Robert Peston

the period that you were in government is actually the share of procurement by government that went to British companies actually rose quite significantly.

And it was a sort of deliberate strategy.

It's fallen.

quite significantly in recent years.

Again, if you look at America, the idea that they would buy from non-American businesses is absurd.

So we obviously need to encourage more British businesses, particularly in the areas we're talking about, AI and tech and all the rest of it.

There's this massive controversy at the moment about Palantir, the American...

The Science and Technology Committee of MPs have said that the NHS should end its contract with Palantir early because it argues that essentially the NHS will be too locked into Palantir to the detriment of potential British competitors.

What do you think of arguments like that?

And again, just to sort of use the US analogy, right?

I mean, you know, Palantir are absolutely immersed in our defence, you know, in the Ministry of Defence.

Yes.

But again, you know, the Department of War in America, the idea that they would be buying the British equivalent, we just shouldn't.

You know, we should be encouraging the British equivalent of Palantir, bidding for, you know, those defence and health contracts.

There's one final thing.

We're almost out of time.

There's one other thing I want to, because I want to take us back to the beginning.

Trump has just announced that he wants to have all new, you know, AI essentially services vetted for a few weeks before they're released.

Do you think that is, because there are two theories of this.

One is it is taking the safety issue seriously, or it's just another Trump thing of saying, I want it first and I want to own it effectively.