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The UK will bring in legislation to safeguard against the risks of artificial intelligence in the next year, technology secretary Peter Kyle has said, as he pledged to invest in the infrastructure that will underpin the sector’s growth.

Kyle told the Financial Times’ Future of AI summit on Wednesday that Britain’s voluntary agreement on AI testing was “working, it’s a good code” but that the long-awaited AI bill would be focused on making such accords with leading developers legally binding.

The legislation, which Kyle said would be presented to MPs in the current parliament, will also turn the UK’s AI Safety Institute into an arms-length government body, giving it “the independence to act fully in the interests of British citizens”. At present, the body is a directorate of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

At the UK-organised AI safety summit last November, companies including OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic signed a “landmark” but non-binding agreement allowing partner governments to test their forthcoming large language models for risks and vulnerabilities before they were released to consumers.

Kyle said that while he was “not fatalistic” about advancements in AI, “citizens need to know that we are mitigating the potential risks”.

The legislation will focus exclusively on ChatGPT-style “frontier” models: the most-advanced systems, made by just a small cluster of companies, which are capable of generating text, images, and video.

Kyle also pledged to invest in the advanced computing power needed to enable Britain to train its own sovereign AI models and LLMs, after ministers came under fire in August for scrapping funding for an “exascale” supercomputer project at Edinburgh university. It had been promised £800mn by the previous Conservative government.

Exascale supercomputing — defined as the ability to produce a billion billion operations a second — is widely seen as a crucial step to unlocking the widespread adoption of AI.

There are two known fully functional exascale computers in the world, both in the US. Experts believe that China also has at least one, although it has not submitted to international leader boards on compute capacity.

Kyle said the decision to scrap the existing Edinburgh exascale project was a “painful” consequence of Labour’s fiscal inheritance from the Tories.

“I didn’t cut anything because you can’t cut something that doesn’t exist,” he said of the previous government’s failure to hand over any money to the programme despite promises to do so.

While the government would not be able to stump up £100bn to invest in compute infrastructure by itself, it would partner with private companies and investors to “unlock that kind of money going forward”, he said.

Kyle also suggested that the commitments inherited from the previous government were not adequately suited to the needs of the LLM sector today, saying: “If we’d planned for this two years ago, we would have got it wrong.”

“I will make statements specifically on compute, relating to sovereign compute capacity, but also general compute capacity that’s needed right across the economy and society for researchers and businesses alike,” he said. “But when I make an announcement . . . it will be funded, it will be costed and it will be delivered.”

Separately Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the Competition and Markets Authority, said the UK could become a leader in AI innovation and that the antitrust watchdog’s “unique” approach to digital regulation, through its new Digital Markets Unit, would enable a “very targeted, proportionate” approach to Big Tech.

The CMA’s proposed regulation was not “going to deter or chill investment”, Cardell told the FT summit. “There’s a huge opportunity here for this to be a platform for growth for the UK tech sector.”

Close Brothers Asset Management (CBAM) and SEI have agreed a platform technology partnership.

The deal includes the adoption of SEI Wealth Platform and SEI Data Cloud, a fully integrated technology, data and operational outsourcing solution.

CBAM says the partnership with SEI marks a move to deliver its strategic objectives and to be the best place in the UK for wealth management professionals and their clients.

It adds that SEI was selected following a comprehensive, multi-stage selection process involving several providers.

SEI is a wealth platform technology provider and currently has contracts with several wealth companies including Benchmark Capital, Brewin Dolphin and Evelyn Partners.

CBAM also announced that it will also adopt Objectway’s Portfolio Management Solution and outsource order execution activities to Winterflood Business Services (WBS).

A number of CBAM employees will join SEI’s SWP operations team as part of the agreement. SEI and CBAM will work closely to ensure a smooth and successful transition.

CBAM’s chief operating officer Gregg Clarke said: “Our new partnership with SEI marks an important moment for CBAM. The adoption of the SEI Wealth Platform enables us to deliver on our growth strategy, and expand upon our proposition whilst having complete confidence that high-quality service levels will be maintained for our clients.

“After a thorough selection process, it was clear that CBAM and SEI are both culturally and technologically aligned. SEI understands our business and is committed to partnering with us, alongside our new WBS and Objectway partnerships, to help us achieve our strategic objectives.”

Jim London, chief executive of SEI Investments Europe Limited, added: “We’re thrilled to partner with CBAM and to provide access to the full breadth of SEI’s integrated technology, data and operations solutions that can help them achieve their growth aspirations.”

SITTING in the English Channel, just off the western coast of France, Jersey is known for its sandy beaches and rich history.

While the Channel Island is popular with Brits in the summer, it’s been tipped as a top winter destination thanks to the mild temperatures.

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As the most southerly of the Channel Islands, Jersey benefits from mild weather in the winter, making it slightly warmer than the UK mainland.

According to the island’s tourism board, temperatures in Jersey rarely drop below freezing, ranging between 5C to 8C in the winter instead.

Because of its warmer winters, the Channel Island has been tipped as a top winter destination by a team of travel experts from the travel booking site, Omio.

The travel booking website researched the best locations where holidaymakers could experience a Euro Winter, with St Helier, the capital of Jersey topping the list.

Google searches of St Helier as a winter holiday destination rose 171 per cent compared to last year.

As the island’s capital, there are plenty of activities to do in St Helier – especially if there’s a chill in the air.

One of those is Chocolate Bar Jersey – an independent shop where holidaymakers can purchase handmade chocolate.

Other places to shop include the Liberty Wharf Shopping Centre, a restored Victorian shopping centre that’s home to top brands and cafes, and Voisins Department Store.

Mont Orgueil Castle is another popular attraction to visit in Jersey in the winter.

Bird watching is another popular pastime in the winter, with the best months for bird watching between October and March.

This is because plenty of birds migrate to the island for the winter.

Jersey is also said to be home to a year-round dolphin population, meaning holidaymakers may be able to spot the aquatic creatures in the winter.

Earlier this year, Jersey was named one of the world’s best islands in the Condé Nast Traveller’s 2024 Readers’ Choice Awards.

Jersey is known for its wide variety of beaches, with its coastline often being compared to more exotic locations like the Caribbean.

Beauport Beach, which is close to St Brelade’s Bay, is described as a hidden gem.

Arriving at the beach is an adventure, with a steep pathway of steps tumbling down from the cliff face from a small car park.

The south side of the beach is surrounded by granite cliffs and is a well-known sun trap, making it an ideal place for a walk.

Plenty of Jersey’s beaches are surrounded by palm trees, giving the island a tropical feel.

The harbour town of St Aubin’s, located on the southwest side of the island between Portelet Bay and St Helier, is another popular destination on the island.

Originally a fishing village, St Aubin’s used to be the island’s economic centre, with the harbour being central to the town’s history.

Its fort is another highlight, with holidaymakers able to reach the structure at low tide.  

Jersey is a paradise for food lovers – with the island making the most of its local produce like Jersey royal potatoes, Jersey milk, and seafood.

Jersey milk is used to make butter and ice-cream, which is available from many of the island’s cafes and beaches.

The Michelin-starred restaurant – Bohemia Bar & Restaurant at The Club Hotel & Spa in St Helier is one of Jersey’s top offerings.

With its chic atmosphere, bright linen-clad tables, dark wood walls, and modern European cuisine made with local, seasonal, and fresh ingredients, the restaurant has held on to a Michelin star for 20 consecutive years.

Other awards under its belt include four AA Rosettes and a place in the top 1,000 restaurants in the world by LA LISTE in 2022.

The island can be a budget-friendly holiday destination depending on the type of accommodation and activities you choose.

There’s a variety of budget-friendly accommodation options, including guesthouses, B&Bs, and Airbnbs.

Holidaymakers can save money by exploring Jersey on foot thanks to the compact size of the island.

The easiest way to reach Jersey is via ferry or plane, depending on where you live on the UK mainland.

Condor Voyager is a high-speed ferry from Poole to St Helier that takes about four hours. A standard car trip for two can cost from £75 per person each way.

Commodore Clipper is a conventional ferry from Portsmouth to St. Helier that takes about 10 hours and 20 minutes. The average price for a foot passenger is £206, and the average price for a car is £436.

And EasyJet offers cheap flights to Jersey starting from £26.99 in November.

Meanwhile, these are six secret holiday spots in Europe.

And this French holiday spot has been described as “unfairly overlooked”.

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Donald Trump’s election victory has sent a shudder through Europe and Asia as policymakers and executives digested the implications of a US-led lurch towards protectionism.

Europe’s export-oriented countries — led by the region’s largest economy, Germany — are heavily exposed to the US president-elect’s claims that he would tighten trade restrictions and loosen security ties with the US’s allies.

Moritz Schularick, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, described a second Trump presidential term as “the most difficult economic moment” in Germany’s postwar history.

Berlin was “not prepared” to deal with the challenges both in foreign trade and security policy that it will soon face, he said, adding that it would now need to “invest massively” in defence capabilities.

The repercussions for the global economy are neither immediate nor straightforward, however.

Many analysts expect the next president’s vow to make his 2017 tax cuts on corporates and the wealthy permanent to initially boost growth. “Fiscal stimulus might dominate and be a small positive” in the near term, said Innes McFee at Oxford Economics.

US equity markets surged to an intraday high after Trump’s decisive victory, as investors focused on the prospect for lower corporate taxes and deregulation.

If Trump carries through his plans for higher tariffs — 20 per cent for exporters outside China, where a 60 per cent levy could be imposed — it would raise the prospect of tit-for-tat trade measures that would derail trade. But it will be many months before the details of Trump’s trade policy comes into view.

“The rest-of-world impact is dominated by what the eventual tariff regime is going to look like,” McFee said.

Peter Sand, chief analyst at Xeneta, said he expected shipping rates to soar as companies rush to send goods to the US ahead of the president-elect’s inauguration on January 20.

“The knee-jerk reaction from US shippers will be to front-load imports before Trump is able to impose his new tariffs,” Sand said. “If you have warehouse space and the goods to ship, front-loading imports is the simplest way to manage this risk in the short term — but it will bring its own problems.”

In a sign of the longer-term pressures a US lurch towards protectionism augurs, stocks in global shipping companies dipped on Wednesday.

Shares in Maersk, the world’s second-largest container shipping group, fell 7.6 per cent while Hapag-Lloyd was down by 5.8 per cent by noon.

Modelling from the IMF points to a wider economic hit if Trump’s threatened tariffs target a “sizeable swath” of global trade.

The tariffs — alongside the rest of his economic agenda of tighter migration rules, extended US tax cuts and higher global borrowing costs — would erase 0.8 per cent from economic output next year and 1.3 per cent in 2026, the fund said last month. 

Krishna Guha, vice-chair at Evercore ISI, said he expected the Trump “macro shock” would have sharply diverging implications for the global economy, with the US experiencing higher prices and growth while other countries suffered disinflation and a dip in output.

Hildegard Müller, head of a trade body representing Germany’s struggling car sector, said the pressure on manufacturers to relocate production from Europe to the US would be “enormous”.

Michael Hüther, president of the Cologne Institute for Economic Research, said German companies should “brace for a costly trade war as of today”.

Ireland, home to the European headquarters or large operations of major US tech and pharma companies, also has an outsized trading relationship with the US. 

“This is a really big issue for the Irish economy,” said Dan O’Brien, chief economist at the Institute of International and European Affairs. He added that the imposition of across the board tariffs was “the biggest near-term risk” for the Irish economy. 

Europe as a whole appears acutely vulnerable, with the US accounting for a fifth of the bloc’s total exports last year, according to Eurostat data. At €502bn, EU exports were 46 per cent larger than the region’s imports of US goods.

Trump’s tariffs would hit an “already fragile Eurozone economy”, ABN Amro economists warned, with “the downside risks” to growth and inflation having significantly increased.

The outcome would be lower interest rates in the region — and a bigger gap between borrowing costs in the currency bloc and the US.

While most European shares lost ground, Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International, which remains the largest western lender still operating in Russia, was the best performer on the Euro Stoxx banks index, up more than 6 per cent. During the campaign Trump repeatedly claimed he could quickly end the war in Ukraine.

The implications elsewhere will depend on how far Trump goes in pursuing his anti-globalisation agenda.

Asian exporters are exposed to higher trade barriers, with China’s already-weak economy set to suffer acutely if Trump goes ahead with plans to impose a 60 per cent levy on all Chinese exports to the US.

Analysts at Citigroup argued that the 60 per cent China threat feels more like a “bargaining chip” than a real risk.

Mexico, which has overtaken China as the biggest exporter to the US, is also vulnerable despite a free trade deal inked with the US and Canada during Trump’s first term.

He has vowed to impose tariffs — including a 200 per cent levy on cars imported from Mexico — unless its southern neighbour curbs the flow of migrants across its border.

Japanese automaker Honda warned on Wednesday of an “extremely big impact” on its exports to the US from Mexican plants should Trump follow through on that pledge.

For America’s trading partners, the immediate prospect is an extended spell of heightened uncertainty, as the world’s most important economy undergoes a historic regime shift. 

“Trump remains unpredictable and erratic,” said Holger Schmieding, economist at Berenberg Bank. “We thus cannot really gauge which of his often grandiose and not always consistent campaign promises he would actually implement.”

Additional reporting by Laura Pitel in Berlin, Jude Webber in Dublin and Kana Inagaki, Daria Mosolova and Mari Novik in London

Data visualisation by Patrick Mathurin and Janina Conboye

A TOP retailer has dropped the price of the Baileys to £10 for a whole litre.

Shoppers are desperate to get their hands on this seasonal treat which can be spotted at Sainsburys.

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Baileys Original Irish Cream Liqueur is enjoyed all year round but is especially popular during those winter nights.

On the Baileys Facebook page, happy customers were leaving rave reviews: “Definitely the best, can’t beat it.

Another suggested: “Baileys with ice cream?”

A third raised one concern: “Yeah, open the bottle and it’s gone.”

The deal is available to those with a Nectar Card, which slashes the usual price of £21.95 down by more than half.

Nectar customers can add the card to their Sainsburys Groceries account when they check out to access all sorts of discounts.

For those shopping in person all you need to do is scan the Nectar card or app on your phone to bag the bargain.

Baileys is famed for its smooth luxurious texture and distinctive taste.

With hints of chocolate and vanilla amongst the combination of Irish whiskey and Irish cream, it’s pretty irresistible.

For those who don’t have a Nectar Card, Sainsburys have offered an alternative.

The retailer has offered a dupe of the beloved for £13 for 70cl called Sainsbury’s Irish Cream Liqueur.

This has received generally good reviews but many shoppers have stood by the original.

For loyal customers of Baileys, other supermarkets are knocking the price down as we get towards December.

In Morrisons you can nab a bottle for £13, however you will need a More Card to get this reduced price.

More Cards can be downloaded on the My Morrisons app where hundreds more deals are available.

You can also check these bargains out through the My Morrisons website if you fancy scrolling on a bigger screen.

If you’ve got a physical More Card you are able to print out paper vouchers to shop in store.

Other retailers discounts include Tesco, which is bumping the price down from £22 to £13 for members.

Tesco Clubcard members can sign up online or through the app.

One of the best ways to make sure you’re getting the best deal is checking supermarket websites before hand.

Most shops will have their original prices as well as available discounts.

Another shopper hack is to use comparison sites like Google Shopping or Trolley.co.uk so you know you’re not missing out.

Make sure to keep an eye on how big the bottles are, as they vary in size.

How else can I save money on Baileys?

To stretch your cash a little further, you can always go for a Baileys dupe, which have been described as “almost perfect.”

If you’re prepared to downsize you can purchase the 70cl Ballycastle cream liqueur for £5.79 – just 82p per 100ml.

Customers have described the product as “lush” and “gorgeous” on Facebook.

The Ballycastle product even comes in several flavours, such as the newest addition, which is a luscious Milk Chocolate Clementine version for £7.49.

If you’re keen to give something new a try, this could save you up to a whopping £16.21 on one bottle of Baileys.

In fact, for the price of one Baileys bottle from Morrisons or Asda (£22.00), you could almost buy four bottles of the Ballycastle.

However, keep in mind that the ABV (alcohol by volume) of Bailey’s is 16%, the Ballycastle booze is 12%.

Other supermarkets which offer up their own Baileys dupes include Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Morrison’s, Asda, Lidl and M&S.

While the cheapest is Ballycastle, Lidl’s Irish Cream Liqueur is the second most affordable at £1.14 per 100ml.

In Tesco, the 70cl own brand liqueur is £8.50, at £1.21 per 100ml, and in Sainsbury’s, it is £9 at £1.28 per 100ml.

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

One of the awful ironies of this harrowing play about the Sudanese human rights activist Mende Nazer’s experience of modern slavery is that it wouldn’t exist had she not had the courage to try and escape — and had a couple of brave people not helped her. Being an enslaved person in today’s world means being invisible and voiceless. When Nazer broke free in 2000, it was from a home in north-west London: her plight had gone shockingly unnoticed in contemporary Britain.

Since Kevin Fegan’s play (drawn from Nazer’s 2002 autobiography, Slave, co-written with journalist Damien Lewis) was first staged in 2010, the UK has introduced the Modern Slavery Act. Yet there are currently an estimated 49.6mn enslaved people across the world, according to the Global Slavery Index, and an estimated 130,000 in the UK, according to Anti-Slavery International. Those grim statistics hang over Caroline Clegg’s revival for Feelgood theatre company.

In 1994, as a young girl, Nazer was snatched by mujahideen raiders, who torched her village in the remote Nuba mountains in Sudan, killed many of the inhabitants, and kidnapped and raped her. The traumatised 12-year-old was then sold to a wealthy family in Khartoum, where she was beaten, brutalised and bullied into submission. About six years later, she was trafficked to relatives of her “master” in London, where a chance encounter finally offered a way out. Even then she was initially refused asylum by the UK government; it would take a vigorous campaign to save her from deportation back to Sudan.

Fegan’s play offers a straightforward, episodic account of events, staged by a versatile ensemble in Clegg’s production, who deploy rich traditional music and dance to whisk us into Nazer’s early childhood and contrast that easy warmth and freedom with the later horrors of enslavement. It’s not a particularly innovative show in style or structure. But that’s not the point of this drama, which is more about conveying the naked facts of modern slavery and its impact.

Watching the excellent Yolanda Ovide, as Nazer, transform from an open-faced, hopeful little girl into a shrunken, cowed young woman is awful. There’s a wonderful performance too from Ebony Feare as her friend, Kheko. That they represent real people, and that their experiences are common to many, is what really hits you. This is theatre as educator and campaigner, admirably shining a light on this most hideous and shameful of trades.

★★★★☆

To November 9, riversidestudios.co.uk