons I support innovating more with AI, while at the same time lifting the age of access to social media to 16.

“But the AI revolution is happening, whether we embrace it or not. So we should do everything we can to make it work in our favour.”

There is no doubt that AI can help with the business of politics itself. Ben Guerin, furious about tax rises against pubs, asked the AI agent Claude to workshop an idea he had: using Valuation Office Agency data, could a map of the upcoming business rate rises be built?

A lot of the fear is based on very real observations of the power of tech to influence politics in a negative way

Guerin is far from a political lightweight. Having worked under the tutelage of Lynton Crosby, he launched his own social media-savvy advertising agency in 2016, before becoming a close adviser to Boris Johnson’s 2019 general election campaign. He told the Telegraph that while AI can’t do the imaginative side of political campaigns, it can do just about everything else.

Upon launching, the site took off. Within 24 hours it had been viewed 100,000 times. Soon, tools to organise a crawl around the worst impacted pubs in your local area were added, and before long the government announced a U-turn on the changes.

Similarly, Lord Kempsell enabled AI to support his work campaigning against the Chagos deal including aiding his FOI requests, which revealed the FCDO ‘Chagossian contact group’ had never met after it was announced, and that the Prime Minister’s adviser Jonathan Powell had begun work on a deal before being formally appointed.

But while AI adoption may soon become essential for political campaigners, the irony is that those campaigns may increasingly be fought in the context of voter resentment at the disruption the technology will bring in its wake. 

Photography by Roy J Baron

10 min read20 May

Across Britain, almost two years after Labour won a landslide election victory promising to fix the cost of living crisis, millions of families are still unable to keep their homes warm or to access essential dental treatment, while millions more are skipping meals as they struggle to afford food.

The government’s recently appointed ‘cost of living champion’ is not one of them and never has been.

Lord Walker, the multi-millionaire boss of Iceland supermarkets, freely admits that he has never personally struggled with living costs. But that doesn’t mean he’s the wrong man for the job, he insists.

“I make no secret of the fact that I’m very privileged in my background,” the 45-year-old peer tells The House.

“I’ve come from a very entrepreneurial family. Both my granddads, who I never met, died very young. They were both coal-miners who worked their fingers to the bone… I think because of that, mum and dad always knew what a hard day’s graft was, so I grew up with that work ethic.”

Richard Walker, as he was then, served as Iceland’s managing director from 2018 before taking over as executive chairman in 2023 from his father Malcolm, who co-founded the business in 1970. Working at Iceland brings with it an insight into the experiences of people from more humble starts in life, he says: “Given our business, we do see, feel and hear a lot of the issues on a daily basis that our customers are facing.”

Reporting directly to the Prime Minister, who he meets every few weeks, Walker says his job is to “bring some critical outside thinking” into government and to “stress-test some of the ideas already percolating within No 10” about how to reduce people’s daily costs.

He admits that, as a policy area, the cost of living is “an impossibly broad remit”. He is “zeroing in”, therefore, “on a few key territories where I think policy can be enhanced and improved, but also, to be frank, where I think I can make a quick impact and a difference”.

When The House sits down with Walker, he has just returned from a meeting with Kate Dearden, the consumer protection minister, to discuss the government’s work tackling “subscription traps”. From spring 2027, subscription services will be required to provide customers with reminders when their free trial is ending or when their annual contract is being automatically renewed.

But Walker is also working with the government to explore how sidecar savings, liquid savings accounts connected to a pension plan, and child trust funds could be used to provide a “buffer” for Britain’s lowest-income families. He is eager, too, to widen access to “responsible credit”, as he warns too many people are still being driven into the hands of loan sharks.

As part of his role, Walker has been given a private secretary in No 10 and plans to work with an existing Downing Street ‘sprint team’ solely focused on slashing living costs.

The team, he says, are bringing with them a “private sector mentality and trying to just get shit done – and not machinate and pontificate too much but actually make deliverable interventions at pace”.

Walker accepted the job – an unpaid post – on two conditions: “One – I’m not going to stick around and I’ll give it to the end of the year. Two – I am allowed the freedom to say what I think.”

Does that mean he’ll have finished his work by Christmas?

“We’ll see,” he replies. “What I didn’t want to do is be there forever, and write a very long, 100-page report that no one would read. I’m just interested in meaningful interventions and trying to make a difference. It is early days… but I think to try and put an end-stop date to it is important because it drives a sense of urgency and pace.”

Walker’s appointment to the role in February came less than a month after he took his seat in the Lords as a Labour peer – but his path to Parliament was not straightforward. Until the last election, he had only ever voted for the Conservatives, to whom he donated £10,000 in 2020.

In a letter to Rishi Sunak in 2023, he said it was his “most fervent wish” to become a Tory parliamentary candidate, having “given my all to earning that privilege”. 

By that point, Walker says he had spent two years door-knocking and leafleting for the party in the hope of being selected for a constituency at the general election.

“I did feel I was being given the endless runaround by CCHQ [Conservative Campaign Headquarters],” he says. “This was a long, committed process. I was not so arrogant to think I could just parachute in and bag a seat.”

Walker says his candidacy was repeatedly deferred, as the party told him he was being too outspoken on issues like sewage in Britain’s seas. But he says he had also become disillusioned by the Tories’ ideological direction.

“I just did not like the aping Reform kind of way that the politics was going. I could see the writing on the wall, and I think I’ve been broadly vindicated in them becoming a bit of a tribute band and this existential crisis they’re now having.”

There was nothing opportunistic, he insists, about his decision to switch his support to Labour in early 2024, and he points out that he has “never donated a penny” to the party.

“I was very clear I’m done with chasing the unicorn of trying to be an MP and we never even discussed this place,” he says, referring to the Lords. He was “blown away”, therefore, by the call from Downing Street offering him the peerage late last year.

Endorsing the party is one thing, but taking the Labour whip in Parliament is clearly another. Having backed the Tories almost all his life, what exactly are his politics?

“I’m kind of a pragmatist, being a businessman. I’m obviously pro-market and pro-business,” he says, before adding: “I’ve always wanted to push an agenda that I suppose is centrist, but looks after those people who don’t have broad shoulders… I have, and continue to develop, quite a strong social conscience, which I think sits very well with a centre-left agenda.”

In a previous interview, Walker said described his father as “more a Farage fan”. How did Malcolm Walker react to seeing his son sworn in as a Labour peer?

“He was very proud,” Walker laughs, before admitting: “As the photos were being taken in the Robing Room afterwards, he did under his breath shout ‘Vote Reform!’”

Walker’s peerage may also have come as a surprise given how publicly lukewarm he had been about Labour’s first year in government.

I’m not going to give a running scoreline. I’ll give you a score at the end of year

In a February 2025 interview with the Financial Times, he warned that the decision to hike employers’ national insurance contributions had “added greatly to the cost of business” and he gave the government a measly score of six out of 10 for its performance thus far. Would he give it a higher score now?

“It haunts me, this question,” he exclaims. “I’m not going to give a running scoreline. I’ll give you a score at the end of year.”

Has the cost of living got better for people since Labour took office?

“I think it’s kind of some and some,” is his answer. While his opinion of the employer’s national insurance hike has not changed, he argues that the decision to increase the minimum wage to £12.71 per hour “is a good thing which will filter through”. He adds, however:  “Clearly there have been some things that have been out of their control. I think the two biggest concerns are food and energy.

“At the moment, [with] food inflation, we’re OK, but clearly everyone is watching, praying and hoping that Hormuz will be reopened and things will be resolved. We’ll see what the next energy cap is, but hopefully we can get through the summer, and when heating usage goes up, we’re in a more stable environment.”

One major cost that hits households each month is council tax, charged according to what properties were worth in 1991. It has become an increasingly regressive system, with the Resolution Foundation finding that it now takes nearly five per cent of income from the poorest families but only one per cent from the richest. Shouldn’t the government reform it?

“I agree, and I’ve raised it with them. It isn’t a system which is up to date,” he says. “If there’s the political will and the room to manoeuvre, it should be looked at.”

Walker voted for Brexit in 2016 but has been disappointed by how it turned out: “I’m not quite sure we got to the sunny uplands that Lords Hannan and Gove promised us.”

While he has welcomed the government’s work building a closer relationship with the EU, he does not think it should go as far as taking the UK back into the single market, as London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has pushed for. “It would be a terrible idea, politically, socially. There was enough of a row over Brexit.”

Is there an economic case for it? “Obviously there’s economic arguments, but we’ve been there and done that,” he replies. “We’ve had the vote, so we can’t go back there.”

He is less willing to pin his colours to the mast when asked whether the government should grant licences to drill the Jackdaw gas field and Rosebank oil field. Despite the question sitting at the centre of a policy debate over whether increased North Sea drilling could reduce energy bills – even if only slightly – the peer says he is “not an expert” on the issue, though he finds it “interesting”.

Walker is speaking to The House in the days ahead of Labour’s disastrous local election results and the subsequent turbulence at Downing Street, but even in advance of those elections, the opinion polls are clear that Keir Starmer is profoundly unpopular across the country. Does he have no sympathy with Labour MPs already calling on him to stand aside?

“No, none at all. I think that’s where they get too consumed in this place. The guy won an absolutely thumping majority, with a record number of seats. He was given a very clear mandate from the British people and it’s his duty to get on and deliver that.

“Opinion polls will bounce around – you’re right, of course, the current ones are pretty rough reading – but he is a man of integrity and of duty, and he wants to see it through, of course.”

While tackling the cost of living remains a top priority for the government, Walker is clear that the issue should be viewed not just in terms of the base cost of products, but in the full context of whether wages are keeping up with them.

“But actually, I think it goes beyond that,” he says, “towards a sense of life being a daily grind. By that, I mean people feeling that there’s an injustice to a system, or they’re getting caught out, or they can’t just catch a beat.

“I don’t think anyone is expecting the price of stuff to go down, long-term. In fact, I’d hope it doesn’t, because then we’d be in a Greek-style deflationary environment, it wouldn’t be a good thing.

“But I do think people should expect a government to work as hard as they can to make interventions where they can.”