The UK will increase procurement from homegrown startups, tech minister Peter Kyle said Tuesday, as he unveiled a raft of digital tools — including a chatbot built in partnership with OpenAI — designed to assist the public and businesses.
Westminster has long been criticised by the tech community for its opaque procurement processes, which have left some startups feeling they had been unfairly passed over for lucrative government contracts.
But the Labour administration — which came to power in July last year — is signalling plans to shake that up. The move follows months of increasingly frosty relations between the government and the country’s tech sector amid tax hikes and funding cuts.
“We want to make sure we use the purchasing power of the government to benefit the innovation coming out in this country,” Kyle told Sifted at a press briefing. He didn’t share details on how exactly that would work.
His comments come on the back of a bumper week for UK government tech announcements that saw it announce a grand AI plan, which included billions of pounds of investment into AI infrastructure and increasing the country’s compute power twentyfold by 2030.
A turbulent relationship
It’s been a turbulent six months for Labour’s relationship with the country’s tech sector. The government axed £1.3bn in tech funding over the summer, before hiking business tax — including employee national insurance contributions and tax paid on an exit — in the Autumn budget.
There are signs the government is looking to repair that relationship.
In November, finance minister Rachel Reeves announced plans to mobilise £80bn investment into new businesses and critical infrastructure — including VC funds — from the country’s pension funds.
“We are looking at ways that we can play a key part of fostering innovation,” said Kyle. “The government is trying to create the investment landscape for private sector investment and the VC community.”
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/uk-startup-procurement-news/
