General election 2024: Labour promises to boost digital infrastructure

The Labour Party manifesto for the 2024 basic election has promised to help the tech and digital sectors via a brand new industrial technique and a plan to reform planning guidelines to boost digital infrastructure reminiscent of datacentres.

An Industrial Strategy Council can be arrange on a statutory foundation to present recommendation from companies, with the celebration saying it is going to ship “a new way of doing government that is more joined up…and harnesses new technology”.

“We will work in partnership with industry to seize opportunities and remove barriers to growth,” mentioned the manifesto. “We will also update national planning policy to ensure the planning system meets the needs of a modern economy, making it easier to build laboratories, digital infrastructure, and gigafactories.”

Labour mentioned that if it types the following authorities, it is going to develop a 10-year infrastructure technique, aligned with its industrial technique and regional growth priorities. The manifesto cites cell and broadband networks, synthetic intelligence (AI) and datacentres as areas this technique intends to profit.

“Under the Conservatives, investment in 5G is falling behind other countries and the roll-out of gigabit broadband has been slow. Labour will make a renewed push to fulfil the ambition of full gigabit and national 5G coverage by 2030,” mentioned the manifesto. “We will ensure our industrial strategy supports the development of the AI sector [and] removes planning barriers to new datacentres.”

The celebration makes no commitments to introducing its personal model of the federal government’s controversial Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, which failed to turn out to be legislation due to Parliament being dissolved for the election.

But the manifesto promised to create a National Data Library, “to bring together existing research programmes and help deliver data-driven public services, whilst maintaining strong safeguards and ensuring all of the public benefit”.

Labour claimed that the UK’s regulatory surroundings hampers the introduction of recent applied sciences and the celebration will overhaul the system to permit companies to make the most of innovation extra rapidly. It may even introduce legal guidelines to regulate some AI corporations.

“Regulators are currently ill-equipped to deal with the dramatic development of new technologies, which often cut across traditional industries and sectors. Labour will create a new Regulatory Innovation Office, bringing together existing functions across government. This office will help regulators update regulation, speed up approval timelines, and co-ordinate issues that span existing boundaries,” mentioned the manifesto.

“Labour will ensure the safe development and use of AI models by introducing binding regulation on the handful of companies developing the most powerful AI models and by banning the creation of sexually explicit deepfakes.”

The celebration mentioned it is going to additionally construct on the present Online Safety Act and “explore further measures to keep everyone safe online, particularly when using social media”.

Technology additionally performs an underpinning position in a number of areas of Labour’s plans for public sector reform, together with healthcare, policing and taxes.

In the NHS, the manifesto promised to “harness the power of technologies like AI to transform the speed and accuracy of diagnostic services, saving potentially thousands of lives”. It mentioned the celebration will exploit the “revolution taking place in data and life sciences” to rework healthcare.

Labour desires to additional develop the NHS App, in order that sufferers are “in control of their own health to better manage their medicine, appointments, and health needs,” and it’ll digitise the Red Book file of youngsters’s well being.

In policing, Labour mentioned it is going to guarantee expertise and investigative strategies “keep pace with modern threats” and goals to standardise approaches to procurement and IT.

The manifesto mentioned Labour will modernise HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to deal with tax avoidance, which is able to contain investing in new expertise and capability for HMRC.

E-commerce corporations could also be focused, as Labour mentioned it is going to change the enterprise charges system with an goal to “level the playing field between the high street and online giants”.

The Labour Party additionally promised to guarantee justice and compensation are “delivered swiftly for those subpostmasters shamefully affected by the Horizon IT scandal”.