Opinion: Why do we rely on US tech giants in the UK?

It is time to rip the plaster off and free ourselves from the grip of giant global tech moguls on our public services. Gaining digital sovereignty would protect us from unaccountable corporations and the instability in the USA, and could be great news for our homegrown digital talent, which many are calling ‘Silicon Brighton.’

Every year the government spends many billions on big contracts with so-called ‘strategic suppliers’, to deliver the technology we rely on in our daily lives, from the NHS and social services to national defence systems.

With temperamental President Trump continually causing fear and disruption, extending from sudden tariffs to actual threats, there is a real risk of these ‘strategic suppliers’ proving anything but strategic.

Corporate influence has been the talk of Westminster on the back of the Peter Mandelson scandal. Along with my Green colleagues, I have called for an independent inquiry into Peter Mandelson’s involvement in securing tendered contracts for the spy-tech company Palantir.

It is utterly wrong that American companies like Palantir, whose data practices are cause for enormous concern, are being awarded multi-million pound contracts in our NHS and defence sector without competition.

Beyond the global risks, there are practical problems caused by public services being run within the big tech companies’ proprietary software. With the underlying code and data hidden away from customers in these closed systems, our information can’t be easily moved to another company’s product if we want to shift to another provider, so the Government is locking us into a very risky situation.

And there are wider harms to our economy here in the UK, when billions in public spending are being hoarded by giants, instead of being invested in our own creative and people-focused tech businesses. Brightonians have so much skill in this area, and our talented workforce and the companies they are creating could be the success story of our economy, if only we took a different road.

It is not as if the systems we are locked into are actually good. I cannot tell you the difference it would make to my constituents and casework if our public sector apps, online forms and admin screens were made with the people who have to use them in mind. If we had homegrown alternatives, these could be made much more user friendly, accessible, clear and functional, with UK-based feedback and improvement loops.

Every week I hear from people with disabilities, neurodiverse residents and older people who are just finding it impossible to access the simplest of services online or facing unnecessary barriers to claiming benefits that would make a huge difference to their lives. The limitations of the tech we are procuring for billions from the big tech companies is behind almost all of these problems.

To help fix all this and reap the huge potential benefits of bringing these systems back under our control, I have been working with digital rights campaigners to call for a UK Digital Sovereignty Strategy. A proper strategy to build up alternatives would build up our resilience against unstable global forces and support homegrown businesses all at the same time.

In Parliament, I think I was the first MP to ask ministers to develop a Digital Sovereignty Strategy for the UK. Science and Tech Secretary, Liz Kendall, told me that the government is investing in our own AI infrastructure, but this is far too narrow an approach, and falls way short of dealing with the wider problem.

My Early Day Motion calling for this strategy is supported so far by MPs from six parties. It asks for open standards and open-source software, investment in UK technology firms and small businesses, and demands we keep billions away from US tech billionaires and within the UK economy instead.

Our European neighbours have already been making great progress on this topic.

France recently announced that from 2027 every government department will bid adieu to Microsoft Teams and Zoom and will use a French-developed alternative instead. Germany is pioneering digital sovereignty by investing heavily in homegrown, open-source alternatives that it builds, maintains and controls itself.

I am working hard to drum up support in Parliament for our own, much-needed Digital Sovereignty Strategy. If you agree that we should be investing more in domestic technology, and perhaps are not my constituent, then please ask your MP to add their name.