I signed a parliamentary motion calling on the Government to publish a comprehensive UK digital sovereignty strategy.
Many government services, critical infrastructure and core democratic functions rely on a small number of external tech suppliers.
Concentration creates risk: if one of those suppliers withdraws, changes its terms, or is affected by sanctions or geopolitical events, essential public services could be disrupted.
While the Government already has principles in place to encourage interoperability and reduce dependency, these are not applied consistently or in a binding way across the public sector.
We need a stronger, binding approach to build resilience into our digital systems.
The Government should be able to fully control the systems it relies on – with the ability to maintain, update, or replace them without being locked into a single supplier.
This isn’t just about resilience. It’s also about value for money, stronger competition, and supporting UK tech businesses and SMEs. Reducing over-reliance on a small number of suppliers will help keep more public money in the UK economy and make our digital systems more robust in the long term.
The motion reads:
“That this House notes that government services, democratic functions and critical infrastructure increasingly depend on a small number of external digital suppliers; further notes that excessive concentration and inadequate exit or substitution planning expose the public sector to risks including service withdrawal, sanctions, commercial failure, geopolitical disruption and unilateral changes in service terms; also notes that existing government policy, including the Technology Code of Practice and Open Standards Principles, promotes interoperability, portability, reuse, access to source code and open source approaches to reduce supplier dependency, but that these principles are not applied consistently or in a binding way across government; believes that long-term resilience, continuity of public services and value for money require the Government to retain effective control over digital systems it funds or relies upon, including the ability to maintain, modify, and replace them without dependence on a single supplier; further believes that reducing supplier concentration through interoperable systems would strengthen competition, support UK technology firms and SMEs, and increase the proportion of public digital expenditure retained in the UK economy; and calls on the Government to publish a comprehensive UK digital sovereignty strategy with binding effect across central government, arm’s-length bodies, and the wider public sector, setting out how continuity of service and operational autonomy will be ensured in the event of supplier withdrawal, sanctions or external state action.”
You can read the motion here: link
