Support for new data centres, long-term R&D funding and reformed, centralised regulators for new technologies are among the key tech policy commitments from the Labour Party’s 2024 manifesto.
The Labour Party published its 2024 manifesto ahead of the general election on 4 July.
Here are the key tech policies from the Labour manifesto that startups, investors and industry stakeholders should know about.
Data centre planning reform
To ensure there is enough compute for the UK’s growing AI sector, Labour said it will “remove planning barriers to new data centres”.
The policy would designate data centre projects as “nationally important”, The Telegraph reported, meaning ministers would make planning decisions rather than local councils.
It would see more data centres built on brownfield sites on green belts surrounding cities. Plans for a £2.5bn “hyperscale” data centre were blocked last year under current rules.
Labour also said it would establish a National Data Library that would “bring together existing research programmes and help deliver data-driven public services”.
Closing private equity tax ‘loophole’
Labour said that “private equity is the only industry where performance-related pay is treated as capital gains” and will close this “loophole”.
The manifesto does not provide further details. The policy, which was first reported by The Times, would mean profits made by a private equity fund would be taxed as income instead of the lower capital gains rate.
Roughly 2,000 people receive carried interest each year, amounting to £2bn a year and an average gain of £1m, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.
Long-term R&D
Labour said the “short funding cycles” provided for key research and development institutions must be scrapped in favour of 10-year budgets. Shorter funding cycles of around one to five years have been criticised for hindering long-term planning.
The party said it would also simplify the procurement process, which it considers another barrier to R&D innovation.
Regulators
Labour called out the current state of regulators, describing them as “ill-equipped to deal with the dramatic development of new technologies”.
The party said it would create a Regulatory Innovation Office that would bring together the existing functions of government. Labour said the office would allow faster, more up-to-date regulation with shorter approval times and greater cross-regulatory coordination.
Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones previously told UKTN that the Conservative plan to regulate new technologies such as AI was insufficient due to overworked and unequipped regulators.
AI safety
As part of Labour’s plan for souped-up regulators, the party said it would introduce new regulations on AI.
Labour said it intends to ban the creation of “sexually explicit deepfakes”, which are sexual AI-generated images that are made to resemble real people without their consent.
Last year, the House of Lords held a debate on the potential harm of this practice and the best way to mitigate it.
Labour also said it would introduce “binding regulation on the handful of companies developing the most powerful AI models.
British Business Bank reform
Labour said it would “reform of the British Business Bank” to encourage greater SME investment across the regions of the UK.
As previously announced in Labour’s ‘Financing Growth‘ and ‘Start-up, Scale-up Review‘ reports, the party intends to grant further autonomy to the bank, removing the need for state approval for any changes to the annual strategy.
The party also intends to introduce new key performance indicators that will track the bank’s progress in providing regional funding.
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