But in the wake of the Iran war, which has choked off supplies of fuel from the Middle East and caused energy costs to soar, the Government has been under mounting pressure to approve new drilling licences – including from Donald Trump.
Expanding on the modern importance of energy security, Mr Carns added: “Britain imports over 40 per cent of its energy.
“We rely on supply chains we do not control. The critical minerals that underpin advanced technology pass through countries whose interests do not always align with our own.”
The Labour MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, who joined the Royal Marines aged 19 and was elected to Parliament in 2024, also criticised the Treasury, accusing it of treating British national security and funds for our Armed Forces as a “cost to be contained”.
Treasury sees defence as ‘a cost to be contained’
In an attack on the long-delayed Defence Investment Plan, he writes: “The Defence Investment Plan does not reckon with the totality of the threat we face.
“Spending 2.68 per cent of GDP by 2030 is not a serious answer to a world where the character of warfare has changed fundamentally.
“That figure was not set by the threat, but by the Treasury, which scores defence as a cost to be contained.”
Mr Carns also suggested Britain needed to develop its own “domestic alternative” to Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5, the world’s most advanced AI models, after Mr Trump banned foreigners from accessing them over national security fears.
He said: “This week, a leading American AI company was ordered by its own government to suspend its most powerful model.
“British researchers were studying it. British companies were testing it. British hospitals were piloting it. Not any more.
“That is the same pattern, live. A tool millions depend on, switched off by foreign decision. Britain has no domestic alternative.
“This isn’t an AI story. It’s the story of every industry we used to lead.
“Britain has some of the best AI talent in the world. What we don’t have is the power stations to run the data centres, the planning system to build them, or the industrial base to make the chips.
“So the work happens here, and the value lands somewhere else.”
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