On Tuesday 13th May, PICTFOR hosted industry and Parliamentary members to discuss how the tech sector can help to deliver the Government’s Industrial Strategy.
Samantha Niblett MP, PICTFOR Co-Chair and Member for South Derbyshire, chaired the session and opened the roundtable by welcoming attendees. She introduced the theme of the discussion, highlighting the critical role of digital policy, infrastructure and regulation in enabling growth and inclusion across the UK.
She then introduced Victoria Collins MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Science, Innovation and Technology, who opened the session by stressing the importance of getting digital and tech policy “right,” particularly through inclusive and ethical approaches. She highlighted how her constituency – Harpenden and Berkhamsted – exemplifies the UK’s digital infrastructure challenges, being home to leading university spinouts and scaleups while still struggling with internet access in key areas. She described how the UK lags internationally, ranking 45th out of 58 countries for 5G rollout and suffering from digital exclusion, which inhibits workforce participation and economic opportunity. She emphasised the social and economic value of digital inclusion and called for investment in both physical and soft infrastructure.
Victoria Collins MP emphasised that this is not just about innovation for its own sake but about creating a regulatory environment that enables trust, inclusion, and industrial growth. She described adoption and inclusion as “two sides of the same coin” and called for AI regulation that is ethical, trustworthy, and supports capital investment and transformation across sectors.
Jessica Lennard, Chief Strategy & External Affairs Officer at the CMA, spoke about the role of competition policy in driving economic growth, productivity and innovation. She outlined the CMA’s core remit to protect consumers and ensure fair, effective competition, noting that competition policy is not an end in itself, but a tool to deliver tangible benefits such as lower prices, better services and greater consumer choice. Lennard underscored the importance of aligning competition policy with the government’s growth agenda, and explained how the CMA is actively targeting its enforcement and market tools toward priority sectors identified in the UK’s industrial strategy.
Jessica Lennard described how the CMA’s microeconomics unit has conducted a retrospective review of international industrial policies, drawing out key success factors to inform UK strategy. She explained that integrating pro-competitive principles into industrial interventions can maximise the long-term value of investment and support sector-wide innovation. She further discussed how the CMA is supporting cross-sector collaboration, including in areas such as net zero and university skills partnerships. She emphasised that scaling and collaboration can be consistent with competition policy, and highlighted examples of how the CMA is enabling such outcomes.
Turning to digital markets, Lennard highlighted the UK’s new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) regime as a world-leading asset. She explained that the UK’s regime is bespoke, flexible and proportionate, designed to foster innovation without burdening smaller businesses. She outlined the CMA’s “Four Ps” – pace, predictability, proportionality and process – as central to its regulatory approach, particularly as it begins to implement the DMCC regime.
In a broad discussion on regulation, several participants raised the need for clear and outcomes-focused rules that are proportionate to the scale of the businesses being regulated. There was wide agreement that regulation must support rather than stifle innovation, and that principles-based approaches, when well-guided, can offer the clarity and flexibility needed by SMEs. It was suggested that “training wheels” are helpful for smaller firms navigating new frameworks, but that regulation must also allow for those constraints to be removed as businesses grow.
Claire Penketh, representing BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, reiterated the importance of professionalism, skills and trust in the deployment of AI. She argued that IT professionals should be recognised and regulated in a similar way to other trusted professions, such as medicine or law, and called for a mandatory cybersecurity code of practice. Others echoed this point, calling for consistency, ethical standards and stable frameworks that would support long-term investment and planning.
Beth Sidwell of the British Phonographic Industry highlighted concerns about the use of copyrighted material in the training of generative AI models. Sidwell emphasised that copyright remains the foundation of the creative sector’s business model, and that enforcement of rights must be upheld if creators are to benefit from AI developments. She noted that a recent survey found 78.5% of music listeners would not engage with AI platforms trained on copyrighted content without consent. She urged policymakers to ensure that transparency in AI training data does not equate to unfair exposure for UK companies, but instead supports a fair and trusted system for all.
Representatives from across the sector, including CloudNC and techUK, raised concerns about jurisdictional ambiguity in proposed regulations, warning that global user-based fee structures could disadvantage UK businesses with international reach. They stressed that success abroad should not become a regulatory penalty, and called for clarity and fairness in how such frameworks are applied.
Anderona Cole, representing Jisc, highlighted the importance of supporting learners in further education, many of whom face barriers to accessing digital resources. She called for a regulatory and funding environment that supports digital inclusion in education, recognising the essential role this plays in skills development and wider economic participation.
Throughout the discussion, participants returned to the question of how to build an effective regulatory environment that enables innovation while ensuring public trust, fairness and access. There was strong support for proportionate, principle-led approaches, and for greater use of government data to inform better policy outcomes. CMA representatives shared examples of their work using AI to improve public procurement outcomes and noted the need for more systematic and interoperable data collection across government departments.
Victoria Collins MP closed the session by thanking attendees and emphasising the shared commitment to making the UK the most trusted and competitive place in the world to deploy digital innovation. She underlined the need for continued engagement between regulators, parliamentarians and industry to ensure that ethical innovation, infrastructure development and industrial growth go hand in hand.